“There’s no ‘supposing’ about it. I am right. It’s not Bliss’s fault that her father’s a jerk who never claimed his other kids. The way I look at it, Tiffany, you have a chance to have a family now. Your father, well, you can take him or leave him. Your choice. But your sisters, they’re gifts. Now, let’s go over these casualty reports, then you can tell me about your love life.”

“There isn’t much to tell,” Tiffany said.

“ A situation that needs to be remedied and I just happen to know a divorced father of four, forty years old, six-foot-three with gorgeous blue eyes and a smile to die for.”

“I’m not in the market.”

“He has a great job, nifty sense of humor and—”

“And I’m still not in the market.”

“You can’t mourn forever, honey,” Doris said, her eyebrows lifting over the tops of her glasses.

“I’m not mourning—not really.”

“Then why not go out, kick up your heels a little?”

“When the time is right.”

Doris walked to the coffeepot and poured its last dregs into her mug that seemed permanently stained with her favorite shade of coral lipstick. “You’ve got to make it right, Tiffany.”

“I will.”

“When?”

“Soon,” she promised but knew she was lying. She wasn’t interested in men right now. There was a chance she never would be. So what about J.D.? that horrid voice in her head nagged, and Tiffany did what she did best: she ignored it.

* * *

“You’ve come to the right place,” the Realtor, an egg-shaped man with freckles sprinkled over every square inch of his exposed skin insisted as he drove J.D. along the winding, hilly roads outside Bittersweet. The grass was bleached dry and wildflowers bloomed in profusion along the fence-rows while Max Crenshaw blabbered on and on about the merits of one farm over another.

“I don’t know much about growing grapes down here and I’ll admit it right up front. But there’re several wineries around Ashland and Medford, up the road a bit. They seem to do a bumper business, and the soil here grows about anything.”

J.D. was barely listening. He gazed through the dusty windshield at the small herds of cattle and the occasional thicket of oak trees that dotted the fields flashing by. Nondescript music wafted from the speakers of the older Cadillac and was barely audible over the rush of cool air from the air conditioner and the drone of Crenshaw’s voice.

“Been here all my life, let me tell you, and I’ve seen cattle farms turned into llama and ostrich ranches.... You know times change, so I’m sure we’ll find the right place. . . .”