He was also tired of the store, but he couldn’t do anything about that. His dad had no one else to take over Holt Feed and Seed when he retired. The entire family business and the hope and drive and dreams that came with it all sat squarely on Tyler’s broad shoulders. It was a burden he felt every minute of every day.

And don’t even get him started on Cassie Wellington. As Tyler waited at a stoplight, hushing Ruby when she barked at a dog in another truck, he rubbed the side of his neck where Cassie had left her mark. He and Cassie had dated back in tenth grade, then again in part of eleventh, but she’d broken up with him for good last fall when Sugar Bend Academy lost to Spanish Fort, their biggest rival, by a single touchdown after Tyler fumbled the ball at the one-yard line. He hadn’t been particularly sad to see her cozied up to the quarterback of Spanish Fort the next weekend, but it wasn’t long before they broke up and she came back for Tyler, hips swinging and hair bouncing. He kept telling her he didn’t want to date again, but she wasn’t one to take no for an answer easily.

Tyler turned onto Grove Street and looked for the wisteria-covered trellis that marked the long driveway to the Figg sisters’ house. Violet Figg had been a customer of the Feed and Seed for as long as Tyler could remember, and probably longer than that. The woman loved birds, and she came in from time to time to ask about certain kinds of seed—safflower for cardinals or white millet for doves. She also occasionally asked for help in her yard—cleaning up after heavy storms, raking the impressive amount of leaves that fell from their trees in the fall, or trimming tree limbs that grew too close to the house—and Tyler was always quick to help. Today he was delivering five bales of pine straw for their front flower beds.

When he reached the end of the driveway, Tyler turned off his truck and the old thing ticked and exhaled. He opened his door and Ruby bounded out after him, nose to the ground and tail wagging. As Tyler lowered the tailgate and pulled out the first bale of pine straw, he spied Ms. Trudy around the side of the house, down by the edge of the river, in a similar position as Ruby, though without the tail. Ms. Trudy was bent over staring at the ground, her eyes trained for the little gems she pulled out of the sand and grass and then used in her art sculptures.

He thought her sculptures were kind of weird, but people loved them. His mom even had one, a sunburst on the wall of their kitchen made from twisted pieces of driftwood and little white shells.

A few minutes later he was hard at work, clipping the twine from the bales and spreading the pine straw under bushes and around the bases of small trees. Ms. Violet always said he could just leave the bales at intervals near the beds so she didn’t have to lift them, but he liked to go the extra mile for them. The sisters were a little strange, with Ms. Violet’s bird obsession and Ms. Trudy’s little pad of paper, but Tyler liked them. Every time he pulled into their driveway and parked under the huge magnolia tree, it was like walking into another world—some fairy-tale place where the rest of the world slid away and he could relax.