It could only be passed forward.
Caleb looked at the house.
“We're not leaving until it's safe.”
Mara smiled.
“Thomas would approve.”
“I hope so.”
Emily Whitmore received the call that evening.
She almost didn't answer.
Her phone had been ringing constantly.
Then she heard a woman's voice.
“Are you Emily?”
“Yes.”
“This is Rosa. I'm with your mother.”
Emily's stomach dropped.
“Is she okay?”
“She is now.”
“What happened?”
Rosa explained.
The storm.
The damaged house.
The riders.
The repairs.
Emily sat down.
She had spent twelve years believing her mother was stubborn.
She had never understood how much fear was hiding beneath that stubbornness.
“Why didn't she tell me?”
Rosa was silent for a moment.
“Maybe she didn't want you to worry.”
Emily closed her eyes.
That answer hurt more than anger would have.
She looked across the room at her two children.
Her son was doing homework.
Her daughter was watching television.
She suddenly realized how much of their grandmother they had missed.
Not because Mara didn't love them.
Because everyone had been waiting for someone else to make the first move.
Emily stood.
“I'm coming.”
The roof was finished on the third day.
The porch was reinforced.
The damaged floor was replaced.
The electrical system was brought up to code.
The leaking pipes were repaired.
The house was painted.
Even the old mailbox was replaced.
But there was one final problem.
The property taxes.
Mara discovered it when a man named Victor, an attorney who had joined the riders, sat beside her at the kitchen table.
He placed an envelope in front of her.
She looked at it.
“What is this?”
“Your tax balance.”