He quickly dressed in pajama pants and a loose-fitting T-shirt and chose a book from the collection. He read six pages before he laid the book to the side with a sigh, got up, and found his senior yearbook on the top shelf of his well-organized closet.

He turned to the page with the sophomores. There was Jennie Sue. The underclassmen’s pictures were in black and white, but her eyes looked sad. Why had she come to Bloom on a bus? It wasn’t a bit of his business, but he couldn’t help wondering. The whole town would be talking about it.

You had a little crush on her when you were in high school, that niggling voice in his head said.

“So what?” he said aloud. “No one ever knew about it. She was way above my league. As if she would have gotten into a pickup truck with me.”

He stretched out on the bed and laced his fingers behind his head. So she was in town for Dill’s birthday party, was she? That meant a few weeks from now, because he remembered from the social pages in the paper last year, it was right near his own birthday.

The likelihood of their paths crossing was slim to none, but he might catch a glimpse of her in town or having coffee in the café—if he was lucky.

Chapter Two

Jennie Sue awoke on Tuesday morning with a start. She sat straight up in bed and blinked several times before she realized that she was in her old bedroom in the house in Bloom, Texas, and not in her New York City apartment. It seemed like a fitting way to begin a new life, but nothing looked or felt right. And yet nothing had changed in the house or in her bedroom.

Last Christmas her mom and dad had spent the holiday with her in New York. She’d had some free time between her online college classes, so they’d gone to a couple of shows, and she and her mother had done a lot of shopping. It had been a surreal visit ending in the birth of Jennie Sue’s stillborn daughter, the baby arriving a couple of weeks ahead of schedule.

A lump formed in her throat and tears dammed up behind her eyelids when she thought of that day. With her head in her hands, she bent forward and let the tears have their way at the memory of holding that precious little body in her arms for an hour before they took her. She’d thought that day that she’d never come back to Bloom and never go to the unmarked grave in the Baker plot at the Bloom cemetery, because she wouldn’t be able to stand the pain again. She’d been in such shock after the birth that she’d never quite figured out why her mother was so adamant about keeping her stillborn grandchild a secret.

Out of nowhere a memory of her dad winking at a young woman at a party when she was fifteen came to her mind, and then she remembered seeing the same gesture from Percy when they went to a dinner thrown by a diamond buyer in Paris. She wiped the tears from her eyes and sat up straight, anger replacing pain. If all men were like her father and her ex-husband, she’d stay single the rest of her life.

Sitting there with a million thoughts swirling around her, she wondered if she’d done the right thing by using part of her slim cash stash to come back to Bloom. But it was either that or live in a box on the streets. She had to get out of the apartment, and even if she’d gotten to keep her car, she couldn’t afford the parking-garage bill to keep it if she stayed in the big city. Sure, her dad would have stepped in and given her an allowance until she could find a job, but she couldn’t afford to live in New York. Truth was, even though she didn’t plan to stay in Bloom, something kept pulling her back there. Maybe if she went to her baby’s grave site, she’d get closure and she could move on.

She went to the bathroom and stared at her reflection in the mirror. Red eyes from crying, no makeup, and were her cheeks fuller than they’d been a few months ago?

“Maybe Daddy doesn’t want to hire me because I have ten extra pounds hanging on my body,” she muttered sarcastically. “Mama will have a hissy if he does give me a job. I’m supposed to be just like her and work on being pretty so I can hang on some man’s arm at parties. Tried that, Mama. I didn’t like it.” She talked to herself as she stretched and rolled her head from side to side to get the kinks out of her neck, and then she washed her face with cold water and went to the bedroom to get dressed.

She’d have breakfast and treat herself to doing nothing for the rest of that day, but tomorrow when her dad got home, vacation was over. If he wouldn’t hire her, then she’d find a job somewhere else.

“Good mornin’.” Charlotte met her in the hallway and put a glass of something green in her hands. “Drink it up and meet me in the fitness room. We’ve got an hour with the trainer. You simply must get those extra pounds off before Dill’s party. People will talk.”

Jennie Sue sipped the green goo and frowned. “I can’t stand this stuff. You know I hate the taste of kale.”

“You’ll acquire a taste for it after a few weeks,” Charlotte informed her as she hurried off to the trainer.

Jennie Sue carried the glass into the bathroom and poured it down the drain. Green tea was one thing, but that stuff wasn’t fit for toad frogs or cockroaches. Her mother was already on a treadmill when she peeked inside the room. She took one look at the machinery and walked out, thankful that neither Charlotte nor the trainer had seen her.

She sniffed the air on the way down the wide staircase, but nothing, not even a whiff of coffee, floated up to her. Definitely not a hint of bacon or hot biscuits in the oven—she could understand the absence of food since her dad wasn’t home, but surely her mother hadn’t given up her morning cup of coffee.

“Hey, Mabel, am I too late for breakfast?” she asked when she reached the kitchen.

“Honey, I can whip up something for you, but since your daddy’s gone, we don’t do breakfast. Your mama drinks one of those god-awful things that she makes in the blender, and she’s stopped drinkin’ even decaf. Says that she read in an article that it made a woman’s face wrinkle up faster,” Mabel answered. “I ain’t one to meddle, but even the garbage disposal would spit that green crap out. Me and Frank got us a coffeepot out in the garage, and we have a cup before we start our day.”

“Well, I’m having coffee,” Jennie Sue declared.

“Didn’t she bring you a glass full of that liquid grass?” Mabel asked.

“I just cleaned out the drain in the bathroom sink with it. Looked to me like it would work as good as that declogging stuff. How does Daddy get his morning three cups?”

Mabel drew in a long breath and let it out slowly. “Frank keeps the coffee going in the garage all day long. Man couldn’t live without it, and Dill goes out there and gets it in the mornin’, too. I reckon you could do the same.”

Jennie Sue picked up an empty mug and headed to the garage, returning a minute later sipping at the steaming-hot coffee. “What’s makin’ Mama sick is that green shit.”

“Most likely, but you’re going to suffer her wrath if she smells coffee driftin’ up the stairs. Poor old Dill sure does,” Mabel said. “But now that we’re alone, tell me, what’re you really doin’ here, child?”

“Tryin’ to talk Daddy into givin’ me a job. Percy left me and moved in with his girlfriend months ago. I thought he owned the apartment we had, and I got it in the divorce, but it was leased. Once the alimony checks started bouncing, I had to deplete my savings to finish my business degree online,” she answered, finishing with the tale of her ex’s diamond-filled escape from the feds.

“I’m so sorry, honey, but I got to admit, I thought that man was shifty from the beginnin’. He had a big name and acted all proper, but there was something about him that didn’t add up.” Mabel patted her on the back. “I had a feelin’ you were home for something more than your daddy’s party. You want some bacon, eggs, and hash browns to go with that coffee?”

Jennie Sue nodded. “Yes, ma’am, but you don’t have to wait on me. I’ve been takin’ care of myself ever since he left. You go on about whatever you were doing.”

“Okay, then.” Mabel’s head and all three of her chins bobbed up and down. “Just put your dirty dishes in the sink.”

“No need. Percy had to be in control of everything. Believe me, I know how to keep things spotless. First month we were married, he fired four housekeepers and told me that I’d learn to take care of the place the way he wanted it done, or I could go on back to my Podunk Texas town.” Jennie Sue opened the refrigerator.