“People here aren’t used to that,” Lisa said, picking up a set of Disneyland salt and pepper shakers and moving them in an attempt to clear off the coffee table. “They’re used to a gentler approach. You have to think before you blurt out whatever goes through your head or you’ll lose them. The people here aren’t used to change. They kind of actively fear it.”

“You seem to be getting along well. And this is coming from the girl who got into a fight her first night here and ended up pulling out another chick’s weave. So I’m not seeing the Southern manners.” Her sister’s stories about the town and the people here had been one of the reasons she’d come.

It had seemed like a good place to hide.

Lisa grinned. “They do like drama. And she was coming after my man. They understand that, too. You’re amazing at your job. I just want it to be smooth sailing for you.”

“It will be.” At least her clinic probably wasn’t a museum for bad souvenirs. “Why on earth would he keep all these things? The poor man obviously had a mental illness.”

“Or he was lonely.” Lisa’s hands ran over the collection of brightly colored pens. There looked to be tubs of them. “These things probably reminded him of a time when life was good. When he and his family traveled. The only thing the kids asked me for were the pictures. I sent those back. There were lots of pictures of the five of them in a camper traveling across the country.”

The Daley family had never done that. Not once. The most they’d traveled as kids was to the prison on visiting days after Will had managed to get his license. They hadn’t taken trips, they’d just tried to survive.

Was she still trying to survive? Was she still clawing her way through a day without any understanding as to what it meant? Her family was safe. They were all happy and moving on. They had lives and she was . . . running and managing to stand still all at the same time.

The man who’d lived here, he’d had a life. Maybe it had been a messy one. Maybe he’d been lonely in the end, but he’d lived.

When she’d decided to leave Dallas, she’d packed up her car and had room to spare. She hadn’t taken a bunch of things that reminded her of good times.

Because she hadn’t really had good times.

Lisa held up a coffee mug. It was emblazoned with the hokiest picture of an elderly couple smiling from inside a big heart. World’s Greatest Husband was written across the other side of the mug. “I think some of these things were gifts from his wife. Isn’t that sweet?”