She winced. One small hand went shyly to cover his clenched fist on the table. “I’m so sorry.”

He seemed to mentally shake himself, as if he’d been locked into the past. He met her soft, concerned gaze. His big hand turned, curled around hers. “I’ve never spoken of it, until now.”

“Maybe sometimes it’s good to share problems. Dark memories aren’t so bad when you force them into the light.”

“Seventeen going on thirty?” he mused, smiling at her. It didn’t occur to her to wonder how he knew her age.

She smiled. “There are always people who are in worse shape than you are. My friend Billy has an alcoholic father who beats him and his mother. The police are over there all the time, but his mother will never press charges. Sheriff Carson says the next time, he’s going to jail, even if he has to press charges himself.”

“Good for the sheriff.”

“What happened, after the trial?” she prodded gently.

He curled his fingers around Michelle’s, as if he enjoyed their soft comfort. She might have been fascinated to know that he’d never shared these memories with any other woman, and that, as a rule, he hated having people touch him.

“He went to jail for child abuse,” he said. “My mother was there every visiting day.”

“No, what happened to you and your sister?”

“My mother refused to have us in the house with her. We were going to be placed in foster homes. The public defender had a maiden aunt, childless, who was suicidal. Her problems weren’t so terrible, but she tended to depression and she let them take her almost over the edge. So he thought we might be able to help each other. We went to live with Aunt Maude.” He chuckled. “She was not what you think of as anybody’s maiden aunt. She drove a Jaguar, smoked like a furnace, could drink any grown man under the table, loved bingo parties and cooked like a gourmet. Oh, and she spoke about twenty languages. In her youth, she was in the army and mustered out as a sergeant.”

“Wow,” she exclaimed. “She must have been fascinating to live with.”

“She was. And she was rich. She spoiled us rotten. She got my sister into therapy, for a while at least, and me into the army right after I graduated.” He smiled. “She was nuts about Christmas. We had trees that bent at the ceiling, and the limbs groaned under all the decorations. She’d go out and invite every street person she could find over to eat with us.” His face sobered. “She said she’d seen foreign countries where the poor were treated better than they were here. Ironically, it was one of the same people she invited to Christmas dinner who stabbed her to death.”

She winced. “I’m so sorry!”