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booties for winter. Had about all of that I could take with your grandmother.”
    Tyson smiled. “Yeah, she was a real ballbuster.”
    â€œSweetest thing in Texas is what she was,” his grandfather said, emotion heavy in his voice. The man had loved Annie Hart with every fiber of his being and still grew maudlin at the mention of the woman he’d lost twenty-five years ago when Tyson was only a teen.
    Their only son, Trent, Tyson’s father, had problems almost all his life and as he’d gotten older he’d dabbled in alcohol and drugs. Tyson’s mother wasn’t much better. Grady and Annie had been the only stable force in Tyson’s life. He had bumped back and forth between Oak Stand and towns all over North Carolina as he grew up. At times it had been tough, but he’d survived. His father had passed away five years ago, estranged from his family. His mother lived in Myrtle Beach and rarely called. Grady and Laurel were his family.
    â€œYeah, Grandma was a gem. Especially to put up with your cranky butt.”
    Grady grunted.
    â€œSo, you got the remote control. Are you good?”
    â€œCourse I’m good. I’ve been takin’ care of myself for seventy-six years. Ever since I was twelve years old.”
    â€œI know,” Tyson said, picking up a long-sleeved white shirt that was hanging on the back of the library door. He knew at once it was Dawn’s. She must have left it yesterday when she came to clear out the rooms. Beforehe could stop himself, he brought the shirt to his nose and inhaled her scent—a clean, flowery smell. Then he snorted. So much for distance. Friends didn’t sniff each other’s clothing.
    â€œDon’t you snort. I had to leave home when I was a wet-behind-the-ears boy to find work. There ain’t nothing funny about the Depression and there ain’t nothin’ funny about going hungry. Somebody had to put food on the table for our family.”
    Tyson interrupted his grandfather’s favorite tirade that would wrap up with a lecture on being a responsible, dependable, teetotaling man. “I wasn’t snorting at you. I had some dust in my nose.”
    â€œOh,” his grandfather said again.
    Tyson told his grandfather goodbye then headed down the stairs. As he stepped onto the landing, he took one more sniff of Dawn’s shirt and tried to convince himself it wasn’t perverted to stand in an old folk’s center and sniff the director’s shirt.
    Of course, it was perverted. Or weird. Or both.
    God, he hoped this friendship thing worked out. But he had his doubts. Dawn had sparked something in him he hadn’t felt since before Iraq.
    And he knew what it was. It was excitement. Plain and not so simple.

CHAPTER SIX
    T WO WEEKS LATER , D AWN carried a pumpkin onto the porch and placed it on one of the pillars flanking the steps of Tucker House. The orange globe grinned with macabre glee—a smile that was Hunter Todd approved. Tyson brought the second one and placed it on the matching pillar. Hunter Todd ran past them and jumped into a pile of leaves Dawn had raked earlier.
    â€œThere,” he said, “I think those look fine. I wish Laurel was coming for the weekend. We’d show her a true small-town Halloween.”
    Dawn studied the jack-o’-lanterns, feeling bad for Tyson. Over the past few weeks of “being friends,” he’d told her about the pending divorce and the rapidly expanding gulf between him and his only child. He thought moving to Oak Stand would fix everything. That getting back to his roots would give Laurel gravity in her life. Teach her some old-fashioned values. But it didn’t seem to be working. Especially since Laurel had contrived reason after reason for not fulfilling the terms of the custody arrangement. Something important always came up—a recital practice, a youth-group function or a bad cold. Tyson said he didn’t want to go to