“You might as well dive in, even if you do it in your clothes,” Jackson said as he sat down beside her. “Tex is like a kid. He’s in and out, in and out, and every time he comes out of the water, he has to do that shaking business. He’ll drench you if you sit here very long.”

“He’s like one of those mist fans,” Nessa said.

“Never thought of it that way.” Jackson chuckled. “What brings you out tonight if you aren’t going for a nice cool swim?”

“I just needed to get out of the house. We’ve been here a week now, and I’m not any closer to getting things sorted out than I was when we first got here. I quilted all day today, and I enjoyed it, but no revelations fell out of the sky like I thought they would,” she said. “And I don’t know why I’m telling you this. We hardly know each other.”

“That’s why you’re telling me.” Jackson picked up a smooth stone and tossed it out into the water. It made a splash, and ripples started at the site and grew bigger and bigger until the flowing water brushed them away. “Relatives and really close friends want to give you advice. A stranger just listens.”

“Then thank you for just listening,” Nessa said.

“When I was a kid, my folks would come see Uncle D. J. in the fall, usually between Thanksgiving and Christmas.” He picked up a stick and whipped it out into the middle of the creek. Tex dived into the water and swam out to retrieve it. “Mama would bring him a box of expensive candy from one of the stores in Austin and a smoked ham. He told me later that he shared the candy with Miz Lucy and gave her the ham to fix for Christmas dinner. When I was about six, Daddy let me come stay a week with Uncle D. J. Mother told me if I got homesick to just call her and she’d come get me. At the end of the week, I cried because I had to go home.”

“Yep,” Nessa said. “I pouted for a week when I had to go home. I’m surprised we never met when we were kids.”

“I always came the first week after school was out, sometime at the end of May or the first of June,” Jackson said.

“We came for two weeks right before school started in the fall. I couldn’t come before then because that way, Mama and Daddy could use my time here as a threat all summer. If I wasn’t ‘good’”—she put air quotes around the word—“then I couldn’t come to Blossom.”

“Then I take it that you liked to spend time here?” Jackson could listen to her soft Texas drawl all evening.