ISBN: 9780373767342

A winter sky hung heavy over the Shadow range, spitting dime-size snowflakes like a white blanket shedding lint. As the rattletrap of a pickup slowly approached Sundown, Montana, Shallie … Plus…

A winter sky hung heavy over the Shadow range, spitting dime-size snowflakes like a white blanket shedding lint. As the rattletrap of a pickup slowly approached Sundown, Montana, Shallie Malone stared through the passenger side windshield, wishing she could shake the notion that maybe this snowstorm was an omen. Maybe coming back to Sundown was a huge mistake. Imagine that. Her making another mistake. So what else was new? She expelled a weary sigh as the old truck bounced along the snow-packed road. She'd made a lot of mistakes in her twenty-seven years. She hadn't wanted her return to Sundown to be one of them, though. She'd wanted it to be well, she'd wanted it to feel like home again, not like another misstep on the very rocky road of life. Face it, she thought, as a jagged line of mountain peaks disappeared behind a heavy clot of clouds; mistake or not, it wasn't like she'd really had many other choices. She focused on the forest beyond the windshield as the wipers shoved wet flakes off the glass. The pine boughs bent like old shoulders under the weight of winter. She, too, felt very old today. And weighted down. Mr. Coleman, the elderly rancher who she vaguely remembered had been kind enough to give her a lift from the bus station in Bozeman. He had the heater going full blast. Even so, Shallie shivered beneath her lightweight jacket. And tried to ignore the queasy feeling in the pit of her stomach the feeling that suggested the old adage might be true: You can't go home again. A name on a mailbox at the end of what she knew was a long curving lane leading deep into the forest and halfway up the mountain caught her eye as they drove by. She cranked her head around to catch another glimpse of black lettering partly covered with snow. "Did that say Brett McDonald?" "Hum? Oh, yeah." Concentrating on keeping the truck from slipping off the slick road, Bob Coleman squinted through his bifocals after a cursory glance at his rearview mirror. "The boy bought the old Fremont place about the same time he bought the Dusk to Dawn." Whoa. Mac? Her childhood buddy, Brett "Mac" McDonald, now owned the Fremont cabin? And she couldn't believe what else Bob Coleman had just said. "The Haskins sold the Dusk to Dawn?" "Beats all, don't it?" Bob grimaced beneath the brim of a worn gray Stetson. "Never thought I'd see the day when Nadine and Chet would hang it up, but I guess they got a hankering to do some traveling and Mac had the cash to make it happen." The Dusk to Dawn was Sundown, Montana's, local watering hole for the community and the ranchers surrounding town. It was bar, restaurant, coffee shop and minimart all wrapped up in one well-used, well-loved establishment. If someone got married, the reception was held at the Dusk to Dawn. If someone died, it was where the family had the wake. Birthday parties, graduations and regular Saturday-night party-hardy crowds had gathered under the green tin roof for Fiction Fiction eBook, Silhouette<