He hadn’t come back because he wanted to.
He’d come back because he had nowhere else to go.
The next morning, he walked into Ruthie’s Diner and every head in the place turned.
Blackwood wasn’t the kind of town where strangers went unnoticed, and Noah Carter had never really been a stranger. His name had once been stitched onto the back of a football jersey. His father, Walter Carter, had owned Carter Lumber, one of the few decent businesses in town. Before everything went bad, people used to slap Noah on the shoulder and ask if he’d play college ball.
Now he heard a fork clink against a plate.
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