by Mark Terry
Sharon Stillwater was seventy-two years old with white hair worn short. Her face was lined, her eyes a lively blue. She wore a pair of green surgical scrubs and her feet were bare.
Her husband, Daniel, was in the kitchen making a pitcher of lemonade and listening to the radio, which was turned to the local NPR station, WJCT. She could hear Diane Rehm’s distinctive voice, but didn’t understand what she was saying or who she was interviewing.
A bumblebee flew around the roses Daniel had planted along the edge of the deck. If she listened hard enough she could hear it over the chatter of birds and traffic a couple blocks away. She closed her eyes for a moment, giving into the drowsiness she felt. This was just a vacation. In another month she and Daniel were flying to Sierre Leone to spend six months at a mission. She had more energy when she was working. Sometimes when she was on vacation she grew listless, wanting to take naps she rarely felt the need for when she was seeing patients.
A loud crash broke the lassitude, followed by Daniel’s, “Oh my God!”
Daniel almost never swore. For a moment her heart jumped into her throat. Daniel never stopped. He worked and worked, he worried, he was the classic Type A personality, ambitious, contained, striving. Daniel was two years older than her, seventy-four, and although reasonably healthy for his age, was showing more signs of the years—higher blood pressure, higher cholesterol, some absentmindedness that concerned both of them.
She called out, “Dan? Everything okay?”
Silence.
Now alarmed, she tossed her journal on the table and went into the kitchen. Daniel was standing in the middle of the kitchen staring into the living room out the large picture window. On the floor were shards of blue glass in the midst of a puddle of pink lemonade.
“Daniel, what’s wrong?”
He continued to stare at the window. She followed his gaze and saw a car in the driveway. A moment later the doorbell rang.
“Daniel?”
He didn’t say anything.
Sharon edged around the glass and went to the front door, opening it. She gasped, hand to her mouth. Derek stood at the door. It had been, what, seven, eight years since they had seen each other? And even that had been only for a brief time when he was traveling through Florida on some assignment for the government. He looked older, but… happier, she thought. He wore blue jeans and a T-shirt and a hat that said DHS across the front.
In his arms he held a little boy. The hair and blue eyes…
“Mom, Dad… I’d like you to meet someone…”
Acknowledgments
First, I would like to thank my wife, Leanne, and my two sons, Ian and Sean, of course. I would like to thank Tamara Smith, a blogger, teacher and ex-pat living in Moscow who helped me out with some of my research, going way above and beyond the call of duty by taking a walk through Frunzenskaya and Gorky Park and shooting photographs. I would like to thank my good friend and phenomenal writer, Erica Orloff. Erica also writes books for middle grades under the name Erica Kirov, and so I thank her for the use of her alias. And alas, Erica, as you may now know, you didn’t get to sleep with Derek. Maybe in a future book. And finally, readers, thank you for coming back and asking for more adventures with Derek.
Table of Contents
Title
Copyright
Other Books
Dedication
Epigraph
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Acknowledgments