Dario Russo grew up on the road. The son of itinerant workers in California, he had no friends, no stability, and no concept of a normal life. Until the age of sixteen, when he meets Reverend Waters’ son, Billy Ray. The relationship is short lived, but it haunts Dario for the next thirty years. At the age of forty-six, he has the opportunity to return to Crows Landing, California, and the chance to track down the man who had meant so much to him.
But what he finds in Crows Landing is the last thing he expects. So wrapped up in his hopes for a second chance, he almost misses the very real interest from a local, Shawn Pederson. Shawn might not have the past working in his favor, but he’s willing to offer the future Dario always wanted.
Chapter 1A man in reasonable health with fifteen minutes to spare could walk across Crows Landing without breaking a sweat. Give the man in question an extra twenty minutes, and he could knock on the door of every house in the town, introduce himself, meet the family, accept a graciously offered glass of water, and turn down an invitation to dinner for later that night. When Dario Russo had been sixteen, he had gone to each one of those homes and knocked on each one of those doors, looking for work. He had done everything from cleaning chicken coops to mowing lawns, and never had more than a few dollars to show for it at the end of the day. He was quite sure that if he approached those doors now, he would see the same faces, only slightly changed by the passage of thirty years. Or maybe t