“I’d like to stay and visit and meet this girl you got hidin’ away somewhere, but she’s y’all’s business and not mine. I reckon y’all will come clean about her if she stays much longer. You should hear the rumors. I done heard that she’s the child of a daughter one of you gave away at birth. Another rumor has it that she’s really Belle’s granddaughter instead of one of y’all’s. That your mama gave birth to a fourth child and the father took her away. Now, with all this technology, the girl has found y’all and is here to claim her share of the Banty House,” Flora said. “Great strawberry shine. Needs just a little more sweet put in it. When you get it perfected, save me back a pint. I think Mama might like it.”

“Sure thing, and don’t believe everything you hear,” Betsy said.

“Never do,” Flora said.

The sound of people walking and then the front door shut. Connie leaned in closer to the monitor.

“Okay, you can turn it off now,” Kate yelled.

“Damn, Sister, you almost deafened me,” Connie hollered down the steps.

Ginger could hear Kate giggling even after she had reached over and switched off the monitor. She’d never felt as if she’d had roots no matter where she’d been sent, but in less than a week, she could almost feel a few growing around her heart.

Tinker seemed to be as restless as Sloan that night. He’d whine at the door and then come back to the rug under the coffee table and flop down. Then in five minutes he paced around the room and barked. Sloan wasn’t much better. He surfed through the channels on the television several times and found nothing that looked good enough to watch. He pushed the little red power button on the remote and picked up a book from the end table. He read five pages, laid it down, and went to the kitchen. When he opened the refrigerator, he found that the sweet tea jar was empty, so he got out a bottle of water and carried it back to the living room.

He remembered being restless and bored a lot of times when he and his team were on deployment. They’d play cards, tell tales about things they’d done back home, or watch movies and wait for the next moment when someone needed them to take care of a bomb. Ever since he’d come home, he’d tried to stay so busy that he didn’t have time to be bored or to even think, but here lately things were changing. He wasn’t sure just what to do about it. He couldn’t get back in the army, but he’d begun to want a regular job.

“And just what would I do with my skill set?” he asked Tinker.

The dog ran to the door and whined.

“Okay, okay, we’ll go for a walk, but only up to the old tree this time,” Sloan said. “You were so worn out after we went all the way to the Banty House that I was afraid I’d find you dead the next morning.”

Tinker wagged his tail and shot out the door the second Sloan opened it. The night air was warm, so Sloan left his jacket behind, but he carried the bottle of water with him. The dog was content to walk along beside him and didn’t even chase a cottontail rabbit that ran across the road in front of them.

“Killing that snake took all your energy, didn’t it?” Sloan asked him.

Tinker looked up at him and barked, but Sloan didn’t know if he was saying yes or no. Sloan had been home for only a few weeks when his granny died, and so Tinker had been his only companion for the next months. Then Kate Carson had come to his house, given him a good talking to, and then asked him to work for them a day a week. She’d mentioned that she’d walked down to the cemetery that morning to check on her mother’s grave and found it all grown in. When she left, Sloan had scaled the fence separating his house from the graveyard and was appalled at the condition it was in. His parents’ and his grandparents’ graves had sunk in and needed more dirt and some grass planted on them. Weeds covered the whole pitiful-looking place. That day had been a Monday, too, and he’d vowed that once a week he’d see to it that the cemetery was put to rights.

Tinker plopped down on his tummy at the edge of the old log. A turtle was slowly making its way across the road, and he kept an eye on it, but he didn’t even give it so much as a growl.

Dark clouds drifted back and forth across the sun that evening. When the wind picked up, Sloan could smell a storm brewing off to the southwest. Maybe that’s what had made him and Tinker both so restless. He opened his bottle of water and downed half of it, then held it down and let a slow stream flow out so that Tinker could have a drink.

“Hello again,” Ginger said as she walked up and sat down on the other end of the log. “Do you think we’re in for some bad weather?”

“Kinda looks that way,” Sloan answered. “You take a walk every evening?”

