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LUCAS MCBRIDE had spent the past fourteen Christ this one the same way But that was before a two-ht hiia, a town he’d once vowed never to set foot in again

Strung with hts, even the oldest part of don Honoria looked festive Enor from each lamppost As he drove down Main Street, deserted on this Sunday evening only five days before Christmas, Lucas looked behind the decorations to note that s were unoccupied, the s boarded up or gapingly eh they struggled to survive A Revitalize Don poster fluttered halfheartedly on a pole beneath a glittering wreath

He passed the corner of Main and Oak, where he and his teenage buddies used to hang out on Saturday nights, s not to look too anxious to irls who cruised by in their daddies’ cars The alley behind the old, eht Lucas and his pals had gotten into with a bunch of football jocks from rival Campbellville Chief Packer had broken up the melee and hauled all the participants to the city jail

Lucas had spent that night in a cell His father had been the only one who hadn’t come to bail out his son

It was the first night Lucas had spent in jail, but it hadn’t been the last Chief Packer hadLucas a hobby after that

At the end of the block sat what had once been the old soda shop Lucas had s there

She’d been seventeen, he’d been nineteen During the next ten months, they’d come to see themselves like Romeo and Juliet, kept apart by old fa the romantic thrill of their trysts No one had been aware of their feelings for each other—until Rachel’s brother Roger had found out about them

Few of the townspeople would have iined that the fiery-tempered bad boy, Lucas McBride, had a hidden streak of romanticism But the events that had eventually run him out of town had destroyed whatever idealiss of old don Honoria

Lucas had driven through the west part of town earlier, and had hardly recognized the heavily developed area with its shopping strips and fast-food restaurants and service stations and car-sales lots He still re in the woods that had once stood there

Progress, he thought, looking at the sadly dignified brick building that had once held the old fiveand-dime store, wasn’t all it cracked up to be

Seeing the changes in his fored since he’d left in the o His father was dead now His cousins scattered His baby sister a grooman And Rachel

As always, he pushed back his thoughts of Rachel into the darkest part of hiswith the other painful memories of his past At least he wouldn’t have to face her on this reluctant visit He knew she’dafter he had

Out of old, half-forgotten habit, he turned right on Maple Street, thinking he’d drive past the high school and see if that had changed asblue light reflected in his rearview mirror The dark-colored Jeep had pulled out of nowhere and was now right on Lucas’s rear bu it as a police officer’s vehicle

Hell Lucas had been back in Honoria less than two hours and already he was being hassled by the local authorities

Apparently, soed at all

He drove into the deserted parking lot of an auto-repair shop and stopped beneath a street lael He rolled down the driver’s sideand pulled his wallet out of the back pocket of his jeans, extracting his driver’s license froh to knohat to do

The thirty-so officer was dressed in civies—a heavy denie in his hand to identify himself

“License and registration, please,” he said in a lol that marked him as a native Southerner

Lucas held the license out the open“What did I do?”