THE MEASURE OF GRACE

Two years later, on a crisp morning in late October when the mountain maples were glowing in magnificent shades of scarlet, amber, and gold, an old passenger bus stopped at the rural crossing two miles from Willow Creek.

A single passenger stepped down into the gravel.

It was Bradley.

He had served eighteen months in a minimum-security federal camp, having been released early to a court-monitored community service program.

He was thirty-seven years old now, but he looked fifty. His styled hair was gone, cropped into a short, practical buzz streaked with grey; his face was thin, sunburned, and etched with the deep, agonizing exhaustion of a man who had lost everything except his breath. He wore a faded denim work shirt, dark canvas trousers, and scuffed leather boots.

He walked up the two-mile dirt lane, carrying a single canvas duffel bag over his shoulder.

Through the trees, the rhythmic, clear *clack-slide* of the wooden looms and the laughing voices of young women singing traditional Appalachian weaving rounds drifted on the autumn breeze.

Bradley reached the split-rail cedar fence marking the boundary of the homestead.

He stopped, his hands clutching the rough wood, his shoulders trembling violently.

In the grassy front yard, two-year-old Thomas was laughing as he chased a yellow butterfly, wearing a pair of hand-sewn linen overalls.