*   *   *

Pierce Blake, Rowan’s older brother, an entertainment lawyer, was on his way from Los Angeles. Louise had sent a car to the airport for him. After a failed marriage he, too, was a bachelor now.

Louise planned to make her boys dinner (filet mignon, baked potato, and a citrus salad with Bibb lettuce), “like in the old days,” she told Rowan when he returned to the kitchen. It had been Burdy’s favorite, too. He’d washed his face, his dark hair, smartly cut, was combed, and he’d taken off his jacket. His sleeves were folded midway up his forearms. A large mug of black coffee waited for him on the table.

“There, that might help. I’ve made a pot.”

Rowan ignored the pointed tone in her voice, but picked up the coffee. “Mother, what can I do?”

“Nothing now … dear. I’ve a list of people we need to call. Let’s wait for Pierce.” Her back was to him.

“Sorry. For earlier, I mean. My phone was on silent. I was entertaining clients—”

“Yes. I know. When I spoke with your intern”—she paused but didn’t turn around—“he said you weren’t there.” Louise said it like she was leaving a door open for him, even though she knew he wouldn’t walk through it. She knew her son by heart. She was certain he was on his way to becoming an alcoholic, if he wasn’t one already. She’d seen something like this coming for months. She’d seen it in her own mother and sisters and knew the signs well. She stopped fixing the salad and began to thump one small-fisted hand on the counter, muffled but insistent, as if to squash her rising grief into a pulpy mash and dispose of it in the garbage disposal.

Rowan said nothing. He took the coffee, came toward her, but stopped midway, then walked out. Everything about him was tired. He opened the patio screen door and was soon on the edge of the golf course. He stood on the trimmed rough of the 16th and wished himself back into an earlier time when his life seemed full of promises and innocence.

“It’s all about balance, Ro,” his grandfather said. “Relax your grip, son. Swing easy. And mind the rough.” It was a spring afternoon. He was twelve years old. Burdy was wearing his gold ochre sweater and linen golf trousers, his silver hair soft like silky milkweed threads, explaining the rules of putting, angles, and imaginary lines and how to read the green. “If you get your putting right, you’re halfway there. Putting is the foundation of building your game. The trick is to focus on the line of the putt. Visualize it moving across the green. View the hole from different aspects, Rowan. You’ve got to feel the move of the green.”

He stood in behind Rowan. “That’s it, Ro. Line your foot up to the ball. Keep the club square to the line. Now, let your shoulders hang loose. Hands level with the ball. How does that feel?”

“Okay. I guess?”

“Good boy.” Burdy laughed and stepped away. “You’re a natural. Remember, a perfect putting stroke resembles a pendulum.”

Rowan had stopped and turned around to look at his grandfather, puzzled.

“No. Keep your eyes on the ball. Remember, like a pendulum. Keep your putter on the line, square with the target.”

Burdy had a special marker, an old Irish coin—a nickel three pence picturing a hare and a harp. That was also his lucky piece. “Here, let me show you.” He picked up Rowan’s ball and put down the coin, dropped his own ball beside it. He stepped up and with his feet in place, he shifted easily back and forth, looked from the hole to his ball, his grip as light as a feather. He pulled back and through, stroking the back of the ball. Soft like a puff, the ball poofed along the imaginary line, following the lay of the land before dropping, plonk, into the hole.

“It’s all about balance, Ro.”

It’s all about balance, Ro. But Burdy was dead and balance was the last thing Rowan Blake had in his life.

*   *   *

Half an hour later, another car pulled into 316 Greenview Drive. A man in his late forties got out and paid the driver. He was tall and straight, had a long but handsome nose, full lips, and brown eyes that resembled his brother’s. He carried a bouquet of peonies and a leather suit bag. Louise, seeing him from the kitchen, rushed out to meet him.

“Honey! Pierce … dear. You’re here.” As she’d done earlier with Rowan, she now clasped onto her eldest son, more like a child than a mother.

“It’s all right. It’s all right, Mother.” He held her close and patted her back. Both sons were a foot taller than Louise. “It was Burdy’s time. He’d a great life.”

“I know,” she said. “I know. But … it was so … so sudden. I wasn’t ready.” As she partly spoke, partly wept, Rowan appeared at the door and came toward them. “I’m so glad you’re here,” she whispered to Pierce.

Over the top of her head, Pierce’s deep voice called, “Rowan! Hey! How are you, brother?”

Louise released her hold and moved aside. The brothers hugged briefly but warmly. Like Rowan, Pierce was wearing a white shirt. It was how the Blake men always dressed. Crisp white shirts. They were the kind of men you’d look at if they passed you in the street—perfectly groomed and full of the quiet self-assurance tall men often have. “It’s just us now against the world, hey?” Pierce said gently and they stood a moment. All three looked in different directions to the hundreds of trees that sheltered them, not touching but close enough so the space between them was as intimate as a whisper.

“Ah,” Pierce said, coming into the kitchen, “pink grapefruit and blue cheese!” Louise had set the table and placed her famous salad on place mats. “No one does it like you, Mother.” He winked at Rowan and handed her the flowers. “I don’t suppose you’ve prepared the mignon and the Idaho, too?”

“You’re too much, Pierce. You make me laugh.” She was on the verge of tears.

“You shouldn’t have,” Pierce said, picking up her hands and holding them in his own. “We could have ordered in—”

“I needed to do something while I waited for you.… For you both.”

Pierce “at home” had revived Louise, Rowan observed with some regret as his mother steadied the bouquet into a glass vase. Then she broiled the steaks under the grill. The potatoes, wrapped in tinfoil, waited on the plates. For a few minutes they made small talk like nothing had happened. Both men leaned back on the kitchen counter, side by side, arms folded across their chests. Pierce asked Rowan how the landscaping business was going.

“In L.A. it seems every other house has a fancy tree lit up with soft lights and smart water features and minimalist planters. What’s it like in New York? Still doing those brownstone gardens in Brooklyn?” He seemed truly interested. He was, after all, the older brother. Rowan said he was working on a redesign for Paley Park on East Fifty-third, in fact.

“Dogwoods and box and a few multistem Himalayan birch.”

“It’s time you came out to Brentwood, buddy, helped me with my ten-by-ten gravel backyard. What would you say to a swimming pool?” Pierce chuckled and gave his brother a soft thump on the back.

Their conversation seemed to settle Louise. She asked them then to sit down and they held hands across the kitchen table, as was customary in the Blake household. Louise looked to Rowan. “Will you say grace, please?”

*   *   *

After the dinner, which none of them could really eat, some of Louise’s neighbors stopped by; it was late, but Pierce and Rowan pretended it was polite to slip away. They stepped outside onto the deck. Fireflies flashed with silent electricity. A breeze stirred the trees and offered some relief to the hot night.

“We could take Mother’s car down to Muscoot’s?” said Rowan.

“That old haunt? Doesn’t have this fresh air, Ro.” Pierce slapped his hands together and laughed his big, deep laugh. “Let’s just walk a bit. We’re past those days, don’t you think? Beer joints?”

They walked in silence with the crickets sounding. A few stars hung above the 16th fairway. Rowan said nothing, although he ached with emotion. And he wanted a drink. From time to time he glanced over at Pierce and wondered if his brother thought him much altered from his visit last summer.