“I didn’t until I got here,” she answered. “I was on my feet all day, running back and forth between the kitchen and the customers at the café where I worked. I was usually so tired when I climbed the steps up to my apartment that I only had enough energy to grab a quick shower and go to bed.”

“What did the baby’s daddy do?” Sloan asked.

“Not much, other than try to scam folks out of their money, sell drugs, and make my life miserable. I was a fool to ever move in with him,” she replied.

“So y’all separated?” Sloan was prying, but he wanted to know more.

“No. He got killed, and his folks came and got his body to take home with them to bury, or maybe they cremated him. His mama was one of those hoity-toity women who looked down her nose at me. Her hair was all done up fancy, and the suit she wore probably cost more than I made in six months as a waitress,” she said.

“I’m so sorry.” Sloan knew what it was to lose friends and still grieved for those he’d lost in Kuwait. A wave of guilt washed over Sloan as he remembered all the friends he’d lost.

She shrugged. “I hate to say it, since he’s the baby’s daddy, but it was more of a relief than a grievin’ burden. That was months ago, and I didn’t even know I was pregnant at the time.”

Some of the heavy chains surrounding Sloan’s heart felt as if they’d been loosened. “Did you go to the funeral? I’m sorry if I’m prying into your business—you don’t have to answer that.”

“Don’t mind answering at all,” she said. “Matter of fact, since I got here, I’ve talked more about Lucas than I have since he was killed. It’s helped to make me see that I don’t have to feel guilty about the way I feel. He was a charmer who talked me into moving in with him and then treated me like crap. I was glad when his parents came to the apartment and told me I wouldn’t be welcome at his funeral. I didn’t have the money to travel from Lexington all the way to the western part of the state anyway.”

“You’re a good person, Ginger,” Sloan said. “You deserve better than that kind of treatment. Are you going to tell them about their grandchild?”

“Nope,” she said. “I’ve given it a lot of thought, and I figure it’s best just to keep that to myself.”

“What’re you going to tell the baby when it’s old enough to ask?” Sloan handed the water bottle to her. “Tinker and I both had a drink, but it didn’t touch Tinker’s mouth, only mine.” He thought about all the times his grandmother told him stories about his own father. She’d stepped up and been a wonderful mother, but she never let him forget that he’d had parents who loved and adored him.

She twisted the lid off and finished what was left. “When my baby asks about his or her father, I’m going to tell them the truth, that he’s been dead for a long time. What about you, Sloan? Did you always live with your granny?”

“My mama and daddy were big-rig truck drivers. They started that job when I was about two years old, and they’d leave me with Granny when they went on long hauls. We lived in a house in Hondo, but I stayed with her a lot. They were killed out in New Mexico when a gunman walked into a café and started firing a rifle. I was seven at the time, and I went to stay with Granny permanently,” he answered.

A flash of lightning streaked through the sky, followed by a loud clap of thunder that seemed to be right above Sloan’s and Ginger’s heads. Tinker got up and started toward home in a trot.

“Guess that’s our cue to get going toward home, too,” Sloan said.

“I’d say so,” Ginger agreed as she got to her feet.

“Want me to walk you home?” he asked.

“No. We’d better just go our separate ways, or we might get stuck at one place or the other when the rain starts,” she said. “Besides, I won’t melt.”

“See you later, then.” He stood up and waved.

“Maybe tomorrow night if the weather lets up,” she yelled over her shoulder.

Sloan made it home moments before the first big drops of rain fell from the dark clouds. He went straight for the old wall phone in the kitchen and called the Banty House. Kate answered on the second ring and assured him that Ginger had gotten back to the house just fine.

He hung up the phone and slumped down on the sofa beside Tinker. The dog was already snoring, so evidently he was content to stay in the house now. Sloan leaned his head against the back of the sofa and thought about what Ginger had told him. They’d both been orphaned. The only difference was that he’d had a loving grandmother who was willing to raise him, and evidently Ginger hadn’t had anyone to take care of her.

He didn’t pity her. He applauded her for taking charge of her own life.

“I guess it’s way past time for me to crawl up out of my own pity pool and do the same, ain’t it?” he asked Tinker.