A part-time job as a delivery driver, combined with the occasional advance check on her short stories, didn’t exactly provide for a high lifestyle. But she wasn’t touching Simon’s military widow’s pension and life insurance policy, not even to relive the childhood memory.

The rotating sign loomed closer.

She could taste the velvet smooth ice cream, the crisp waffle cone-made daily on site, as they had been for thirty years. She could feel the melting butterscotch oozing over her fingers in the hot, May sunshine.

Oh, to hell with the pizza.

She stomped on the brakes, gluing the unwieldy box of a vehicle to the hot pavement. The tires protested with a screech, but she made the corner, parked across four marked spaces in back of the lot and shut down the diesel engine.

She rounded the building and approached a small patch of garden between the street and the front entrance. There was a black Lab tied to a spindly shrub at one edge of the sparse lawn. Somebody had brought him some water in a Treatsy-Sweetsy ice-cream bowl, but he wasn’t drinking it.

He was staring off down the sidewalk, twitching at the end of his lead.

He watched one car approach, brows up, ears quirked. Then it passed without slowing, and the anticipation leeched out of his body. He moved onto the next car, growing alert, obviously expecting his owner to appear at any second. He had gray fur around his muzzle, and a chunk missing from one floppy ear, testifying to a long, probably less than pampered, life.

Crystal drew his attention, and he watched her with big, brown eyes. For a second, she was tempted to buy him a burger. But she quickly reminded herself that she was broke. She’d already compromised her Saturday night pizza. Plus, she reasoned, the owner might not appreciate random strangers feeding his dog.

The small Treatsy-Sweetsy dining room was a whole lot cooler than outside. It was also completely empty, so she walked straight up to the counter. She looked up at the menu board, debating between a regular and a large cone. She wasn’t worried about the calories, only the price. She had a naturally thin frame, and a metabolism that was very forgiving of her abuses.