She held up her family’s small, asymmetrical apples and pears. “These are what your grandparents ate,” she told the students. Then she showed the big, shiny ones from the grocery store. “And these are what you buy.” Of course she had to deal with the fact that the kids liked the look of the big, perfect apples better than the ones Caitlyn had brought with her.

She understood because she had the opposite experience. She’d grown up surrounded by gnarly trees hanging with delicious fruits. Mrs. Carl did the grocery shopping and the cooking, so she didn’t know that what she ate was different.

But one day her honorary uncles, Pauly and Seth, took her to a city grocery.

In the fruit section, Caitlyn started screaming in fear. It took a while to calm her down and find out what she was so upset about. She’d seen the big red grocery-store apples in a Disney movie. The evil witch poisoned people with them. Caitlyn thought the perfect apples in the display were poisoned and all the people in the store were going to die.

The story went into family legend and there was rarely a family gathering where it wasn’t told.

Just as Cait closed her suitcase, the phone rang. It was her uncles, each on an extension phone, something they always did. They didn’t bother with an introduction.

“Kelly’s substitute vet came,” Pauly said, “and we put him in the trailer. He didn’t bring much.”

“He looks good,” Seth said. “Not beautiful like Adam or your dad, but pleasant. He’s built like a prizefighter. Solid.”

“But he never smiles, and he wouldn’t come to dinner.” Pauly sounded shocked and a bit insulted.

“He closed the door and kept us out.”

Caitlyn smiled. Not coming to dinner and locking them out would devastate her uncles. They loved to know everything about everyone. “And?” she encouraged.

“He has no pets,” Pauly said. “Kelly would be appalled.”

“We were told that he yelled at Betty Lewis.”

Caitlyn frowned at that. She’d heard gossip about Mrs. Lewis being “unusual,” but she’d dismissed it because of her son. Caitlyn had gone to high school with Taran and he was a great guy. He was really smart and was on the cross-country track team. He said that minds and bodies worked together. His certainly did. If Jared hadn’t been—She cut off her thoughts. She could not, would not, and refused to, think of Jared. He was the past. Gone from her life. Forever.

“We can hardly wait for you to get home,” Pauly said. “Maybe you can make Dr. Jones smile.”

“I doubt it.” Caitlyn was beginning to see where they were going with this. “And I don’t intend to try.”

“But maybe you can save Betty,” Seth added. “After all, she is Taran’s mother.”