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to help explain why Vincent should offer them his fields for their last run in the Midwest. They’d lost their original location at the fairgrounds in Bixby and traveled south, trying to find another place to stake their tents.
    Like a fool, Vincent had obliged.
    Haunchyville. Such an awful name. Why those little people had selected that name for their traveling group was beyond him. Maybe to the little ones it was okay. He couldn’t fairly vouch for their way of thinking. After all, he was only the town doctor, so what he figured probably didn’t count for much.
    But he hated the name all the same.
    Leanne sure knew a lot about the group. He was taken aback by how much knowledge she had. It was a little unnerving. She’d sat Vincent down at the kitchen table the same night she’d shown him the flyer and explained what she knew of the carnival’s history, explained that they weren’t really dwarves at all. She told him more about the Haunchies than any rational person needed to know.
    Even though he hadn’t wanted to hear any of it, he’d sat and listened. She was good at that, getting him to give in to anything she wanted. Probably because she had her mother’s eyes, brightly blue as the sky and round as tires.
    Leanne was the spitting image of her as well. Another reason why Vincent wished she’d stayed home instead of lollygagging around the carnival. He didn’t care if it was his land they had set up on, he still didn’t relish the idea of her being there. She would be the best-looking gal there. Most of the women and even teenage girls of Doverton were his patients, and, sure, some of them were cute, pretty even, but none could hold a candle to Leanne.
    She was as beautiful as the girls in magazines. Her beauty made him proud, yet at the same time, made his chest heavy with concern. Sometimes, he’d get so worked up fretting over her he feared he might have a heart attack.
    Vincent stepped under the eave of his front porch just as the rain began plummeting in heavy drops. He decided to wait here on the porch until he saw the headlights of his truck coming around the bend in the cornfield. A dirt road segmented the fields and Leanne had chosen to call it Mystic Lane. Vincent, always the encouraging father, even had a sign made with the name chiseled into it. They’d taken it into the fields and hammered it into the ground just like any other road sign you’d see. He’d never forgotten how happy it had made her.
    He was thankful that, out of his fear of the weather turning bad, he’d talked her into taking the truck. Once he spotted the headlights peering through the stalks, he’d go inside. Lord knew he wouldn’t dare let Leanne catch him waiting for her.
    She hated that.
    But with the way the rain was slashing down from the sky like sideways wet daggers, he doubted he’d be able to see much at all beyond the front yard. The fields were like black blobs in the storm. Vincent could only see the corn in the burst of a lightning flash.
    In the morning, he’d surely find batches of stalks had been blown over, and he’d lose money because of it. Why did he keep putting himself through the hassle and expense of maintaining them? Being the town doctor made him more than enough money, but for whatever reason, he’d chosen to take on the duties of the family farm as well.
    Ma and Pa Carlson had both passed away in the winter of ’81. A freak hay-baling accident had taken both of their lives. Vincent had just buried his lovely wife and the mother of his child a few months before. They were living in Appleton at the time, but once Margaret passed, Vincent had no desire to stay in that house or that town any longer.
    It had been written in his parents’ will that the Carlson farm, house, and the acres of land surrounding it were to be left to Vincent. He gladly turned in his notice at the hospital, packed up their belongings, and moved with Leanne to Doverton.
    And for the past six years he and Leanne had