Tobias hadn’t really slept the night before, though it had been very late once he and the dogs had wound down from Candy’s unexpected visit; he’d merely lain in the dark and thought about events that transpired more than thirty years ago. After four hours of tossing and turning, he’d rolled out of bed, let the dogs out, and put a pot of coffee on. Now on his back porch with coffee in hand, he watched the sky turn from the darkest inky blue to a gold-streaked pink as the sun rose over the hemlock-studded banks of Fightingtown Creek.

Winnie yipped from her spot on the settee, impatient for her sister to join her. Tobias heard Frankie bark back a response, so he wasn’t worried; though, from Winnie’s worried expression, she was. Tobias decided he would give the dog another five minutes to come to the porch before investigating. After four and a half, the little dog came bounding up the steps and scrambled up onto the couch.

“Do I even wanna know?” Tobias leaned over and took a whiff of the dog, who was now nestled next to her sister. “Hmph. You smell okay, too. Now I’m really suspicious.” Frankie barked once and then laid her head on top of Winnie’s. Tobias huffed a laugh and returned to his coffee and his memories.

Suddenly the dogs both raised their heads, ears up. Tobias frowned, but then he heard loud knocking on the front door. The dogs leapt off the couch and ran through the screen’s dachshund-sized flap to go and bark at the front door.

“Toby! Put your britches on! We’re taking you to breakfast!” Cal’s voice yelled from the other side of the door.

Tobias groaned and opened the door a crack both to keep the dogs from running out and to avoid flashing his brother. “Why the hell are you at my house before eight o’clock on a Saturday morning?”

“Put on some pants and we’ll tell you. Come on, man. I’m hungry.”

“ ‘We?’ ” Tobias peered around Cal to the circular drive, where he saw Kat in Cal’s Nova. She flashed a big grin and waved at him. He grimaced and waved back. “She is way too chipper.”

“Once she’s woken up proper, she is,” Cal said with a wiggle of his eyebrows.

Tobias groaned. “You guys aren’t going to take no for an answer, are you?”

“Nope. Now come on. Nolan and Bridget are already at Scuppernong’s.”

“Well, shit. Lemme get pants on and I’ll meet you there.” Cal cocked an eyebrow at Tobias. “I promise!”

With a cackle, Cal turned and jogged down the porch stairs, and Tobias sighed and headed upstairs to put on pants.

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They’d timed their arrival at Scuppernong Cafe’s just right: after the early-bird senior citizen rush, but before the crush of post-peewee sports moms and kids. Tobias had to admit it was nice having a morning meal with actual people, even if he felt like a fifth wheel. Hell, he was a fifth wheel.

“Warm up your coffee, sugar?” Penny topped off his coffee before he answered, and gave him a wink. He was pretty sure she sat them at a table so Tobias wouldn’t feel self-conscious sitting perched at the end of a booth, with happy couples on either side of him. Penny was a good egg.

Nolan, the youngest Harper brother, shook his head after she walked away. “Why do they do that? Just when you get your coffee with the perfect balance of milk and sugar, they come by and ‘warm it up.’ ”

“If you drank it black, you wouldn’t have to worry about that.” Cal waved his own mug of black coffee at his brother. “Besides, you don’t even drink coffee anymore, so I don’t know why you’re bitching.”

“Boy, you’re grouchy for someone who had what sounds like a stellar opening last night,” Nolan said with a snort.

“I’d forgotten what it was like, that rush.” Cal cracked his neck. “I didn’t sleep well last night. Too hyped up.”

“Man, tell me about it. And then, some jackass comes to my door when it’s barely even light outside and makes me put on pants to go to a restaurant to eat with another jackass and two lovely but insane women.” Kat got ready to coo at him, but Bridget, Nolan’s girlfriend, caught Tobias’s jab and leaned across the table.

“What do you mean, ‘but insane,’ huh?” Bridget said, exaggerating her already-heavy South Boston accent.

Tobias just winked and raised his mug to his lips.

“Ah, that’s what I thought.” Bridget shook her head at him. “Always a smart-ass, that one. But better than a dumbass, I suppose.”

