niece—Katydid.
“All right, guilty as charged,” his brother conceded. “Now where are my truck keys?”
“You know that bucket of wall primer...?” Carter teased as he turned off the main road, intending to take a shortcut into town, where he would swing by the hardware store and pick up something to take the remaining shoe polish off his face.
His brother groaned. “Tell me you didn’t.”
“I didn’t,” Carter said with a chuckle. “They’re...” His words trailed off as his attention was drawn to movement outside the open driver’s side window. Just past the wildly overgrown hedgerow that lined the inside of the faded white property fence, a woman lay facedown atop the sagging porch roof of the old abandoned Harris house. At least, the upper half of her did. The rest of her dangled down over the roof’s edge.
Slowing his truck, he glanced back at the scene he’d just driven by. Crime was virtually nonexistent in Braxton, Texas. And the only thing anyone would find in that old place would be cobwebs and dust balls, so he immediately wrote off the possibility of a robbery. So what was that woman doing up on the old farmhouse’s porch roof?
That last thought had barely surfaced when a high-pitched cry cut through the warm spring air. “Help!”
“Carter?” his brother prompted, his impatience growing.
“In the toolbox,” he blurted out. “Gotta go.” He disconnected the call, then stepped on the brake. Throwing his truck into Reverse, he backed up to the drive that led to the dilapidated old farmhouse that no one had lived in for a good ten years or more.
Sure enough, the woman dangled from the edge of the aging farmhouse’s sagging porch roof. She was definitely in trouble. Carter turned his truck into the dirt-and-gravel drive and drove at breakneck speed up to the house, sending a billowing cloud of dust up into the air behind him.
He was out of the truck in no time, racing toward the wraparound porch where the wooden ladder the woman had been using to climb onto the roof had kicked away and was now resting haphazardly against the thick, sprawling branch of a honey mesquite.
The woman was fortunate, he thought with a concerned frown. If the tree hadn’t taken root so close to the old farmhouse... Well, he wasn’t even going to think about what the outcome might have been. As it was, one flip-flop-covered foot rested at an awkward angle against the top rung of the rickety old ladder. The woman’s other foot, currently shoeless, struggled to find purchase below her with no success.
“Hold on!” he called out to her. And then he did something he hadn’t done since his daddy and poor little Katie had been taken to the hospital after the tornado. He prayed.
Lord, please let me reach this woman in time.
Years of working construction, much of that time spent atop ladders, told him that her legs wouldn’t be able to hold out for long before cramping would set in.
“Mommy!” a tiny voice whimpered.
Carter’s gaze shot up to the second-story window just beyond the woman, noticing for the first time the two little faces peeking out, eyes wide with worry.
“Mommy’s fine, sweetie,” she replied, her words strained. “I’ve got a hold on the rope loop Mason made for me.”
His gaze shifted to the length of what looked to be a half-inch manila rope that spilled out over the open windowsill and ran down the weathered asphalt shingles. At the end of the rope was a large loop, which the woman held in a determinedly white-knuckled grasp.
He stepped up to the fallen ladder, just beneath her dangling form. “Are you injured?”
“No,” she called down. “But I seem to have lost my other flip-flop.”
She could have lost a lot more than that, he thought, his frown deepening. “It’s right here on the ground,” he told her as he eyed the cotton-candy-pink flip-flop lying on the grass in front of a flowering Texas sage shrub. “What are you doing up there anyway?” he called up to her with a frown.
“Retrieving a Frisbee.”
His dark brow shot up. A Frisbee? The woman had risked her neck for a Frisbee? “How about we rescue you instead?”
“I... I’m okay with that.”
His mouth quirked, despite the seriousness of the situation. “I’m gonna reposition this ladder, but I want you to keep your foot braced against it while I do. Then I’m gonna hold the ladder in place so you can climb down.”
“Sounds like a plan,” she said unevenly.
He couldn’t see her face from where he stood, but he didn’t have to see it to know she was more shaken than she was letting on. “Okay, I’m gonna start lifting the ladder back toward the roof.” He raised it slow enough to allow the woman to maintain her foothold, prepared to catch her if her foot slipped and she fell. “Okay, work your other foot over to the ladder,” he told her the moment he had the ladder firmly back in place.
Ever so tentatively, her bare foot felt its way to the top rung. Her long ponytail swung ever so slightly behind her, the afternoon sun bringing out the glints of gold in the honey-brown strands.
“That’s it, darlin’,” he said, his grip firm on the ladder.
Her legs trembled beneath her, making the ladder vibrate. The shudder was subtle, but it told him that her strength was nearly spent. “Steady...” he said, wishing he could go up to get her. But the ladder was old and too unsteady to risk it. No, he had to make this work. In doing so, he offered up another silent prayer for the Lord to deliver her safely to the ground below.
“Now work your way down,” he coaxed calmly.
She started to step down and then stopped. “I can’t. The rope isn’t long enough.”
He glanced up toward the window. “What’s that rope secured to anyway?”
“An old iron bed,” she replied shakily. “At least, the frame. There’s no mattress. It’s the only thing in the room.”
“If that bed frame’s in the same shape as that roof you’re lying on and this ladder I’m holding on to, it’s best we don’t have you holding on to that rope much longer. You’re gonna have to let go of it so you can grab on to the ladder.”
“What if I fall?” she said, sounding on the verge of tears. “I can’t fall. My children need me. I’m all they have.”
He thought of the two frightened faces he saw in the window above. Her children were counting on him to get their momma down safely. A feeling like he’d never known came over him and he knew that God had turned him down her road, one he rarely ever traveled on, for a reason.
“I’m not gonna let you fall,” he assured her.
“And if I do?” she demanded with a muffled sob.
“I’ll catch you,” he answered without hesitation. “Either way, you’re safe with me.”
* * *
You’re safe with me. Audra Marshall replayed those words over and over in her mind as she moved down the old ladder. They were the same words she’d heard before from the man who’d promised to love her forever. A man who’d failed to hold to his vows, leaving her to raise their two young children alone.
“Mommy?” her nearly five-year-old daughter called down worriedly. “Are you going to leave us, too?”
“Mommy’s not going anywhere,” she quickly assured her little girl, having heard the panic in her voice. Then she felt herself being lifted from the ladder into a pair of strong arms. “I’m...” She’d almost said she was safe now, but considering she was being held in the arms of a man she didn’t know, she couldn’t bring herself to say those words. She did, however, say a prayer of thanks to God for watching over her. Not that she’d expected the