“I’ll deal with her,” Uncle Arthur had said. “Take the boys up to the cabin.” He steered them in that direction, but the woman was almost upon them.

“Don’t rush off,” she called. A broad smile made her face a caricature of friendliness. The fading light cast menacing shadows across her features, and her voice echoing off the water lent a threatening air to the otherwise lilting tone.

“Who’s that?” Frank asked.

Dylan’s father stepped closer to both boys. “Just a woman from town.”

“Don’t you gentlemen want to introduce me to your sons?” she said. “I have a little boy they might want to meet.”

The scrutiny she gave him and his cousin made Dylan squirm with discomfort. “Come on, Dad.” He’d pulled on his father’s hand. “Let’s clean the fish.”

“Okay, son. Take care of this, Arthur.”

Before Dylan’s uncle answered, the woman interrupted. “I don’t have anything to say to him. You’re the one I want to talk to, Senator.”

“Now, see here.” Arthur’s face turned lobster-red. “This isn’t the time or place to be bothering my brother.”

“Oh, I think it is, and I think he’ll see me, won’t you, Senator?” Her hand on her hip was as cocky as the smile on her face. “Or I can talk to the press. You Bradfords can make the choice.”

“Arthur, go with the boys.” His father had turned back to the woman. “Make it fast.”

For all his previous rush to get away, suddenly Dylan refused to budge. His uncle and cousin started up the hill, but Dylan stayed where he was until Frank came back for him and pulled him by the arm. Dylan turned and looked back to see his father on the rocks beside the woman in the tie-dyed T-shirt. Clayton Harris’s mother.

“You obnoxious, arrogant bastard!” Gracie’s friend Tanya Turnbaugh hissed at Clay across the table in McStone’s Pub.

To Gracie’s knowledge, the label had earned more than a few people a bloody nose over the years. The insult rocked Clay back in his seat. She couldn’t believe a mere difference of opinion over the action movie the three of them had just seen could lead Tanya to hurl the ultimate slur, but her friends had been at each other’s throats all night. Everyone within earshot waited for his response.

“My mother’s marital status at the time of my birth is public knowledge,” he said through gritted teeth. “How do you explain being such a bitch?”

Her glinting smile mocked him. “It’s due to the company I keep.”

“If you’re implying that your personality defects are my fault, I’ll be happy to stay as far away from you as possible.” Clay pushed away from the table. With his head high and his shoulders stiff, he stalked across the room, took one of the few empty seats at the crowded bar, and ordered a beer from Gracie’s cousin Guidry.

She turned back to Tanya. “What in the bejesus was that about?”

Her friend chewed her lip with something like regret, then gave her curls a defiant toss. “I told you when you asked me to join you that he wouldn’t be pleased.”

Gracie hadn’t guessed how accurate the prediction would be. The two women hadn’t had a good chance to talk since her return to town. When she ran into Tanya leaving the hospital, Gracie thought a third party would make the outing with Clay seem less like a date. But Tanya and Clay obviously had a boatload of negative history Gracie knew nothing about.

“You’ve been goading him all evening,” she said.

Her petite friend slumped in her chair and pouted like a three-year-old. “He started it.”

“You two used to get along great. What happened?”

Tanya’s brown eyes flashed with anger and hurt, unable to conceal her emotions. Born Tanya Nadine Turnbaugh, her initials said it all. Their high school yearbook had called her “TNT, a tiny mite in an explosive package”. What mischief Gracie hadn’t thought up over the years, Tanya had. Clay had always curbed their wilder flights of fancy.

After high school, their paths separated as they headed off to different colleges. At first, they’d kept in close touch. But after a while, less often. Eventually, Tanya had dropped out of school and landed in a bad marriage. Then, two years ago, she had returned to town, divorced and with custody of a year-old son.

Thinking back, Gracie couldn’t remember another time that she, Tanya, and Clay had been in town together since their high school graduations.

She looked over to make sure Clay’s attention remained on his beer. Gracie sure hoped it would cool him down.

Tanya glanced his way, too, and her eyes softened. “I shouldn’t have said what I did.”

“True. Having someone call him a bastard is the one thing he won’t forgive.”

Her friend’s features sharpened. “He’ll just have to add it to the list of things he won’t forgive me for.”

Gracie’s ears perked up. “What are some of the others?”

Tanya folded a napkin into precise accordion pleats before answering. “You know how I always used to have a crush on him?”

Gracie glanced around to see if anyone was listening. “Yes, but he was just one of many. I never thought you were any more serious about Clay than you were about the others.”

“I was.” The admission seemed to lie on the table between them like a sleeping monkey, inert and vulnerable for the moment, but obviously capable of reeking future chaos. Tanya folded another napkin into an origami crane. “I knew he was crazy about you, but you weren’t interested in him. I was pleased for my sake that you didn’t want him but miffed at you for not appreciating your good fortune.”

Their foreheads almost touched as Gracie leaned in. “Nobody cares about Clay more than I do. I’m just not the right person for him. And I don’t believe he’s as crazy about me as he thinks.”

“He sure gives a good imitation of it.” Tanya took a moment from her napkin folding to look hopeful. “You think he’s faking his interest?”

Clay turned to glare at them from the bar, even though he was too far away to hear them. A twinge of disloyalty filled her for talking about him behind his back, but the tension emanating from Tanya like a bad aura told her the chat went a lot deeper than mere gossip.

“Exaggerating it. My mother, grandparents, and David all planted the idea a long time ago that it’d be just super if we got together. Clay is so desperate to be part of a family that he fell in love with the concept. It’s a safe and tidy dream for him to fulfill expectations set for him by the people he admires.”

Gracie stirred her straw through the melting ice in her glass. “We might do okay as a couple, but it wouldn’t be passionate, thrilling, or eternal. In my opinion, being with someone who doesn’t love you is much worse than being alone.”

Tanya’s curls bounced as she nodded emphatic agreement, making Gracie wonder again what had happened in her friend’s marriage. That was another topic she’d kept off-limits.

“I tried to tell him the same thing once,” Tanya whispered, “but there’s nothing people like to hear less than the truth.” She held her breath when Clay stood up. Her shoulders slumped when he moved toward the restrooms in the back instead of toward them. “I told him that he probably didn’t really love you. But if he did, you’d never return the feeling.”

“I’ve been telling him the same thing for years.”

“I also said if he didn’t open his eyes, he’d let someone who really did care about him slip away without even noticing.” Tanya shot him a sizzling look as he returned to his seat at the bar. “Meaning me, of course.”

Gracie sat very still, processing the new information. “And how did he respond?”

“He laughed in my face and turned me down flat.” Tanya threw her riot of curls over her shoulder with a head toss. “It was pretty humiliating, but I got over it.”

Gracie wasn’t sure she had. “When did this happen?”

“About seven years ago.”