5

      Connor Larady’s world of routine shifted as the days passed. After a week, Jillian James had become part of his life as easily as if a piece had always been missing and she simply fit into the void.

      He liked the easy way she greeted him every morning, not too formal, not too friendly. He looked forward to the few minutes they’d talk before the bus chauffeured his grandmother to the door of the quilt shop. He liked collecting little things he learned about Jillian, the pretty lady who never talked about herself.

      Some mornings he’d studied the way Jillian dressed, casual yet professional, as if every detail about her mattered somehow. She might be tall, but she wasn’t too thin. Her eyes often caught his attention, stormy-day gray one moment and calm blue the next. She watched the clock, always aware of time, and she seemed to study people as if looking for something familiar in their faces. And she listened, really listened.

      All the women he knew in town seemed shallow water, babbling brooks. But Jillian was deep current and he had a feeling it would take years to really know her. She never started a conversation, but if she disagreed with him she didn’t mind debating.

      Who knew, maybe they’d become friends. But no more. The one thing Connor had figured out about himself a long time ago was that he was a watcher, not a participant, where women were concerned. If life were a banquet, he was the beggar outside the window looking in. He’d rather put up with the loneliness than take another chance.

      He’d stepped out of his place once. He’d married Sunnie’s mother, Melissa, a few months after they slept together on their first date. He’d been home from school for the summer the year he turned twenty-one and she’d been nineteen. He’d used protection, but she’d told him it hadn’t worked.

      Marriage had seemed the only answer. She went back to school with him. He took a part-time job and rented a bigger apartment. He’d known the marriage was a mistake before Christmas that year, but Connor wasn’t a quitter. He carried on.

      Funny, he thought, he’d been caught in her net like a blind fish, but he hadn’t minded. It was just the way of life, and Sunnie made it all bearable.

      Melissa loved that he was from one of the oldest families in East Texas. Almost royalty, she used to say. He was educated, a path she had no interest in following. His family might be cash poor at times, but they were land rich, she claimed, though none of them seemed inclined to sell even one of their properties.

      Sunnie was eight months old when his parents were killed in a wreck. Afterward, Connor, Melissa and Sunnie had moved back to his childhood home, where he finished his degrees online. The house was roomy, but Melissa hated it from the day they moved in. She went back to her high school friends for entertainment, and he spent most of his days learning to handle the family business and his nights in his study with Sunnie’s bassinet by his desk.

      He wanted to write children’s stories, blending Greek myths with today’s world. Though he rarely left Laurel Springs, his character, a Roman soldier, traveled through time visiting battlefields that changed the world. In his novels, Connor’s hero collected knowledge in hopes of ending all conflict.

      But in reality, Connor simply fought to survive. To keep going when there never seemed enough time for his little dream; reality’s voice was always outshouting creativity’s whisper.

      When Sunnie started school, he moved his stories to the newspaper office and set up a writing desk. As the newspaper dwindled to a one-man job, he set up a business desk across from his editor’s desk to handle his rental properties in town and his leasing property outside the city limits. Next came the mayor’s desk, with all the city business stacked high. Of all the desks in his office, the writing desk was the most neglected.

      It had been that way from the beginning of his marriage. There was always too much to do. Too little time for dreams of writing.

      Even when Melissa had started needing her nights out after Sunnie was born, he never thought to complain. But after they moved back to Laurel Springs, the nights turned into long weekends. She needed to feel alive, she’d say. She needed to get away.

      About the time Sunnie started school, the weekends grew into weeks at a time.

      When Melissa would return, she’d bring gifts for Sunnie, and her only daughter would forgive her for not calling. They’d go back to being best friends, not mother and daughter, and Connor would prepare for the next time she’d leave with only a note on the counter.

      Even before she could read, Sunnie would see the note and cry before he read it.

      He learned to cook. Kept track of Sunnie’s schedule. He was there for the everyday of her life. Melissa was there for the party.

      Until three years ago, when she didn’t come back at all. A private plane crash outside of Reno. Both passengers died. Connor hadn’t even known the man she’d been with.

      That day, he became a full-time widower, not just a weekend one. No great change. But Sunnie’s world had shifted on its axis. That one day, she changed.

      Connor lost himself in the order of his repetitive days. He ran the paper his grandfather had started, even if it was little more than a blog, except on holidays. He looked after his daughter and his grandmother. Ruled over the monthly meetings of the city council. Paid the bills. Showed up.

      And, now and then, late at night, he wrote his stories. The dream of being a writer slipped further and further away on a tide of daily to-do lists.

      He told himself that hiring Jillian hadn’t changed anything. She was simply someone passing through, no more. Gram’s time in the shop would soon be ending, and somehow he had to preserve an ounce of what she’d meant to the town.

      The short articles about the quilts Jillian penned were smart and well written, and they were drawing attention. The number of hits was up at the free Laurel Springs Daily, and more people were dropping in to see the quilts she’d described so beautifully.

      Which slowed her cataloging work for the museum, leaving him with hope that she’d stay longer. He hadn’t thought about how much it meant, talking to an intelligent woman his age for the first time. Now, he was spending time trying to say something, anything, interesting on their walks home. All at once he didn’t have to just show up in his life; he had to talk, as well.

      Tonight he’d ask Jillian all about the tiny houses quilt she had logged. She’d said a lady quilted a two-inch square of a house every day for a year, then put them all together. Every one unique. The discipline would be something to talk about.

      “Dad, did you get a haircut?” Sunnie interrupted his thoughts as he pulled into the high school parking lot.

      Connor glanced at his daughter sitting in the passenger seat. “I did. What do you think?”

      She shrugged. “Not much change. Better, I guess. I’m glad I got Mom’s straight hair and not your wavy curls. After you scratch your head it’s usually going every which way.”

      “You have a suggestion?”

      “Yeah, wear a hat.” Sunnie glared at him, her substitute for smiling. “Derrick says you should slick it down a little, then you’d look like one of those newscasters. He said his mother thinks you’re handsome in a nutty professor kind of way.”

      “Tell Derrick’s mother thanks for the compliment, I think.” Connor tired to remember what Derrick’s mother looked like, but all he remembered were the tats covering her arms like black vines.

      He studied his beautiful daughter beneath her mask of makeup. The last thing he ever planned to do was take advice from Derrick or his mother. “You know, women thought I was good-looking when I was in college.”

      “Dinosaur