In Seattle she’d even made a few friends, older, married women who invited her over often for home-cooked meals and the kind of nurturing concern she’d missed since leaving home. She took endless walks along Elliott Bay, bought fresh produce and fish at Pike’s Place Market, sipped decaf cappuccino in every Starbucks she passed.

Clint seemed to have lost her trail or else he’d just given up and gone home, satisfied that he’d made a noble attempt to find her. No doubt that enabled him to sleep well enough. By then, he was probably sharing his bed with some other woman. At any rate, she’d felt it was safe to linger in Seattle. Contentment seemed almost within her grasp. She couldn’t bring herself to admit that she was disappointed that he had given up.

Maybe, if it hadn’t been for the Seattle weather, she could have made it work. But as summer gave way to fall and then to a premature winter, all that rain and gloom had finally gotten to her. She began to miss clear blue skies and the kind of heat that baked the earth.

When she packed up and moved on, she told herself her goal was merely sunshine. The undeniable truth was, she was heading straight for Texas, toward home.

For better or worse, she was going back to become Angela Adams again. The spirited Hattie Jones had died in Montana. Like it or not, Angela Adams was a Texan through and through. Her baby would be, too. The heritage she had abandoned for herself, she had no right to dismiss for the baby. It should be up to her child to decide someday if being an Adams was too much of a burden.

Not that she ever sat down and listed all the pros and cons for going home. The choice was instinctive. She’d hardly even needed a map to guide her south along the Pacific Coast and then east. If she’d stopped to reason it out, she probably would have found a hundred excuses for staying as far away from Texas as she could.

She’d developed a bad case of jitters near the end and wound up in Dallas, bypassing the turn to the south that would have taken her home much sooner. For days she’d lingered, wandering around the stores that had been decorated for the holidays, pretending that maybe this would be the final destination. It was close enough to home for an occasional visit, but far enough away to maintain her independence.