“You know Ainsley,” Aimee said with an artificial laugh. “She can talk to anyone, be friends with anyone. But she wanted a grandparent, and Mom was the only one I could give her.”

In a terrible way, Jen understood. Whatever Mom had inflicted upon her and Aimee growing up, the woman was half a country away. And Ainsley wasn’t Aimee or Jen.

“It sounded like you talk to her, too,” Jen said, and Aimee nodded. Jen ground fingers into her temples. “So does she know what you’re doing with Owen?”

Aimee sat up straighter. “That’s none of your business, Jen. Owen is mine and I know what I’m doing.”

“Are you forgetting what Frank did to Mom? All those women around town, flaunting themselves in front of her? All those scenes? Do you remember bailing her out of jail for attacking that one who came to the house? Owen isn’t divorced. I heard he’s still living with his wife. You don’t think this sounds horribly familiar?”

Aimee thrust out a hand. “Stop. There is nothing to be ‘fixed’ with Owen and me. You don’t know the whole story and, honestly, it’s none of your business. Stay out of it.”

Jen wondered if Aimee kept any vodka in the freezer.

“She’s different now.” Aimee laid her hands flat on the table. “She really is.”

Jen highly doubted that. The woman had just gotten worse every year her girls had aged. “You were talking about me. She knows I’m here?”

Aimee swallowed. “Yes. She wanted to talk to you.”

Jen froze, her body welded to the chair. “She said that? In those words?”

“Well . . . no.”

A strangled laugh escaped Jen’s throat. “Of course not. Was she drunk?”

Aimee’s cheeks flushed. It was clear she wanted to say something, then gave a little shake of her head. Heavy silence weighted down the air between them. The kitchen was fogged with tension. Aunt Bev’s grandfather clock chimed the incorrect time out in the hall.

“It’s been ten years, Jen. You have no idea what she’ll say now—”

“I don’t have to know! She slurred enough the day I left for Austin. That I was ungrateful. That I was abandoning her. That I thought I was all high and mighty, but that I really wasn’t worth anything. Those are the kinds of words that stick.”

Aimee nodded sadly at the table. “I see.”

It was then Jen finally noticed the smell of cookies and the timer on the stovetop counting down the final seconds of baking. Just another normal evening for Aimee. A normal, weekly evening. The buzzer went off and Aimee rose to pull out the tray of chocolate chip.

“What did she want you to ask me? I heard you, before I came in.”

Aimee shoved a spatula under each cookie and slid them one by one onto a cooling rack before answering, her back still to Jen, “She wanted to know if you were planning on sending a check this month.”

So now Aimee knew. Jen fought against the urge to scream in frustration. To kick a chair halfway across the room. To stomp out of the house. “See? She hasn’t changed at all.”

“Jen.” Aimee finally turned around, hands braced behind her on the counter edge. “That’s not the point. You’ve been sending her money?”

Jen shook her head, but not in denial.

“If you’re so worried she’s still drunk all the time, if you hate her that much . . . why?”

Salty, stinging tears filled Jen’s eyes. The day had finally caught up with her—first facing Leith and his indifference, then clawing her way uphill with Sue, now this.

She calmly rose. “If you’re going to play the ‘that’s none of your business’ card, then here’s me, playing mine.”

Chapter

6

Leith had his bare feet kicked up on the rickety coffee table with the angel inlays and the chipped legs, TV muted and tuned to the Red Sox game he wasn’t even watching. Ten o’clock at night and Jen still wasn’t back. He knew this because he’d positioned the pink velour recliner to perfectly view her driveway and side door.

The security light over 738’s porch flicked on as Jen appeared, walking slowly, head bent, that damned purse dragging one shoulder down. She carried a brown takeout bag from the Stone in the opposite hand.

He sank deeper into the recliner and nudged back a corner of the lace curtain. It could have been the harsh glare of the motion-sensor light, but there was a pale haggardness to her face. If he didn’t know that she always managed to hold herself together no matter the situation, he might have named it sadness.

No, never that on her. A trick of the light then. But it made him think of earlier that day, when he’d doubted how well he actually knew her.

She must have spent a long time with Aimee to have come back so late. He wondered if it was difficult for her, to have been called back to Gleann to work, only to spend so little time with her sister. But then, the two of them had never been all that close. Aimee had run with the partying crowd every summer, with Jen often having to rescue her from shit situations or drive her home after she’d drank too much. Jen and Leith’s jokes on the townspeople had been harmless, but Aimee’s antics—vandalism, a pot bust—rarely left people smiling, least of all Jen.

Being closer to Jen, Leith had always held Aimee at arm’s length. Then one summer, while Jen had been off at college, Aimee had reappeared in Gleann holding a baby. Bev Haverhurst took her in without question. Aimee mellowed, grew up. Gleann was a good mother that way; if anything, Leith knew that. Then Bev died, leaving the Thistle to her older niece.

Outside, Jen reached the side door. Showtime.

Leith sat back, hand over his grinning mouth. Maybe Jen refused to acknowledge their romantic past, but he would love for her to remember their friendship, how fun it used to be.

She struggled to take out her keys while balancing everything else, then finally managed to wiggle the key into the testy lock. Then she saw it. The takeout bag slid to the ground as she plucked the folded piece of paper taped to the door.

He shouldn’t be laughing. Really, he shouldn’t be. Except that it was too damn funny. Even when she pressed the piece of paper to her chest and crept around the front of 738 to peer over at the empty blue house she thought belonged to Mr. Lindsay, he was laughing.

The Jen he knew was getting ready to march over to that house and pound on the door, intending to shove the note in the old man’s face and tell him to back off. Then the jig would be up, Leith would head outside to meet her and reveal himself, and they’d have a good laugh. So when she turned to look over at Mildred’s house instead, he flattened himself against the back of the recliner, out of sight.

Seconds later, someone rattled his back metal screen door. What the—

He pushed to his feet, checked to make sure his fly was up, that he didn’t reek. He stood in front of the foggy antique mirror hanging crookedly in the narrow hallway and ran a hand through his hair.

For the life of him, he couldn’t fully wipe the grin off his face. So when he opened the back door, one foot propped on the single step leading up into the kitchen, he was sure he looked like the proverbial cat who ate the canary.

Jen sighed when she saw him. Actually sighed.

Hello, canary.

“Holy crap, Leith. Look what that pervert left me now!”

She shoved the note in his face, and even though he didn’t have to read it to know what it said, he scanned his own chicken scratch anyway.

“Ms. Haverhurst,” he read, unable to hide his smirk, “Would you mind not hanging your clothing and unmentionables around the house in plain view of anyone walking along the sidewalk?”

Leith laughed as he lowered the paper, but Jen’s arms were clamped over her chest as though she were naked and he were Mr. Lindsay. Which he was, technically . . . and which she wasn’t, unfortunately.