A blast of cold air rushed out to greet him when he opened the door. Bright sunshine offered a little warmth outside the trailer, but the sunrays couldn’t penetrate the metal shell to heat up the inside. One bottle of whiskey was left in the cabinet, so he poured a shot and carried it to the bed. He sat down on the edge and groaned.

“I don’t drink on the job.” He stood up, emptied the glass into the sink, and squared his shoulders.

Instead of going back to the house, he wandered down to the Big Cypress Bayou. The cold, dead grass crunched under him when he sat down and braced his back against a willow tree. Before long spring would push winter away and things would turn green again. But Tucker’s heart was a different matter—he felt as if it had suffered a bitter, cold winter for almost three years now, and spring would never arrive again.

Charleston, South Carolina

Jasper had walked up to the little store at the RV park that afternoon to get a loaf of bread and half gallon of milk, so Sugar used the time to call Dotty. The bar would open in half an hour and things would get hectic, but she and her friend could cover a lot of ground in that time.

“Hello, guess what. The kids came to Sunday dinner yesterday. Tell me that Jasper is better. We’re still worried about him.” Dotty sounded like she was out of breath.

Sugar had a vision of her having a heart attack and panic set in. What if one of her friends died and she was too far away to even get home for the funeral?

“Are you all right? You’re panting?” Sugar asked. “Tell me everything. Is Jolene doin’ all right? She says that she loves the work at the Magnolia and sends me pictures, but you’re the closest one to her since y’all work together, so do I need to come home to take care of her?”

Dotty giggled. “I miss you like hell, but don’t come back to Jefferson for Jolene. She’s doin’ a fine job of livin’ with Tucker. And I think I can see some improvement. To my knowledge, he’s only been drunk enough to have a hangover one time. Hell, who knows? Maybe Lucy’s prayers are going higher than the ceiling.”

Sugar laughed. “So what is Lucy praying for?”

“That he stays sober, especially after the grand opening in the spring, because she thinks it’ll hurt business if he comes in drunk on the weekends,” Dotty answered.

“Well, then praise the Lord for Lucy’s prayers,” Sugar said.

“Amen to that,” Dotty said. “He don’t know that he’s fallin’ for her, and we’re tryin’ our best to let them figure it out on their own. But he looks at her like Jasper used to look at you when we were all kids. And it’s real hard for us not to play matchmaker.”

“That’s sweet,” Sugar said. “But according to Jolene, he’s not over Melanie. Sounds to me like Tucker and Jolene have been walkin’ two separate paths. But then there was a fork in the road and they’ve met up to walk a single one. They’ve kind of got the same problems.”

“You should’ve been a therapist, the way you can see inside people’s souls,” Dotty said. “Now tell me all about your travels.”

“It’s been great. We go as far as we want, stay in one place until we’re bored, and then go on down the road again. It’s like a long honeymoon,” Sugar answered.

“I wish I’d got me a driver and an RV and gone with you,” Dotty sighed. “Promise when you swing back this way, you’ll stop here for a week or two. We miss you so much.”

“Promise,” Sugar said. “And here’s Jasper with the milk so I can make fried chicken and gravy for dinner. Talk to you in a day or so.”

Chapter Fourteen

Jolene’s apartment out in West Texas had been so small that the only time Aunt Sugar came to visit, she said that she couldn’t cuss a cat in it without getting a hair in her mouth. Now Jolene lived in a huge house, and yet after Tucker left that morning, it felt empty and cold.

“What’s the matter with me?” She sat down on the top step of the staircase when she’d finished sweeping. “This kind of business is what I’ve dreamed about since I was a child.”

Thinking that a breath of fresh air might straighten her out, she went downstairs, jerked her coat on, and headed to the bayou. As a child, she’d spent hours running up and down the edge of the water. Some days she made tiny boats from twigs and floated them. Others she’d dug a few worms or caught some grasshoppers and gone fishing. As a teenager, she’d found solace in sitting with her back to her favorite old willow tree and listening to the sounds of nature.

A cottontail startled her when it ran out from a thicket of dead branches not far from the water’s edge, and she stopped to watch it zigzag back toward the house. She turned around and saw Tucker sitting against her tree, and it brought up something like jealousy in her heart. That was where she’d hidden from Reuben when she was a child. If she made herself very small, then he couldn’t find her back in the drooping branches. It was where she’d poured out her heart in a journal the summer she was thirteen. And where she’d come to search for peace after her mother’s addiction took a firm hold on her.

“That’s my tree. It’s not up for sale, not even half interest,” she said.

“Then charge me for trespassing, and I’ll pay my fine. What are you doing outside in this cold wind?” he asked.