They called themselves “the lucky ones”

They were seven children either orphaned or abandoned by their parents and chosen by legendary philanthropist and brain surgeon Dr. Vincent Capello to live in The Dragon, his almost magical beach house on the Oregon Coast. Allison was the youngest of the lucky ones living an idyllic life with her newfound family...until the night she almost died, and was then whisked away from the house and her adopted family forever.

Now, thirteen years later, Allison receives a letter from Roland, Dr. Capello’s eldest son, warning her that their father is ill and in his final days. Allison knows she must go home again and confront the ghosts of her past. She’s determined to find out what really happened that fateful night—was it an accident, or, as she’s always suspected, did one of her beloved family members try to kill her?

But digging into the past can reveal horrific truths, and when Allison pieces together the story of her life, she learns the terrible secret at the heart of the family she once loved but never really knew.

Also by Tiffany Reisz

THE NIGHT MARK

THE BOURBON THIEF

The Original Sinners series

The White Years

*

THE QUEEN

THE VIRGIN

THE KING

THE SAINT

The Red Years

*

THE MISTRESS

THE PRINCE

THE ANGEL

THE SIREN

For a complete list of books by Tiffany Reisz,

please visit www.tiffanyreisz.com.

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk

The Lucky Ones

Tiffany Reisz

Copyright

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2018

Copyright © Tiffany Reisz 2018

Tiffany Reisz asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © February 2018 ISBN: 9781474077040

To Andrew Shaffer and Jenn LeBlanc...we’ll always have Cannon Beach.

Praise for The Night Mark

“You will find yourself falling in love with every character... [Y]ou’ll wait with bated breath just to see in which direction the author will turn; and at the end you’ll find yourself not being able to go a minute without thinking of the journey and glorious storytelling of Tiffany Reisz.”

—RT Book Reviews, Top Pick

“This time-travel romance is swoon-worthy and lovely. Reisz is a powerful writer who hits all the high romance you can ask for, while creating a fascinating yet believable plot that makes us believe that love can conquer all, even time and death.”

—Kirkus Reviews

“The perfect summer read for historical romance fans.”

—Barnes & Noble Reads

“If you love romantic time travel and stories about eternal, never-quieting love, then you must absolutely pick up The Night Mark.”

—LitStack

“An aching meditation on grief and loss... It’s chock-full of symbolism and, most importantly, hope.”

—Heroes and Heartbreakers

Praise for The Bourbon Thief

“A dark, twisty tale of love, lust, betrayal, and murder...this novel is not one to be missed.”

—Bustle

“[Reisz’s] prose is quite beautiful, and she can weave a wonderful tight story.”

—New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author Jennifer Probst

“The Bourbon Thief isn’t just good, it’s exceptional. The story captured my imagination; the characters captured my heart.”

—Literati Literature Lovers

“Reisz fills the narrative with rich historic details; memorable, if vile, characters; and enough surprises to keep the plot moving and readers hooked until the final drop of bourbon is spilled.”

—Booklist

“Beautifully written and delightfully insane... Reisz vividly captures the American South with a brutal honesty that only enhances the dark material.”

—RT Book Reviews, Top Pick

“Impossible to stop reading.”

—Heroes and Heartbreakers

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Praise

Quote

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Acknowledgments

“...the companions of our childhood always possess a certain power over our minds which hardly any later friend can obtain.”

—Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

Chapter 1

Louisville, Kentucky, 2015

All Allison wanted was for this conversation to be over. That and she hoped the heavy gray clouds would part and the sun would appear. It could go either way today—sun or rain. She stood at the kitchen window, peeling old white paint off the sill as she waited for the Kentucky sky to make up its mind. Meanwhile, sitting behind her at the table, her lover, Cooper McQueen, gently ruined her life.

Then, a small mercy—the clouds split wide open. The sun shone bright enough to momentarily blind her. She exhaled in her relief. Allison had always loved the rain. She could forgive McQueen for leaving. She would never forgive him if he’d ruined the rain for her.

“She’s pregnant,” McQueen said. “She’s due in April.”

“You’re happy about it,” Allison said, working another strip of paint off the edge of the frame. She felt a silly sort of triumph when it came off in one long white ribbon.

“Cricket,” he said softly, apologetically. “Look at me.”

Allison wanted to walk out right then, walk out and never look back. She should have, she knew. Instead, she turned around and faced him. He’d just ended it and here she was, still obeying his every command.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“It’s all right, McQueen,” she said, shrugging. “We knew this would happen eventually. Not you getting some strange woman you picked up in a bar pregnant, I mean. But...”

