He’d been overseas, at a base with one bank of telephones, when his mother had e-mailed him the news within minutes of it happening. He’d waited in line for hours to use one of those phones, needing to say something to Sophie. And instead of wise and comforting words coming out of his mouth, he’d held the phone and heard himself say, across the thousands of miles that separated them, aww, Sweet Pea.
How much he cared about his aggravating, funny nuisance of a neighbor had taken him by surprise, because if asked he probably would have claimed he was indifferent to her. That was certainly how he had acted the majority of the time. But on the phone that night, his heart felt as if it was breaking in two as he helplessly listened to her sob on the other end of the line. Brand felt as if he’d failed her by being a million miles away, instead of there.
Maybe it was always her eyes that had made him feel so attached to his young neighbor, despite the manly pretense of complete indifference.
Her eyes had a worried look that often creased her brow; they were hazel and huge. Even behind those glasses, they had been gorgeous way before the rest of her was. There had been something in them that was faintly unsettling and certainly older than she was: calm, as if she looked at a person and knew secrets about them they had not yet told themselves.
Seeing her tonight, touching her, he realized Sophie had grown into the promise of those eyes. And then some.
Her hair had lost the red and deepened to a shade of auburn that the firelight had licked at the edges of, making a man itch to touch it to see if it was fire or silk or a seductive combination of both.
He was not sure where freckles went when they went away, but there was no hint she had ever been a freckle-face. Her complexion now was creamy and perfect. Not that he had thought about it, but if he had, he would not have envisioned a grown-up Sweet Pea being quite so lovely.
Seeing her as a woman had been slightly unsettling. She had filled out that gown pretty nicely. If he hadn’t realized just in time that it was Sweet Pea, he might have let his eyes drift to where the fabric clung to breasts that had been unfettered with anything as sinful as a bra.
But he was still the guy who had stood between her and her tormentors, and there had been as many who tormented her about her success with “What Makes a Small Town Tick” as there had been those who were happy for her.
She’d never known when to back down, either. That girl had a gift for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time.
He’d even vetted her rare suitors, doing his best to scare them off, and given her unsolicited advice.
Sweet Pea, all men are swine.
Including you?
Especially me.
Brand had been the older brother she didn’t have but badly needed.
Sweet Pea still lived next door. Didn’t anything in Sugar Maple Grove ever change?
Yes, it did. Because she was not the same Sweet Pea he remembered. And he was not the same guy she thought she knew, either. He didn’t feel like her older brother anymore.
He had not set foot in this town for eight years. Family occasions had long since moved to his sister’s in New York, and his parents had visited him in California.
Brand suddenly remembered his mother’s childlike enjoyment of Disneyland, how she would get off the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, and then get right back in line to go again.
Mom.
The light heartedness left him, and another feeling hit. Hard. On this porch where his mother had rocked and waited for him to come home, hours after the curfews he had always chaffed against, careless of her feelings.
He was aware he had managed to outrun his grief and his sense of failure toward his family until the exact moment he drove back into town, under that canopy of huge maples that lined the Main Street, past the tidy redbrick-fronted businesses, their bright awnings rolled up for the night.
The residential streets had been so quiet tonight, the sidewalks between the tree-lined boulevards and large grassy yards with their whitewashed picket fences completely empty.
He could sense people sleeping peacefully under those moss-covered roofs, curtains fluttering out of open, unlocked windows.
It was postcard-pretty small-town America. The place he had sworn his life to protect, and that, ironically, when he was young, he could not wait to get away from.
Now, standing on the porch of the house he had grown up in, searching for a key he knew would still be hidden in the same place, his mother’s sweetness gathered around him.
He could practically taste her strawberry lemonade.
His father had made it clear he would never forgive him for not being at her funeral.
The words deep cover meant nothing to Dr. Sheridan, who did not consider a career chasing the world’s bad guys to be in any way honorable.
There had been no explaining to his father that years of carefully laid work could have been lost if Brand had come home. Lives could have been endangered by breaking the cover.
“I don’t want to hear your excuses,”Dr. Sheridan had said the last time Brand had called.
“He’s mad at you, anyway,” his sister had told him, always pragmatic, when she had enlisted Brand to make this journey to their childhood home. “There’s no sense his being mad at both of us, is there?”
Marcie had told Brand there had been an incident. A fire in the kitchen. An unattended frying pan.
His sister had some legitimate concerns and questions about whether their dad, seventy-four on his next birthday, who had never cooked for himself or looked after a house, should be starting now.
Brand, what if he’s losing it? Then what?
That’s what Brand was here to find out.
To do the job nobody else had the stomach for. Didn’t that have a familiar ring to it? His whole adult life had been spent stepping up to the plates that wiser men stepped away from.
Finding the key, he went in. Without turning on lights, Brand went up the stairs and into a room with a steeply sloped roof that had once been his.
An open box inside the door was crammed full of Brand’s football trophies and school photos—his grad picture was on the top—the one that had once been on the mantel.
He kicked off his shoes, flopped down, coughing slightly at the cloud of dust that rose out of the unused bedding. He closed his eyes. The whole house had a scorched smell to it that made him miserably aware of his mission.
He opened his eyes again, contemplated the flicker of light on the ceiling and realized the fire was still burning in the yard. He tried to reclaim the lightness he had felt earlier by thinking of his encounter with Sophie.
A thought blasted through his brain, unwelcome and uninvited.
Had Sweet Pea been crying?
He got it suddenly. Ah. She wasn’t marrying the night. She’d just tried to distract him from the real story with her legendary cleverness. She was in his father’s backyard at midnight burning wedding pictures in a wedding dress because somebody had broken her heart.
And it was only a sign of how tired he was, how the world he’d left behind was colliding with the one he’d made for himself, that instead of feeling sad for her, he felt oddly glad.
He didn’t want Sweet Pea marrying anyone without his approval. It was as if eight years of separation didn’t exist at all, and he was stepping back into the role he’d always assumed around her.
Big brother. Protector.
Only now, he thought, thinking