“I suppose.”

Even before he had retreated to the cabin, Max disliked chitchat, but now it seemed a painful thing. Still, despite the overwhelming urge to get in his car and go, Max couldn’t bring himself to be rude to the one man in town who could call him by name. So he leaned on Lyle’s rear fender and tried to come up with something to say. In the bed of the truck lay two enormous pumpkins. “You planning on doing some carving later?”

Lyle smiled. “It’s kind of a family tradition. Me and the grandson do the jack-o’-lanterns, then I take him trick-or-treating. I used to wear my sheriff’s uniform. That was costume enough for the kid, but now that I lost the election…” His words trailed off.

Max knew that there had been an election—he’d seen the lawn signs—but he hadn’t heard that Lyle had lost. He shook his head. “Voters can be a fickle bunch.”

“I guess I’ll just be Grandpa this year.” Lyle took off his cap and ran a hand through his thinning hair. “Truth is, I kind of feel… I don’t know. I’m not sure what to do with my time anymore. I walk around all antsy, like there’re just too many minutes in a day.” Then he smiled to himself. “If it were only me, I’d move out to the woods and become a hermit like you, but Meredith would have my head.”

Until that moment, Max had never thought of himself as a hermit, a word that conjured up a crazy man in rags, living in a cave, eating bugs. Sure, he had let his beard and hair grow, but he still bathed, and clipped his toenails, and brushed his teeth. His cabin was sound and well insulated, with electric heat and appliances and a beautiful view of a lake.

That’s when it dawned on him that his exile—his attempt at penance—was the kind of existence that some people paid good money to experience.

Something caught Lyle’s attention and he turned to look at a woman and child walking toward them. The woman, in her midthirties, wore the tired face of a mother nearing the end of a long day. Her gray sweatshirt had a large chocolate stain just left of center, and her black hair fell in looping strands from the remnant of a bun atop her head. She pushed a cart of groceries with one hand and held her son’s hand with the other.

“There’s my crew now,” Lyle said, stepping out of the truck. He walked to the back and opened the tailgate. “You ever met my daughter?”

“Not that I remember.”

“Max, this is Sandy.” Lyle began lifting bags of groceries from the cart, nestling them next to the pumpkins.

The woman smiled but it didn’t reach her eyes. She had the lithe body of a runner, with strong cheeks and dark eyes that gave her a look of quiet confidence. Max held out his hand. “Max Rupert,” he said.