Jude Calohan has been keeping his head down for years. In the quiet town of Bower Bliss, Texas, he has tried to be a good man, a good father, tried not to think too much about his relationship with his own father ... and yet despite this, in the gentle autumn of an uneventful year, Jude Calohan soon finds his relationship with both his eldest child and his own identity as a father called into question.<br><br>Amidst the sleepy apple groves of small town America, will Jude Calohan be able to keep his family together while his eldest child Charlie discovers the confidence to make one of the biggest choices of their young life?

Love Among Strangers

“Look, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”


She stepped forward, and the door swung shut before she could reach the handle.


Sheepishly, with considerably less bravado than the last time he had made an appearance, Jude Calohan pushed open the doors of the library, crossing the distance from the daylight that caught upon the wooden slats of the interior and the delicately arranged shelves of books and moving towards the oval desk behind which sat the librarian, awkwardly pretending she could not sense his approach.


“Schmidt,” he said, placing his hands on the desk.


“Calohan,” she answered, not looking up from her book, and he sensed the change in dynamic: this wasn’t fun, this wasn’t playful, this was something else—it was uncomfortable.


“I thought I should apologize,” he continued, trying not to be disheartened by her lack of engagement.


“You don’t need to,” she replied carefully, frowning as she re-read the same paragraph over and over again and still didn’t fully take it in.


Chapter 24