“So what’s on the agenda today, ladies and gents?” Tobias extended his arms above his head, stretching his back. He stifled a yawn, but he knew exactly what he planned to do after breakfast: go home and take a nice, long nap.

“Oh, I thought I’d do a little shopping, maybe pick up a few things for the house and the Tavern,” Kat began, with a sly look at Tobias.

“Kat, don’t,” Cal warned in a low voice. The redhead sat back with a huff and began to tap her finger on the table. Nolan and Bridget looked at each other with wide eyes and then turned alternately to Cal and then to Tobias.

“Something you want to share with the class?” Nolan leaned forward and rested his elbows on the table, settling in. Tobias sighed with the realization that Nolan sensed a story he wouldn’t allow to be left untold.

“Someone I haven’t seen in years was at the show last night. Let’s just say I was very surprised to see her, and just leave it at that.” Tobias plucked a sugar packet out of the carrel and proceeded to shred the thin paper.

Kat flapped her hands at him and goggled in disbelief. “Oh, come on, Tobias. You have got to give us more than that.”

“Babe, what did you tell me last night, hmm? You need to take your own advice.” Tobias saw Cal squeeze Kat’s thigh where his hand rested, and she harrumphed at him but didn’t say anything more.

“Okay, Kat, I’ll give you a little more. The Liddie Hopewell thing happened three decades ago and is a lot more complicated than y’all need to even worry about. Happy now?”

Kat’s auburn eyebrows furrowed into a frown. “Well, that just leaves me with more questions.” Tobias just shrugged in answer.

“Liddie? She used to come visit Mama after you and Chet moved to Nashville that first time.” Nolan squinted at a memory. “She used to bring cheese straws over. I still use that recipe.”

Cal gawked at the youngest Harper. “How the hell do you remember that? You were, what, five, six?”

“She came over every week for three years, Cal. I remember baking with her while Mama sat at the kitchen table. She was the one who first taught me how to roll out pie crust.”

“Where the hell was I?” Cal looked and sounded genuinely distressed.

“Probably doing something you weren’t supposed to be doing with someone you had no businesses being with.” Nolan’s candid answer cut some of the tension, and Cal ended up nodding his head and laughing.

“So what are you going to do?” Kat asked Tobias before shooting a look at Cal. “Oh, hush, Cal, I know, but I just can’t leave it alone with the way those two looked at each other last night.” She turned to her best friend. “Oh my God, Birdie, it was just like a movie.”

“Oh my God, Kat, you’re always saying something’s just like a movie,” Cal said with a groan, which got him an elbow in the ribs. “Ow!”

“Stop it, you big spoilsport. It was.” Then she turned to Tobias and said, “I wish I had a recording of when the two of you locked eyes. There was crazy, wicked chemistry.” Kat nodded knowingly at Tobias. “And you know it, Tobias Harper, even if you won’t admit it.”

Tobias didn’t want to talk about Liddie Hopewell anymore, so he changed the subject. “Candy was on my front porch, waiting for me last night when I got home.” That statement shut everyone up for a full ten seconds, and then they all started babbling at once.

Finally, Cal spoke above the clamor. “What the hell did she want?”

“What else? Money. She had some sob story about having to move in with her mother, blah, blah, blah.”

“Hell, I’d be distressed if I had to move in with Ann Bristol. That woman is toxic.” Cal shuddered.

Tobias snorted in agreement. The apple didn’t fall far from that poisonous tree. In a way, Candy’s mother was worse than her daughter, if only because she was shrewder, something the elder Bristol woman wouldn’t let her daughter forget. Tobias felt the tiniest bit sorry for Candy in that regard.

“The sports squads are starting to show up, y’all. Let’s let Penny turn this table over,” Nolan suggested, and Tobias gave him a thankful grin.

The group paid their tab, overtipping as usual, and tumbled out into the parking lot.

“Tally said her mother was going to be working at The Backward Glance on the weekends, you know.” Kat blinked at him, trying to look innocent and failing miserably.

“Is that so?” Tobias grinned. “That’s good information. See y’all later.”

He got into his truck, cackling at Kat’s disgruntled expression, and decided he wasn’t that tired after all. In fact, Tobias thought he was in the mood to do a little shopping.