Sam’s voice followed him. “I’ll check around.” He cleared his throat. “I’ll see you at the funeral.”
Jack stopped, turning around to meet Sam’s gaze. “That’s very kind of you.” He knew the words were stilted, but he meant them.
“Your grandmother was a customer. Not that she ever came in the store, but she’d call and tell me what she wanted and I’d take it out there. And she was your grandmother. We were best friends in high school—all the way through. You walked away and the truth is I don’t like you very much right now, but on some level we’re still best friends.”
Jack smiled, but the expression felt cold on his face. He doubted if it looked any warmer than it felt. “Really.”
“Yup.” Sam sketched him a wave. “When you drive down Country Club Road, those little crosses that are all rough and the paint’s worn off? They’re the only sign that the accident ever happened. The road’s been repaved, even widened a little. They couldn’t do anything to straighten out the curves, but it’s a lot safer than it was then. Other than those of us who were in the wreck and our families, people have forgotten. The scars have healed. I don’t know why you saw fit to leave the way you did. I may never know why. But you’re back now, at least for a while, and it’s time for the exile to end. It’s been long enough.”
“Long enough?” Jack kept his voice mild, maintained the smile, but everything inside him tightened. “For the Gallaghers and the Benteens? The Worths and Linda Saylors’s parents? For you, Sam?”
Sam hesitated, lifting his free hand to straighten the patch that suited his face so well it was as though it had always been there. “Maybe not. I don’t know.” He sighed. “The accident wasn’t your fault. No one blames you for it.”
“I know.” Not that he believed it for a New York minute, but maybe if he said it often enough, he would. Maybe.
* * *
“SERIOUSLY. RENT-A-WIFE IS cleaning the Dower House and I drew the short straw? No one will be there while I’m working, right?” Arlie Gallagher filled her plate with a little more spaghetti than was probably good for her, but her stepmother was the best cook on the lake. “You told them that everyone should be out of the house so I can get the job done quickly?”
“Yes, I told them that.” Holly, her six-months-younger stepsister, followed her, filling her own plate as full as Arlie’s.
Gianna Gallagher topped off their wineglasses and waited for the daughters she’d raised more alone than not to join her at the table. “I’m glad you girls are here.” She swirled the liquid in her glass and took a drink. “I don’t get lonely much—there’s no time—but mealtime’s when I miss your dad the most.”
“We should come for dinner more often.” Arlie covered her stepmother’s hand with her own and smiled into her eyes. “It would be a struggle, but I could eat your cooking occasionally as opposed to standing over the kitchen sink scarfing a Hot Pocket. Goodness knows, Holly could use some more pasta, too.”
“No, I couldn’t.” Holly shook her head. “If I gain more than ten pounds, my foot doesn’t fit right and I have to get a new socket.” She rapped the side of her prosthetic ankle, a result of the accident that had claimed her stepfather’s life.
Gianna squeezed Arlie’s fingers. “I wanted to talk to you both before you started hearing things. Lakers may blame the summer people for starting rumors, but the truth is that gossip travels even faster in the wintertime when people are bored.”
“What is it, Mama?” Holly spun her pasta expertly onto her fork.
“The Llewellyns.”
Arlie laid down her fork again, her appetite gone. “We’re cleaning the Dower House as requested, Gianna. We already know Jack’s coming back for a while. He won’t stay—he never stays.” The words made her stomach twist, the way it had when she’d seen him on the street today.
She leaned back in Gianna’s comfortable dining room chair and sipped wine, enjoying the immediate comfort of it. Sycamore Hill’s red was extra good this year. Not that she could tell the difference, but Chris Granger’s family owned the local winery and he said it was.
Gianna hesitated. “Apparently the estate is very complicated. I don’t pretend to know what all’s involved—the beauty-shop grapevine’s intel wasn’t that in-depth—and both boys will be coming back here to stay for a time.” Gianna’s eyes softened on Arlie. “Will you be okay with it?”
After the accident, there had been so much pain between them they couldn’t seem to get through it. When he left for college, he never came back. It still hurt to think about it, though not as badly as it had then. Nothing hurt as much as it had then, but seeing him across the street today had opened the old wounds.
If Arlie gave the word, her stepmother was completely capable of telling Jack Llewellyn the streets of Miniagua weren’t big enough for him and her daughter both and he needed to find his way back out of town.
She sipped her wine, enjoyed its warmth, then drained her glass. “It’s not as though I’ve spent the last sixteen years in mourning. I’ve lived half my life since then. I have a career, my own house, and Chris is a sort-of boyfriend. I can deal with seeing Jack.”
It sounded good, she thought, but her stepmother didn’t look entirely convinced.
Gianna glanced at her watch, then poured the last of the red into their glasses. “We’ve buried our dead and gone on with our lives. Jack and Tucker are here to do the same thing. Miniagua is home to them just like it is to the rest of us. It’s time for peace in all our souls.” She firmed her voice and met Arlie’s eyes, her dark gaze compassionate. “If you think you can welcome them back, then I know I can.”
Holly nodded. “Me, too.”
Arlie didn’t think she was ready for that. Cleaning the Dower House was one thing. Seeing Jack from across the street without losing her lunch had been entirely doable. Getting friendly with the Llewellyns was something else entirely.
“I’ll try.” Arlie stared back into the eyes that still held hers. “I promise I’ll try.”
Once dinner was over and they were standing in the driveway of Christensen’s Cove, Gianna’s house, saying good-night, Holly offered Arlie a ride. She shook her head. “I need some air. And maybe to think some.”
“Don’t overthink it, sis.” Holly hugged her hard.
Arlie nodded. “See you in the morning.”
The evening was warm for mid-October. A full moon danced on the water, and Arlie could hear people chatting on their porches and docks, hanging on to all the comfortable outdoors time they could. Sometimes during the day, Lake Miniagua looked big, but in the evening it seemed to shrink, its streets becoming the bumpy and narrow throughways they actually were. People rode by on bicycles, calling out greetings as they passed. Golf carts whizzed along in near silence. Teenagers walked close together in couples and groups, both sibilance and new huskiness in their hushed laughter. The playground above the beach was deserted, although Arlie thought if she listened hard, she could hear echoes of the past ringing through it. But maybe that was just the rustle of dry leaves as they scuttled across the ground in the breeze.
Arlie’s father had built the house she lived in, though he’d sold it when he and Gianna married. The red Cape Cod sat at the end of a narrow inlet that had been dubbed Gallagher’s Foot. When Arlie bought the house three years ago, she painted Gallagher’s Big Toe on the mailbox. The name had shrunk to “the Toe” and stuck.
When she’d