“No. Well, yes. He wishes he was within arm’s length again. We all do. But the injury. The trauma. I wish we could do something to help Gavin be free of it.”
“He’ll probably never be free of it,” Mavis reminded her. Briar’s mouth folded into a line and worry knit her forehead. Mavis hated to see her this way. “He came back. And he tried to make it work at the inn. He’s never done that before. Not since he was a kid.”
“We think it’s only because it wasn’t working elsewhere,” Briar said, “on his own. He tried that first.”
“In my experience, admitting you need help is the first step to recovery.”
“Yes, but how long before he convinces himself again that he doesn’t need us?” Briar asked. “That he’s better off alone? We’ll do anything to make him stay.”
“You’re doing the right thing,” Mavis assured her. “Letting him be on his own—or with Miss Zelda... Letting him have his own space...it’ll all work out. Especially if he gives in to her. Miss Zelda wants him to try meditation. Maybe some yoga. It won’t help if he’s skeptical. And if Gavin is anything, it’s skeptical.” Of everything—of everybody, Mavis thought. There had been that moment under the bougainvillea where she’d seemed to get through that coarse web of suspicion. It had vanished at Zelda’s.
“It wasn’t just his experience on the far side of the world that made him that way,” Briar said. “You do know about his mother.”
“Yes.” Mavis frowned. Gavin’s mother, Tiffany Howard, had made large upsetting waves whenever she visited Gavin as a child.
“Thank goodness he cut off communication with her,” Briar stated. “I’ll never forget him as a boy, caught between two worlds. I know she tried for the longest time to poison his opinion of us and Fairhope.”
“He was smarter than that,” Mavis said.
“Yes,” Briar said, a small smile making the lines in her brow retreat briefly. “Though I’m afraid when that didn’t work, she tried another tack. She made him think he was different—that he’d never have a place here. That try as he might, he’d never belong.”
“That’s horrible,” Mavis muttered.
“The strongest minds can yield to the basest ideas if they hear them enough. So we understand why he feels he’s never been able to stay, and all we can do is reinforce that he does belong. To all of us.”
All of us.
“If you think he’s in trouble,” Briar said, “or you see he’s about to run, will you...”
“I’ll call,” Mavis assured her. “But I think you’re right. He is strong. He doesn’t think he is.” She thought of the weakness peeking through the bandage he’d placed around his open wounds. She’d seen the strength behind it, flagging but real. “I don’t think he wants to be alone. Not completely.”
“Thank goodness for you, Mavis,” Briar said, ignoring boundaries and squeezing Mavis’s hand as they approached the deck of the Leightons’ brick house. “I feel better knowing you’re close to him.”
“Why exactly?” Mavis asked.
“Because he’s always respected you,” Briar revealed. “A friend can save a life.”
Mavis felt a frisson of awareness scaling her spine. She crossed her arms. Did Gavin need saving? Would he want her to be the one to save him?
Doubtful. Regardless, she couldn’t let Briar down. And just like at the inn, she wouldn’t let him drown on his own. Not without him taking her down with him, if necessary.
The door to the Leightons’ rear deck swung ajar wide enough to bash the handle against the wall behind it. A short blond head streaked through, bounding down the steps to the ground. “Mammy! Mavis!”
“Here comes trouble,” Mavis said, a fond smile tugging at her lips as Briar waved a cheerful greeting.
Briar crouched to wrap her granddaughter up like a present. “The world is right again,” she murmured. She chuckled low in her throat, hugged Bea tighter, then sat back on her heels to skim curls from the girl’s brow. She pressed a kiss to the center of her forehead. “Your grandfather showed up early with you, as promised. Good man. But did he bring watermelon?”
Bea nodded eagerly. “They were selling them on the side of the road. There were hundreds of them, big and dirty—like they’d just popped out of the ground. He let me pick two, but I wasn’t big enough to carry them...”
“Give it time,” Mavis said, amused. The precocious four-year-old was growing like a weed.
“...so Uncle Gavin carried them for me,” Bea concluded.
“What?” Mavis said, slack-jawed, while a surprised Briar said, “Gavin? He came?”
“Uh-huh,” Bea replied. “He might not see so good anymore, but he sure can carry a watermelon!”
The happy report of barking brought Mavis’s head up. Prometheus, who’d been gleefully chasing squirrels since arriving in the back of her Subaru, trampled a shrub of Indian hawthorn as he made a break for the raised deck.
Gavin was ready for him this time, folding to one knee and hooking one muscled arm over Prometheus’s collar. He rocked back from the torrent of kisses Prometheus rained over the surface of his face. “Back,” Gavin said, gentle. “Back.” Prometheus’s wriggling body went still as Gavin found the place behind his ear that made the canine groan. “Good boy,” Mavis heard him murmur. He ran a hand along Prometheus’s spine before glancing up.
The frown was never far from his face. It returned in force. Replacing the Oakley sunglasses he had wisely removed before receiving Prometheus’s attentions, he straightened, his feet braced apart on the decking. He didn’t say a word when Prometheus began to wind circles around them, bumping his head and body against the man’s knees in a motion that would’ve looked feline had it not been for the speedy whip motion of the dog’s tail.
Briar didn’t hesitate to approach Gavin. “You made it,” she greeted, taking his rigid form into her arms.
“I’m sweating.” Gavin’s hands lifted, lowered, then rose the rest of the way to hug Briar back. After a second, his head dipped so that his cheek touched her temple. He let her go, but not without a small rub over the slender line of her back. “I heard rumors about your potato salad and Gerald’s rum ribs.”
Briar patted his flat tummy. “You could use some of both, I think.”
“Thanks,” he said without seeming to take offense. He reached down and ran his fingers down Bea’s upturned face, pinching her nose lightly between his knuckles. “This one charmed me out of wrestling Harmony for shotgun.”
“He taught me how to make a spitball,” Bea revealed.
“Lord help us, Gavin,” Briar said, and sighed.
“Yeah,” he said. “Sorry about that.” His gaze relocated—to Mavis. “How’s it hangin’, Frexy?”
Mavis narrowed her eyes. “Frexy?”
He lifted a shoulder. “Since you hate Freckles so much. Thought I’d change it up.”
“Frexy?” she said again.
When he said nothing further, Briar pointed out, “We were just talking, Mavis and I, about Miss Zelda.”
Lines barred the sides of his mouth, his attention all over Mavis again and displeased. “And me.”
Rigid as he was, he still emitted a waver of suspicion around his full lips. “Well, yeah,” Mavis answered. She crossed her arms. “Your stepmother