Maybe, too, it hit just close enough to the camping trips her father had always carved out during the season—this one evening together, her making dinner in the house they shared half the year. Just the two of them, sitting at the table with some decent grub and some good conversation.

Too much had happened, too many things that kept running around inside her head. So much of the summer boomeranged on her, making her think of her mother, and all those hard feelings. She’d shaken off most of them, but there remained a thin and sticky layer she’d never been able to peel away.

She liked to think that layer helped make her tougher, stronger—and she believed it—but she’d started to wonder if it had hardened into a shield as well.

Did she use it as an excuse, an escape? If she did, was that smart, or just stupid?

Something to think about in this short time alone, and again in the company of the single person in the world who knew her through and through, and loved her anyway.

When she pulled up in front of the house, the simple white two-story with the wide covered porch—the porch she’d helped her father build when she was fourteen—she just sat and stared.

The slope of lawn showed the brittleness of the dry summer, even in the patches of shade from the big, old maple on the east corner.

But skirting that porch, on either side of the short steps, an area of flowers sprang out of a deep brown blanket of mulch. Baskets hung from decorative brackets off the flanking posts and spilled out a tangle of red and white flowers and green trailing vines.

“I’m looking at it,” she said aloud as she got out of the car, “but I still can’t quite believe it.”

She remembered summers during her youth when her grandmother had done pots and planters, and even dug in a little vegetable garden in the back. How she’d cursed the deer and rabbits for mowing them down, every single season.

She remembered, too, her father’s rep for killing even the hardiest of houseplants. Now he’d planted—she didn’t know what half of them were, but the beds hit hot, rich notes with a lot of deep reds and purples, with some white accents.

And she had to admit they added a nice touch, just as she had to admit the creativity of the layout hadn’t come from the nongardening brain of Iron Man Tripp.

She mulled it over as she let herself into the house.

Here, too, the difference struck.

Flowers? Since when did her father have flowers sitting around the house? And candles—fat white columns that smelled, when she sniffed them, faintly of vanilla. Plus, he’d gotten a new rug in the living room, a pattern of bold-colored blocks that spread over a floor that had certainly been polished. And looked pretty good, she had to admit, but still...

Hands on hips, she did a turn around the living room until her jaw nearly landed on her toes. Glossy magazines fanned on the old coffee table. Home and garden magazines, and since when had her father... ?

Stupid question, she admitted. Since Ella.

A little leery of what she’d find next, she started toward the kitchen, poked into her father’s home office. Bamboo shades in spicy tones replaced the beige curtains.

Ugly curtains, she remembered.

But the powder room was a revelation. No generic liquid soap sat on the sink, no tan towels on the rack. Instead, a shiny and sleek chrome dispenser shot a spurt of lemon-scented liquid into her hand. Dazed, she washed, then dried her hands on one of the fluffy navy hand towels layered on the rack with washcloths in cranberry.

He’d added a bowl of potpourri—potpourri—and a framed print of a mountain meadow on a freshly painted wall that matched the washcloths.

Her father had cranberry walls in the powder room. She might never get over it.

Dazed, she continued on to the kitchen, and there stood blinking.

Clean and efficient had always been the Tripp watchwords. Apparently fuss had been added to them since she’d last stood in the room.

A long oval dish she thought might be bamboo and had never seen before held a selection of fresh fruit. Herbs grew in small red clay pots on the windowsill over the sink. An iron wine rack—a filled wine rack, she noted—graced the top of the refrigerator. He’d replaced the worn cushions on the stools at the breakfast counter, and she was pretty damn sure the glossy magazines in the living room would call that color pumpkin.

In the dining area, two place mats—bamboo again—lay ready with cloth napkins rolled in rings beside them. If that didn’t beat all, the pot of white daisies and the tea lights in amber dishes sure rang the bell.

She considered going upstairs, decided she needed a drink first, and a little time to absorb the shocks already dealt. A little time, like maybe a year, she thought as she opened the refrigerator.

Okay, there was beer, that at least was constant. But what the hell, since he had an open bottle of white, plugged with a fancy topper, she’d go with that.

She sipped, forced to give it high marks as she explored supplies.

She felt more at home and less like an intruder as she got down to it, setting out chicken br**sts to soften, scrubbing potatoes. Maybe she shook her head as she spotted the deck chairs out the kitchen window. He painted them every other year, she knew, but never before in chili pepper red.

By the time she heard him come in, she had dinner simmering in the big skillet. She poured a second glass of wine.

At least he looked the same.

“Smells good.” He folded her in, held her hard. “Best surprise of the day.”

“I’ve had a few of them myself. I poured you this.” She offered him the second glass. “Since you’re the wine buff now.”

He grinned, toasted her. “Pretty good stuff. Have we got time to sit outside awhile?”

“Yeah. That’d be good. You’ve been busy around here,” she commented as they walked out onto the deck.

“Fixing things up a little. What do you think?”

“It’s colorful.”

“A few steps out of my comfort zone.” He sat in one of the hot-colored deck chairs, sighed happily.

“Dad, you planted flowers. That’s acres outside your zone.”

“And I haven’t killed them yet. Soaker hose.”

“Sorry?”

“I put in a soaker hose. Keeps them from getting thirsty.”

Wine, soaker hoses, cranberry walls. Who was this guy?

But when he looked at her, laid his hand over hers, she saw him. She knew him. “What’s on your mind, baby?”