Index

Sometimes when I’m driving, I see another car--a family, or maybe a mom and her children, or a dad, looking harried, staring in the rear view mirror, instead of keeping his eyes on the road. I think how odd it seems that life in that car is just as vital as my own. We’re all heading somewhere, mixed up in do-or-die business--or plodding through one day to get to the next, but we don’t have a clue about each other.

I was washing dishes--seeing the first scenes in Temporary Father, and I thought about those cars. I wanted to know everything about all the lives in a small town. So--welcome to Honesty, Virginia, where the houses are quiet, the town is growing, the people caring, and lives are changing.

A newcomer to Honesty brings heaven and hell to Beth Tully. She has one priority--getting her son, who’s behaving oddly, even for a hormonal pre-teen, back into their home--a fishing lodge that burned down during a recent storm. Aidan Nikolas is recuperating after an unexpected heart attack, which his medical team attributes to business stress. Secretly, he blames it on guilt over his wife’s suicide, and when he meets Beth Tully and her son, he’s lightning-struck by need for the optimistic, hardworking single mom, but he reads all the worst signs in her son’s implacable sadness and sudden bouts of anger.

Aidan cannot walk away from the boy in trouble, even as he tries to persuade Beth she has time to love him, too. Beth can’t see room in her life for helping her son and learning to trust that Aidan isn’t temporary as a lover and a father.