Never Say Never , livre ebook

Table of Contents Cover Bethany House Books by Lisa Wingate Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Contents Acknowledgments Epigraph 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 Discussion Questions About the Author Back Ad Back Cover
List of Pages 1 2 3 4 5 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316 317 318 319 320 321 322 323 324 325 326 327 328 329 330 331 332 333 334 335 336 337 338 339 340 341 342 343 344 345 346 347 348 349 350 351 352 353 354 355 356 357 358 359 360 361 363 364 365 367 368 369

Landmarks Cover Bethany House Books by the Author(s) Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Table of Contents Acknowledgments Epigraph Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Discussion Questions About the Author Back Ad Back Cover
Cover
Bethany House Books by Lisa Wingate
D AILY , T EXAS
Talk of the Town
Word Gets Around
Never Say Never
M OSES L AKE
Larkspur Cove
Blue Moon Bay
Firefly Island
Wildwood Creek
Title Page
Copyright Page
© 2010 by Wingate Media, LLC
Published by Bethany House Publishers
11400 Hampshire Avenue South
Bloomington, Minnesota 55438
www.bethanyhouse.com
Bethany House Publishers is a division of
Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan
www.bakerpublishinggroup.com
Ebook edition created 2010
Ebook corrections 04.16.2016, 10.26.2017, 04.05.2019
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
ISBN 978-1-4934-2253-1
Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the King James Version of the Bible.
Scripture quotations labeled NIV are from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com. The “NIV” and “New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Cover design by Paul Higdon
Cover illustration by Paul Higdon and William Graf
Dedication

To the homefolks of Burrel-Wingate Road and points beyond—
the Tullys, Hidalgos, Joostens, and Kikers . . .
Thank you for wonderful memories of hours spent along the coast.
And to
The determined, resilient folks of the Texas Gulf Coast,
Still rebuilding after Rita, Dolly, and Ike . . .
I wish you fair skies and gentle winds.
Contents
Cover
Books by Lisa Wingate
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Epigraph
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
Discussion Questions
About the Author
Back Ad
Back Cover
Acknowledgments
W hen I’m out and about at book events, it never fails that someone with a particular favorite among my stories will ask me what inspired the book and how much of it is true. After that, the discussion is a little like one of those chats at a family reunion, in which a gaggle of aunts sits near the vittles, eyeballing passing children and trying to decide whom each one favors. “Why, he’s the spittin’ image of Uncle Clee,” one will say, and another will argue, “Not either. Clee had them big ol’ ears, remember? That child’s cute as a bedbug. Looks just like his mama. Takes after the Lumleys, for sure.” The arguments go on from there, and usually there are as many opinions as aunts at the table.
Stories are a little like children. None of them drop out of thin air. The DNA of Never Say Never was pieced together from shreds of family history, bits of personal experience, a few colorful real-life characters, and a hurricane tale or two shared by readers and relatives along the way. As always, I’d be remiss if I didn’t thank the folks who so kindly contributed.
Thanks to our friends and family in southeast Texas for always hosting us on trips to the coast, for chatting and talking during the numerous “hurrications” of the past few years, and for being willing to share hurricane experiences, even when it was painful to recall them. To Uncle Buck McAdams, thanks for sharing the long-ago hurricane story of floating mattresses and flooded farmland that inspired Mamee’s history. You never know when a chat over coffee will inspire a book. Thanks also to reader friends for sharing evacuation stories and tales of God’s little miracles along the way.
On the print and paper side of things, enormous gratitude goes out to the amazing folks at Bethany House Publishers. To Julie Klassen and Dave Long, you are simply the best editors a writer could dream of. Thank you for your astute suggestions, guidance, and encouragement along the way. Julie, thanks for the notes in the margin—you’re as good an editor as you are a writer, and that’s saying a lot. To the awesome folks in publicity, marketing, and art—what can I say? Even when you’re making snow at forty below there in Minneapolis, you’re coming up with hot new ideas. To my agent, Claudia Cross, at Sterling Lord Literistic, once again, thanks.
Lastly (but not leastly), my thanks once again goes out to my family for being . . . well . . . awesome, and always willing to eat “deadline dinners,” otherwise known as frozen pizzas and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Thank you to my friend Theresa Loman for creating wonderful digital scrapbook pages for my website and to top tech guru and friend Ed Stevens for online help, video production, website assistance, and especially for your encouragement. How lucky I am to have such friends. Thank you also to reader friends far and near for sending notes, sharing stories, recommending the books to friends and book clubs, and delivering encouragement on days when I needed a pick-me-up. Little angels must whisper in your ears, because every time a mullygrub day comes along, a sweet note arrives. God does His best work through the people we meet on our journeys. Thank you, all of you, for being my peeps and for your little acts of kindness. What a blessing!
Epigraph
When thou passest through the waters,
I will be with thee; and through the rivers,
they shall not overflow thee.
Isaiah 43:2
Chapter 1 Donetta Bradford
Y ou’d imagine, livin’ high and dry in the middle of Texas, with the jackrabbits and the prickly pears, you wouldn’t close your eyes at night and feel the water. In this country, people think of water like the narrow string that runs over the rocks in Caney Creek, or drifts long, and slow, and lazy down the Brazos or the Guadalupe. But when I close my eyes, I feel the kind of water that surrounds you and seeps into your mind and soul, until you breathe in and out with the tides.
Where, in heaven’s name, would a person get a dream like that in Daily, Texas, where the caliche-rock ground’s so hard the county’s got no need to pave roads—they just clear a trail and let folks drive on it. It’ll harden up quick enough and stay that way three quarters of the year while the farmers and the ranchers watch the sky and hope for rain. Life here hasn’t got much to do with water, except in the waiting for it. But every night when I close my eyes, I feel a tide, rockin’ back and forth under my body. I been feeling it for sixty-nine and a half years now, long as I can remember. I never did anything about it, nor told anybody. They’d think I was nutty as a bullbat, and when you’re a businesswoman in a small town, well, you got to protect your reputation. That goes double if you’re the hairdresser, and a redhead. We all know what kind of reputation hairdressers and redheads got.
All that’s even more important for someone whose people, historically speaking, ain’t from Daily. In a little town, even if you been there all your life, you’re not native unless you can trace your roots back generations. There’s still folks that’ll point out (in a backhanded way mostly, because they’re all gonna need a haircut sooner or later) that I’m only a Daily girl by half, on my father’s side. On the other side, there’s a bit of scandal the biddies still cluck about.
My daddy was what you’d call a prodigal. After leaving behind his fine, upstandin’ family and a half-dozen brokenhearted girls