A vehicle was coming, a truck. She clawed at the gravel and managed to heave herself closer to the pavement. Another claw to the gravel, another heave. She had to get help, had to get to her boys. She pushed herself up on one bloody elbow, tried to lift a hand to wave to the truck as its headlights beamed so bright that she reeled backward. Pain made her stomach roil, and blackness dimmed the edges of her vision.

She pushed herself up higher. “Hey!” she tried to call out.

The truck thundered on past her and she collapsed down again.

Her head hurt like the worst headache she’d ever had, times ten.

She hadn’t wanted it to end this way, but somehow, she’d always known it would.

CHAPTER ONE

To make an end is to make a beginning.

T. S. Eliot

Present Day

SEAN O’DWYER LOOKED around the lived-in bayou cottage where he’d spent his teenage years, rubbed the back of his neck and dug deep for patience. Nothing like your childhood home to make you feel like a rebellious teenager.

He hadn’t been eager to return to the town where he and his brothers had a history that made people pity them. But Safe Haven was known as the place where you could lick your wounds in peace, and while that primarily applied to women, a handful of men had gotten their footing here, too.

Maybe he’d be one of them. He had nothing left to lose.

“Living by yourself out there in the salt marshes isn’t going to make you feel any better.” Ma Dixie, the woman who’d taken him in when he was an angry thirteen-year-old and raised him to be a decent man, glanced over from clearing the lunch dishes, her broad face wrinkled with concern. “You could just as well plan the renovation staying right here with me.”

Liam, who at twenty-eight was the youngest of Sean’s motley crew of adopted and biological brothers, leaned back against Ma’s kitchen counter and sipped sweet tea. “Your ex-wife was worried you’d do something rash.”

Sean blinked. “You talked to Gabby? You listened to her?”

Liam spread his hands and shrugged. “She was concerned.”

“Concerned enough to dump me for our marriage counselor,” Sean muttered, and then was sorry he had. He didn’t need their pity. He and Gabby had grown apart after his two tours in Afghanistan, so her sudden turnaround on their agreement about not having children had broken what was left of their marriage. That, he couldn’t compromise on. He knew himself and his history too well.

He didn’t even miss her, not really. He just missed the hope he’d felt, getting married. That an O’Dwyer could overcome his past, be a happy husband who treated his wife well and was loved in return. His throat tightened and he shoved aside that stupid dream. “I’m caretaking the place, too, that’s why I have to live there. Eldora was afraid kids or vandals would break into the cottages.”