Joey shrugged. “You’re tired. You work a lot. There’s not much time for you to relax and enjoy yourself. I don’t even remember you going out with anyone more than once or twice. I hope you and Xander can hang out some more.”

Rose did, too, but there was a ticking time bomb for this romantic interlude. Joey needed to know that. Xander would always be a part of his life, but not necessarily in hers the way it was now. “Well, Joey, you know he doesn’t live around here. He’s visiting family. Pretty soon he’ll go back to Washington, D.C., and work. I don’t think much will come of this.”

“You could visit him there.”

She wouldn’t even allow herself those fantasies. If she did go to D.C., it would be to take Joey for a visit. She would be the awkward third wheel. “I don’t know, Joey. We both have different lives. We’re not thinking that far ahead. Xander and I are just enjoying being together again after all this time. Did you know he was my prom date?”

Joey wrinkled his nose. “No. Really? Did he buy you one of those flower things?”

“A corsage? Yes. He got one for my wrist in red roses that matched my dress.”

“She was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen in my life,” Xander said, appearing from the crowd to join them on the lawn. “When she opened the door in that red dress, I thought I might pass out on the doorstep. The only thing that kept me upright was knowing that your uncle Craig would dump me in the pond if I did.”

Rose laughed. Craig would’ve done something like that, she was certain. He’d been scowling at her the whole evening as she got ready. “Welcome, Xander. I’m surprised they didn’t corral you into the parade.”

He shrugged, settling down on the grass beside her. “I told them I had plans. I didn’t want to ride with Lois Walters anyway.”

“That’s your own fault,” Rose pointed out.

“It was good pie!” he said in his own defense. “I wish it hadn’t been hers, but damned if it wasn’t the best strawberry pie I’ve ever tasted.”

“At least Molly finally got a ribbon.”

“She’s still beaming over that. She wanted to beat Lois, of course, but a ribbon is a ribbon. Hey,” Xander added, lowering his voice a touch. “By the way, I spoke with Troy earlier.”

“Anything interesting come from that?”

Xander smiled, his dimples coming out in full force. “We are all set. The scout camp has a nurse on-site that will check in with Joey and give him pain medication if he needs it. He’ll have to skip some of the more active sports and water activities, but he’s welcome to go. I already wrote the check. All he needs aside from clothes and toiletries are a sleeping bag and a few forms filled out.”

Rose was thrilled for Joey, yet she couldn’t help wincing and shaking her head as he finished speaking. “We don’t have a sleeping bag.”

“We’ll get one this weekend. We have to drive him to the campsite and drop him off by nine a.m. on Monday morning. Pickup is Sunday evening.”

He had handled all the details. There was no way Rose could complain. She’d wanted her son to be able to go to this and now he could. “Do you want to tell him?”

“Can I?” Xander said, his expression brightening. When Rose nodded, he shouted to Joey over the oncoming marching band music. The parade would reach them any minute now. “Hey, Joey? Guess where you’re going next week.”

Their son narrowed his eyes and frowned. “To Uncle Craig’s house?”

“Nope,” Xander said. “You’re going to scout camp for the week.”

“What?” Joey said, excitement lighting his eyes. “Really? They’ll let me go with the cast and everything?”

“It’s all taken care of,” Xander replied. “We’re going to get you a sleeping bag and some first-class scouting supplies when the parade is over.”

After a moment, Joey’s enthusiasm waned a touch and his brow knit together in thought. “But wait, Mom, you said you couldn’t afford for me to go.”

Rose nodded and reached out to ruffle his hair. “Xander was nice enough to pay for it.”

“I loved going to camp. I hated for you to miss it.”

That was enough to soothe his concerns. He grinned and looked over at a group of people settling nearby. One of the boys was from his ball team and was also going to the camp, Rose recalled.

“Can I go tell Ethan?”

“Sure. Don’t wander too far or you’ll miss the parade.”

Joey leaped up and shot off, the cast only marginally slowing him down. He would probably do fine at camp unless he whacked it on something. “Thank you,” she said to Xander while still watching her son.

“You’re welcome. I know he’ll have a great time. Hey, do you have some paper to write down Troy’s number? He wanted you to give him a call to talk over things.”

“Sure.” Rose reached into her purse and pulled out a notebook and pen.

“Oh,” Xander said, and he reached down beside them. He picked a folded piece of paper off the grass and held it up to her. “You dropped this.”

Rose instantly recognized it and frowned. She’d forgotten that was in her purse. She took the paper from him and crumpled it into a ball in her hand. “Thanks,” she said dismissively.

Her pen was still poised in her other hand to write down Troy’s number when she realized he was watching her with a concerned expression furrowing his brow just as Joey’s had been a moment before.

“What was that, if you don’t mind me asking?”

She sighed and clicked the end of her ballpoint pen. Troy’s number was apparently on hold. “This,” she said, clutching the ball of paper, “is a letter from my father.”

The drawn forehead stayed firmly in place. “Really?”

“Yep. Authentic prison mail. I forgot to throw it away.” She held it up to toss it toward the nearby trash can, but Xander caught her hand and plucked the paper from her fingers.

“Does he write very often?”

“About once every two months or so.” After he was first incarcerated the letters had come more frequently, at least once a week. Over the years, they’d arrived further and further apart. That was fine by Rose. She didn’t want to receive any letters.

“Do you or Joey ever write him back?”

Rose turned away from his appraising gaze to the commotion in the street. The bearers of the Strawberry Days banner went past them, followed by the local veterans’ group waving red ribbons on sticks. A crowd had gathered along the streets now, families and friends, children on their fathers’ shoulders, and the occasional dog on a leash.

“You know, I remember coming to this festival with my dad once,” she said. “He put me on his shoulders like that little girl over there. I was maybe five at the time and at first I was scared that I would fall. But my dad had a hold of me and he said that he wouldn’t let anything happen to me. He gripped me so tightly that I forgot I was even up so high. I thought I could see the whole world from up there.”

Her gaze dropped to the grass as she fought the tears forming in her eyes. “He lied. My whole life he masqueraded as my protector, when in fact he was the one that hurt me the most.”

Xander flattened the ball of paper and scanned over the words she couldn’t bring herself to read. “He knows what he did to you, Rose, and he wishes you would write to him. He’s so sorry about what happened.”

“They’re just words, Xander. Nothing he says can change the past. And there’s nothing he can do in that medium-security federal prison for the next fifteen years. What’s done is done. The man that worked in that bank is dead and his family has lost their future with him. My father did nothing but lie to me and he will never be a part of my life again. He’s going to miss his grandson’s entire childhood. He hid the problems he was having for years. I can’t trust anything he says.”

Xander’s expression went from concerned to pained. Rose couldn’t understand why. It wasn’t his father in jail. “Everyone makes mistakes, Rose.”