LITMIR.BIZ

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like second parents.

      He’d noticed too, the cars parked at Claudia Campano’s roadside stand. Not surprising that on a beautiful Sunday afternoon folks would be stopping for fresh produce. He hadn’t seen Rosalie. Bryce made up his mind to stop at the stand on his way back down Fox Hollow Road and say hello to Mrs. Campano.

      “What do you want to do?” the agent said, breaking into his thoughts. “I’d love to draw up a contract on this house.” She gave him a brilliant smile. “I think it would be perfect for our town’s new football coach.”

      “I’ll need to arrange inspections first,” he said. “Check for termites. Check the roof, plumbing and electrical.”

      “Of course. But we can make the contract contingent on the inspections coming in satisfactorily.” She tapped a pen on the top of her portfolio. “You don’t want to lose this place by not having your name on the dotted line.”

      He smiled. “How many offers have you had on this property since it was listed last year?” he said.

      She shrugged. “Admittedly it’s been a slow market.”

      Bryce was going to own this house. He felt it in the jangle of excited nerves in the pit of his stomach. “It’s listed at ninety thousand?”

      “That’s right.”

      “Write up an offer at twenty percent under that price. We’ll see what happens.”

      She held out her hand. “Meet me in my office in a half hour. I’ll get the paperwork started.”

      Rosalie joined her son and her mother at the produce stand midafternoon on Sunday. “When are your friends picking you up to go to the park?” she asked Danny.

      He checked his watch. “They should be here any minute. I need to get my gear. Are you staying to help Grandma?”

      “Yes. You go on.”

      “Thanks.” He pointed to an insufficient number of small baskets of tomatoes sitting in a bin. “You need to restock. I was just getting ready to do that.”

      “Sure. Looks like it’s been a good day.”

      He agreed, said goodbye to Claudia and jogged away just as a Honda Civic pulled into the drive and followed him toward the house. Rosalie waved to Danny’s friend at the wheel. She took a stack of miniature bushel baskets from under the bin and started to fill them with tomatoes from a large crate. Her attention was diverted when a black pickup with sparkling chrome accessories braked in front of the stand. She immediately noticed a front bumper license plate in black and gold that said Texas Tech University, and a moment later, Bryce Benton got out of the driver’s seat.

      He started to walk to Rosalie but stopped when Claudia hooted so loud a customer spilled a bag of peaches. “Bryce Benton! Oh, my stars. Get over here.”

      Bryce strode around the back of the stand and gave Claudia a hug. When she finally let him loose, she placed the flat of her hand over her heart and stared up into his face. “You have gotten even better looking, if that’s possible.”

      Rosalie hurried to the front to help the customer retrieve her peaches. As she worked, she couldn’t help thinking that her mother’s reaction to seeing Bryce was amazing, and not in a good way. For a time, both women, and Rosalie’s father as well, had nurtured bad feelings against Bryce every bit as strong as the ones Rosalie still seemed to cling to.

      Numb with grief at the sudden, tragic death of their son, Rosalie’s parents had sought comfort in the only way they knew how—by blaming the young man whose show-off antics had resulted in the accident which took the life of his best friend. Looking back, Rosalie realized that the anger and bitterness against Bryce, rightly or wrongly, had probably been the glue that had held the Campano family together through the weeks and months of mourning.

      And then Danny came along and their lives progressed according to a new purpose and pace. Rosalie continued to cry every night for her brother. Enzo Campano buried his grief so deep that Rosalie often wondered if he allowed himself to think about Ricky at all. And Claudia threw her efforts and mothering skills into making a home for her grandson.

      Unlike her daughter and her husband, at some point, she’d let go of the anguish and resentment. At least she said she had. But had she ever really forgiven Bryce? Since the Campanos didn’t talk much about the incident, Rosalie had always wondered. Today, however, almost sixteen years after her son’s death, Claudia tried to convince her daughter in this grandiose gesture of welcoming Bryce home that she had.

      “You’re the talk of the town, Bryce,” Claudia said. He grinned in a seemingly modest way and chatted quietly with her.

      Rosalie rang up the customer’s order. When the lady got in her car and drove away, Bryce walked over. “So how’s business, Rosalie?” he said.

      “It’s okay.”

      The Honda sped past with Danny in the backseat. The driver honked his horn and turned onto Fox Hollow Road.

      Bryce stared at the car for a moment and then snapped his fingers. “That’s right. You have a kid, don’t you? My mother told me you went to college, met a guy and had a baby.”

      “That’s right.”

      “A boy?”

      “Yes.”

      “And you moved back home with Claudia?”

      “Right again.”

      The car rounded a curve and disappeared. Rosalie hoped that would be the end of the conversation. Nope.

      “Is your son in high school yet?” Bryce asked.

      Vague. Vague. Keep your answers vague. Divert attention away from Danny. “Starts this year,” she said, returning to the task of packing tomato boxes. Bryce didn’t take the hint and move away, so she looked up at him, swallowed an involuntary sigh, and said, “You’re surrounded by fruits and vegetables at your house, Bryce, so you’re obviously not here to shop.”

      He smiled. “Not today.”

      “Then …?”

      He leaned a hip against the stand. “Campanos does business with Benton Farms, and I’m grateful for your years of support. Would you believe it’s customer appreciation day?”

      Right. She rearranged tomatoes to fit more boxes in the bin. “Not unless this magnanimous event just started today.”

      “As a matter of fact, it did.”

      She huffed. “And exactly how many Benton customers have you visited so far to show your appreciation?”

      The grin broadened. “You’re the first.”

      She frowned at him and continued working, though on some deeper emotional level she was aware of his every move. “As you can see, I’m busy. If you want to go appreciate someone else, feel free.”

      “I stopped by for another reason, too,” he said.

      “And that would be?”

      He stood straight and looked down the road. “You and I are going to be neighbors.”

      Her hand stilled. She clutched her fists at her sides. “What are you talking about?”

      “I’m about to become a home owner. I put a bid in for a place down the road, about halfway between your house and the old gristmill.”

      Her mind scrambled to come up with a location. Houses were separated by acres of land on Fox Hollow Road. There were no close neighbors in the traditional sense. The only property she knew of that was for sale was the old Harbin place. Surely he didn’t mean the homestead that was less than a mile away.

      “I just left the Harbin property,” he said. “I’ve made an offer.”

      She could only stare, reining in her first impulse to shout at him that he had no

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