The Carson Springs Trilogy: Stranger in Paradise, Taste of Honey, and Wish Come True Read Online Free PDF Page A

didn’t mean to pry.”
    “It’s okay.” He cast her an apologetic glance. “It’s just that I get asked that a lot. Usually by people trying to fix me up.”
    “It was the furthest thing from my mind, believe me.”
    He laughed. “Good, let’s keep it that way.” She didn’t dare ask if he was seeing anyone. He might take it the wrong way. “What about you? You must have been pretty young when you got married.”
    “Nineteen. It seemed like a good idea at the time.” She gave in to a little smile. “The truth is we were too young to know any better.”
    “You must have been doing something right. You stayed together all those years.”
    She felt a sharp tug of loss coupled with a guilty sense of release. “I guess that’s more than most couples can say.”
    “How long since your husband passed away?”
    “Two years.”
    “Alice talks about him a lot.”
    “She’s still not over it.”
    “It must have been tough on you, too.”
    “It was.”
    She felt suddenly impatient. What did he know? Death wasn’t just the final curtain going down; it was a hundred little indignities. Hospital rooms billed as private that were anything but. Doctors and nurses bustling in and out at all hours of the day and night. Tests, tests, and more tests to tell you what you already knew.
    “My mother died when I was fourteen,” he said.
    “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.” She’d known only that Wes had been a widower for some time. “It must seem strange,” she said, “your father getting married again after all this time.” To a woman young enough to be your sister, she refrained from adding.
    He shrugged. “I like Alice.”
    “That’s not what I meant.”
    “I know.” Ian slowed to keep from hitting a squirrel that had scampered into the road. “But it’s not my opinion that counts.”
    “You’re still entitled to one, aren’t you?”
    He laughed. “Honestly? I think they make a great couple. Better than he and my mom in a lot of ways.”
    She didn’t comment. It would have paved the way for a discussion she wasn’t prepared to have. At the same time, she couldn’t help thinking of Martin and what a perverse custom it was to speak only in reverential terms of the dead. To bury your feelings along with your loved one, robbing yourself of the one chance you might have had to sort through all the odds and ends.
    A scuffling sound caused Sam to twist around in her seat. She thought she saw a flash of movement amid the jumble of tarps and boxes in back. Probably just something that had been jostled loose. “You don’t happen to have a dog, do you?”
    “No. Why?”
    “I thought I heard something.”
    “The engine knocks.”
    She thought of her own car. “You should have it looked at.”
    “I will. One of these days.”
    He’d sounded like Martin just then. Why worry today when there’s always tomorrow? But Ian was young, with no family to support. He could, and should, do exactly as he pleased.
    She lapsed once more into silence. She’d been traveling this road all her life, but never grew tired of it. The walnut orchard where she and her brother and sister used to scavenge for windfall. The creek where generations of Delarosa children had captured minnows and frogs in jars. Just beyond it was a towering loquat tree, the ground below littered with fallen fruit. Sam remembered collecting it in bags and bringing it home to Lupe, who’d made it into jam.
    They passed the little roadside reliquary, with its statue of St. Francis draped in cheap plastic rosaries, which marked the turnoff to Isla Verde. Minutes later Ian was pulling to a stop behind the long line of cars overflowing from her driveway.
    She turned to him. “Thanks. Not just for the ride. It was nice getting to know you.”
    “Same here.” He grinned, a brilliant flash that left her ashamed of the weakness that spread through her.
    What was it? The way he’d spoken to her, not as a contemporary of his father’s but as a peer? Or