“But...” He sat back in the chair.

“You are happy about it, though, aren’t you?” she asked. “You can be honest with me. I’d appreciate it.”

She was lying. She was lying through her teeth. She didn’t want him to be honest with her. She wanted him to lie to her, lie as hard as she was lying to him. She wanted him to tell her he wasn’t happy about it at all, that he didn’t want to end it, that his hand had been forced, that if given the choice he’d throw caution to the wind and marry Allison tomorrow, even if it did cause a scandal, even if it meant his kids might never speak to him again...

“Yes,” he said. “I’m happy about it.”

“I’m happy for you, too, then.”

Another lie.

Allison had sensed that morning that today was going to be the day. Instead of calling her to let her know when he’d drop by—for sex, of course, there was no other reason he ever called her—he’d called instead to tell her he had some mail of hers he was bringing over and a pair of earrings he’d found in his bathroom drawer.

“She has her own money. She’s thirty-seven. A little bit more age-appropriate than you,” he said. A joke. He was trying to make her laugh and, damn him, it worked. But it was a very small laugh. Her lover—or, she supposed, ex-lover—was Cooper McQueen, who was very possibly a billionaire if one got creative enough with the accounting. He was also forty-five to her twenty-five. She’d been his mistress for six years, although she’d known him for seven. The worst part of it all was what a cliché the whole tawdry thing was. At eighteen she’d gotten a job working for McQueen as his daughter Emmy’s weekend babysitter.

“Congratulations,” Allison said. He was trying to spare her pain by not admitting how thrilled he was to have child number three on the way. He and his wife had divorced after two kids, and he’d confessed to her a long time ago that he always felt someone was missing from the family. Not her. She wasn’t family. She was an employee.

“It’s going to be an adventure,” he said, his voice neutral.

Going to be... He was already seeing the future with this child, with this woman. There was no talking him out of ending things. It was already done and over. Now if she could only get through the rest of this conversation without falling apart. She’d gone six years as the secret mistress of a very wealthy man without falling apart once in his presence. She hated to ruin her streak.

“Does she know about me?” Allison asked. An important question.

“I told her,” McQueen said. “After she told me.”

“She asked you to get rid of me, didn’t she?”

“No, in fact. She said I could be in the baby’s life if I wanted to keep you, but I couldn’t be in hers if you were still in the picture. For the kid’s sake, I thought we should try to make it work.”

“You should, yes,” Allison said. Even she couldn’t deny he was doing the right thing—finally.

“She told me to tell you she was very sorry,” McQueen said. “And she means it. She didn’t know about you. This isn’t personal.”

“No, of course it isn’t,” Allison said. “What’s her name?”

McQueen paused before answering as if weighing Allison’s motives in asking. “Paris. Paris Shelby.”

“Tell Ms. Shelby I appreciate that. And I understand.” Allison paused. “Must be special. You kept me through three girlfriends.”

“I’m crazy about her,” McQueen finally admitted. It was a knife in her heart. A small knife, but serrated. It did damage.

“And you’re sane about me,” she said.

McQueen sighed heavily, too wise to retort. He was a handsome man—tan, tall and lean with a twentysomething’s libido. But there was no denying he had crow’s-feet around his eyes, hair more salt than pepper and, on those rare occasions when they were together in public, people always gave them that “daughter or girlfriend?” look. She wouldn’t miss that. She needed to think of other things she wouldn’t miss, but she kept coming up empty-handed.

“Your rent’s paid through the end of the year,” McQueen said. He removed an envelope from the box and showed her the receipt inside. “I would have given you the place, but I don’t own the building. And if you want all the furniture, it’s yours. Anything you don’t want to keep, you can sell.” A surge of relief flooded through her body. She wasn’t married to the place, but she liked having a roof over her head. And it was a very nice apartment—a corner unit on the second floor of a Colonial Revival mansion in historic Old Louisville. McQueen had it furnished with an antique sofa and chairs, plush rugs on the polished wood floors and a luxurious king-size bed. Furnished for him, of course, not her. But she was relieved he wasn’t kicking her out. She had nowhere else to go.

“I appreciate the grace period,” she said.

“If you need more time, please ask for it.” He smiled and took out a smaller envelope. “And I’ve written you a letter of recommendation.”

Now that did make her laugh, loud and hard.

“Recommending me for what?” Allison asked. “Is there an employment agency for rich men looking for mistresses?”

He wrinkled his nose in disgust. “You weren’t my mistress. It’s so...”

