Free Trial by Fire by Jo Davis

sheepish grin.
    Kat’s eyes rounded. “Oh, my gosh! What happened? ”
    “Twelve stitches.”
    “No, to the cat!”
    He rolled his eyes. “Rescued the darned thing.”
    “Good. So, you’ve lived in Sugarland since you were four?” Kat prompted, popping a chip into her mouth.
    Howard tensed, wishing he hadn’t mentioned being adopted. Playing This Is Your Life , at least with his own, had never been his bag. “Yeah.” He braced himself, knowing what was next.
    “And before that?”
    “I lived in a run-down shack on the other side of Clarksville, or so I’ve been told.”
    “You don’t remember?” Sympathy laced her soft voice.
    “Not much.”
    Unless you counted the rotted boards of the front porch steps, the old mongrel that used to slink underneath to take refuge. The stench of beer and his father’s unwashed body, the boiling anger permeating the rank air like a terminal sickness. His father’s bellows of rage, his mother’s screams. The sting of the razor strap across his thin back.
    “My mother loved her garden more than anyplace else,” he said instead, his throat gone tight. “She’d spend hours out in the sunshine, and I remember how beautiful she looked kneeling in the dirt, poking seeds into thumb-sized holes. She had long brown hair the same color as mine, but past her shoulders. And when she laughed . . . the whole world lit up.”
    “She sounds wonderful.”
    Oh, God. A bolt of old pain and anger sliced through his chest. “She was.” Before she left me to a monster.
    “What happened?”
    His appetite vanished and he wrapped the uneaten half of his second sandwich in the plastic. “One day she left and didn’t come back. I don’t imagine anybody blamed her, from what little I remember about my father. He had a mean streak as long and wide as the Cumberland.”
    “Your father was abusive?”
    “Yeah.” The pity and disgust on Kat’s sweet face was almost more than he could stand.
    “And nobody blamed her for leaving?” she asked softly. “Not even the son who loved her so much?”
    She worked with young children every day of the week, and he didn’t have to tell her how emotionally devastating it had been for a boy to be discarded like an old shoe by the person he adored most. How much the knowledge hurt decades later, despite the healing magic of time.
    He shrugged. “I was a kid. I got over it.”
    From her knowing expression, Kat didn’t believe that any more than he did. Silence stretched between them, broken only by the laughter and whoops of the party downstream, as she waited for him to continue.
    “Anyway, the night my mom left town, my father ditched me in the woods between here and Clarksville, then obliged everyone by crashing his truck into a tree and burning to death. Since I had no other family, I became a ward of the state until Bentley and Georgie rescued me.”
    After he’d recovered from the final, severe beating his father had dished out before dumping him like so much trash.
    “Did anyone try to find your mother?”
    “I’m sure the authorities did, otherwise the adoption couldn’t have legally taken place. I believe the correct term is ‘child abandonment.’ ”
    Kat hesitated, looking uncertain whether to ask the next logical question. “Have you searched for her?”
    “What for? If the lady wants to see me, she can find me. It’s not like I’ve gone far.” His answer came out harsher than he intended, and he cringed.
    Patting his shoulder, she didn’t appear to notice. “Oh, Howard. How horrible all of that must’ve been for you, especially that last night.”
    Taking her hand, he gave her a reassuring smile. “I don’t actually remember that part.” But recalling the nightmare, a niggling part of him wasn’t sure.
    “Thank God!” She squeezed his hand, green eyes luminous.
    “Yeah. What I know is based on evidence the sheriff’s department pieced together and eventually passed on to the Mitchells. From what Bentley told me