And Bett couldn’t afford a new husband. Besides, she liked the one she had. Zach was made on confident, easygoing lines; it did him good to get shaken up once in a while. The mischievous grin persisted all through the drive to the house, during the hurried rush into a clean pair of jeans and a T-shirt, on the trip to the local market to pick up a load of bushel baskets, and through another trip to a processor to request the return of their pallets by morning.

Three hours later, she was unloading the bushel baskets with a forklift when Grady drove in, his dusty red pickup unmistakable. Bett leaped down from the forklift just as their neighbor approached her, the last of the afternoon’s hot sun behind him.

Grady Caldwell’s face had a permanently hangdog look, with pendulous jowls and lots of wrinkles. He was hitching up his trousers as he approached, already taking his pipe out of his pocket to pack it. She’d never seen him light the pipe, but it did take a lot of packing. Grady claimed to be sixty; Bett was fairly certain that his sixtieth birthday had passed a decade ago, and regularly marveled at the relationship between men and vanity.

“Where’s your better half?” he asked gruffly.

“Are you kidding? You’ve got it,” Bett replied impishly. “Are you coming in for iced tea?”

“Haven’t time.” Grady pushed back his cap and with it a strand of perspiration beads on his forehead. “Still damn hot.” Grady never risked any extra words.

“Yes,” Bett agreed.

“Been through those young peaches you kids planted in the spring,” he grumbled, and packed his pipe. And packed his pipe.

“We’ve been worried about how they’d do with this heat.” Bett resisted the urge to gnaw her fingernails, waiting for her neighbor’s judgment. Was there something wrong, some bug in the peaches they hadn’t known to look for? But she knew better than to hurry Grady.