“True?”

“Melodramatic. This was always a friendly business arrangement.”

“I see. So you’re not dumping me, then. You’re firing me.”

Allison turned away from him, back to the window and the peeling paint. Outside a knot of college students, a couple of them in red University of Louisville T-shirts, walked past the house, sweating in the sun. One girl linked arms with her boyfriend. Two other guys lightly punched each other’s arms over a joke. They must have been at most four years younger than her, if that. And yet they looked like children. Happy children. Beautiful, happy children. All children should be that happy.

“I’ll send someone to repaint,” McQueen said. “I want to make sure you get the security deposit back.”

“I can paint it myself.”

“I’ll send someone.”

“It’s my responsibility now, right?”

“Yes, but—”

“And I’m not,” she said.

“Not what?” he asked.

“Your responsibility. Not anymore.”

“That’s going to take some getting used to,” he said.

She turned back around and dug her hands deep into her jeans pockets. He never liked her to wear jeans. Or slacks or sweatpants. Skirts and dresses were his preference—or the lingerie that he bought her. One tiny rebellion, wearing jeans today. And yet she’d topped her outfit with his favorite blouse of hers—the sweet white eyelet lace top that made her look like a pretty hippie lost in time—and worn her hair down and loosely curled the way he loved.

“Get used to it,” she said. “I already am.”

McQueen ignored that and reached into the box again. He pulled out a canvas bag with something inside it the size and density of a brick.

“What’s that?” she asked, narrowing her eyes at the bag.

“Fifty thousand dollars. Cash.”

Allison’s eyes widened.

“It’ll tide you over until you can get a job,” he said. “Or help you through grad school. I know you so I’m giving you an order—do not blow it all on books or give it all away to total strangers with sob stories.”

She ignored that last part. If he was giving her money, she’d do whatever she damned well pleased with it. She’d buy a whole damn bookstore to spite him if she wanted.

“Fifty thousand dollars,” she said. “You must feel really guilty, McQueen.”

“I do feel guilty,” he said with pride. “I paid you not to work after you graduated so I could have you when I wanted you. Three years is a big gap on your résumé.”

“I’ll tell them I was working for you as a professional kept woman. The name of Cooper McQueen goes far in this state.”

“I would prefer you give them the letter of recommendation instead. It says you’re a very good personal assistant.”

“Emphasis on the ‘personal’?” She picked up the bag, weighing it in her hand. “I thought it would be bigger.”

McQueen raised his eyebrow. “Not a sentence I hear often.”

She glared at him, tight-lipped, not amused.

“Five hundred Ben Franklins don’t take up a lot of space,” he said. “Don’t believe everything you see in movies. Even one million won’t fill a briefcase, unless it’s all in ones.”

“And you’re giving it to me out of the goodness of your heart?” she asked.

“I am. You should know, my lawyer tried to tell me I should get you to sign an NDA before I gave you the money. I told him to shove it.”

“An NDA? He wanted me to sign a nondisclosure agreement for sleeping with you?”

“I pay the man to protect me,” McQueen said. “My daughter’s ex-babysitter talking to the press about how I slept with her at the tender age of nineteen might hurt me a little. You know I want to run for governor one of these days. But I’m not making you sign anything. I trust you. I have always trusted you. The money is yours free and clear. I want you to take it. You’re only hurting yourself if you don’t.”

“I shouldn’t accept it,” she said. “It’ll let you off the hook too easily.”

He smiled at that. He knew his own faults, which was one of his few virtues.

“But I’m going to take it,” she said.

“You earned it.”

“I did,” she said. “But not because I put up with you the past six years. I earned this much just for putting up with this conversation.”

He lowered his head and exhaled loudly.

“You don’t make it easy on a man,” he said. “You could say thank you. Most girlfriends don’t get severance pay after a breakup.”

“I’m not your girlfriend, remember?” She put the money into the box. She saw her earrings. She saw the rent receipt. She saw the letter. She saw two thick envelopes.

“What are those?”

“One’s your mail. The other’s...they’re the pictures.”

“Our pictures?” she asked.

He slowly nodded. “You have any idea how much it hurt giving those pictures up?”

“How much?”

“A lot. I came this close to keeping them.” He held up his fingers a hairbreadth apart.

“They’re pornographic,” she said, glaring at him.

“They’re beautiful. And you’re beautiful in them. And I don’t look too bad myself.”

“What about running for governor someday?” she asked.

“That’s the only reason I gave them back to you,” he said.

