A Roof Over Their Heads. M. K. Stelmack

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A Roof Over Their Heads - M. K. Stelmack A True North Hero

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wish you were here to read your sister’s story of love and hope—your favorite kind.

      Acknowledgments

      Thank you to Angela Spiller, who drew from her own experiences to share the emotional and bureaucratic journey of adoption, of cobbling together strangers, needing and worthy, into a family. Thanks also to Mark Matheson at the Red Deer office of community corrections for providing insight into how community service would look like for my hero.

      Thanks to my editor, Victoria Curran, who gave my life a Point of No Return, and to Astrid Theilgaard, my tried-and-true critique partner.

      With this book, I’ve gained a tribe in the form of the Heartwarming Sisters, who have filled me with the conviction that our stories matter.

      May I dwell long among them.

      And to the Holy Spirit, who daily drags me through my character arc, abiding and chiding through my every kick and complaint.

      I am blessed.

      Contents

       Cover

       Back Cover Text

       About the Author

       Title Page

       Copyright

       Introduction

       Dear Reader

       Dedication

       CHAPTER ONE

       CHAPTER TWO

       CHAPTER THREE

       CHAPTER FOUR

       CHAPTER FIVE

       CHAPTER SIX

       CHAPTER SEVEN

       CHAPTER EIGHT

       CHAPTER NINE

       CHAPTER TEN

       CHAPTER ELEVEN

       CHAPTER TWELVE

       CHAPTER THIRTEEN

       CHAPTER FOURTEEN

       CHAPTER FIFTEEN

       CHAPTER SIXTEEN

       CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

       CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

       CHAPTER NINETEEN

       CHAPTER TWENTY

       Extract

       CHAPTER ONE

      SWEAT WAS A thin glue coated on Alexi Docker, sticking her T-shirt to the driver’s seat and her hot jeans to her legs, the slimy by-product of four hours on the road with no air-conditioning and a tire change in a highway ditch.

      She crawled the van with the U-Haul trailer to a stop in front of the new home, and turned to her four kids in the back seats. “So, what do you think?”

      Please, please like it. Or, at least, don’t hate it.

      While three-year-old Callie, behind the front passenger seat, kept her brown eyes fixed on Alexi, the other three kids regarded the white split-level and attached garage with a kind of hopeful hesitancy, as if waiting for someone to throw open the front door and boom out a welcome.

      When, not surprisingly, that didn’t happen, Matt said, “Cool.”

      “Where’s the backyard?” asked eight-year-old Bryn from the bench seat he shared with six-year-old Amy. The big backyard was the prime selling feature for the kids.

      “Duh. Behind the house. In the back,” Amy said.

      Bryn unbuckled himself. “Okay, I’m going there.”

      “How about I get a picture with—” Alexi began, but Bryn had already activated the side door and hopped out. Two more buckles unclicked, and Matt and Amy cleared the van with Bryn and were racing past the house, straight for the promised land of the backyard.

      “Matt,” she called, as she rounded the hood. “Stay together, okay?”

      Matt, her eldest at eleven, was the family border collie, patrolling boundaries and herding the strays. He nodded once and disappeared.

      That had gone rather well. No outright mutiny, at any rate. Alexi

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