“You seem sadder about losing them than losing me.”

“Cricket, please...”

“Don’t call me that anymore,” she said, closing her eyes. “I did everything you asked me to do—in bed and out. Everything. I never asked for anything from you. I never complained. I never...” She never made a scene. She never cried in front of him. She did all his favorite tricks.

“We had six good years,” he said.

“Good for you. I was nineteen. Do you feel bad about that at all?”

“Let me ask you this,” he said. “Do you?”

“You want me to absolve you.”

“I want you to be honest with me,” he said. “Did I take advantage of you? If I did, then tell me. Or did you want it as much as I did?”

“I was nineteen,” she said again.

“You weren’t drafted into the army. You had sex with an older man who paid your rent and your bills and gave you diamonds for Christmas. You knew what the deal was when I offered it to you. I’ve told my fair share of lies to my fair share of women,” he said. “But I never lied to you about us. Did I?”

Allison would have argued except it was true. Of course he never lied to her. Lovers lied to protect the loved one. No love to protect meant no need for lies.

“No, you never lied to me.”

McQueen met her eyes for a split second before glancing away, a guilty look on his face.

“So this is it?” she asked. “The end?”

“I’d like to have sex with you before I leave,” he said.

Allison stared at him, incredulous.

“Yes, and I’d like to marry a knight-errant and raise rare-breed cats with him in our castle by the sea,” she said.

“I’m taking that as a ‘no’ to breakup sex,” he said.

“Safe to say that’s a ‘no.’ We had sex yesterday,” she said. “Twice.”

“That wasn’t breakup sex,” he said. “And don’t give me that look. This is your own fault.” McQueen pointed at her, shook his finger.

“My fault? My fault?” Allison was laughing in utter amazement at the sheer gall of the man.

“Your fault. You’ve been trying for years to make me a better man,” he said. “Give more money to the poor. Be nicer to my employees. Don’t date girls my daughter’s age. Well, maybe your guilt trips finally started to sink in a little. I don’t call you Jiminy Cricket because you wear a top hat and tails.”

“You are unbelievable,” she said.

“Allison,” he said, “I am sorry about this. I truly am.”

He held out his hand to shake.

“Six years of my life,” she said, “and it’s going to end in a handshake.”

“You already said no to breakup sex,” he said.

Another hard truth. So she took his hand. As soon as her hand slipped into his he pulled her gently to him and held her close.

“You bastard,” she said even as she wrapped her arms around his shoulders.

“Thank you for always being there for me, Allison. You are smart and lovely and kind—when you aren’t furious at me—and I’ll miss you.”

“I hope you and your new lady and the baby are very happy together,” she said.

“I hope so, too.”

A knot formed in her throat. A vise clamped down onto her chest. One tear escaped her eye before she could capture it, lock it up and throw away the key.

“You know what the stupid thing is,” Allison said, speaking to stave off the building panic. “I don’t even like you very much.”

McQueen chuckled. She felt his chest rumble against hers. She’d miss that, too.

“I mean it,” she said. “You’re arrogant and entitled and you do whatever you want, consequences be damned, and you’re...you’re...”

“Rich,” he said. “That’s the word you’re looking for.”

“That’s it,” she said.

“If you don’t like me, why are you so upset?” he said, his tone teasing, and any other day they’d be in bed together already.

“Because I’m going to miss not liking you.”

He pulled her a little closer, a little tighter. He kissed her cheek, her forehead and then, at last, let her go. She hated herself for letting him be the one to let go first. Once he was gone, she would be alone, completely alone. No family. No friends. A woman on call day and night for a powerful man didn’t get to make friends. She hated him and never wanted to see him again. She loved him and never wanted him to leave her. But she didn’t cling to him when he pulled away, and she counted that a victory.

“If it makes you feel any better,” McQueen said, his hands still on her face, “this wasn’t an easy decision.”

“Weird,” Allison said. “It doesn’t make me feel any better.”

McQueen raised his hands in defeat. “I’ll go.”

She swallowed again. “Bye.”

“Don’t forget there’s some mail for you in the box.”

“Anything important?” She never got mail at McQueen’s address.

“It’s a package from Oregon. No idea why it came to my house.”

“Oregon?”

She glanced in the box at the padded envelope. Sure enough, it was postmarked Clark Beach, Oregon. And the name on the return address read Roland Capello.

Allison gasped, then clapped a hand over her mouth in shock.

“Allison?” McQueen had been retreating during the conversation but now he rushed to her. “Honey, what’s wrong? You look like you’re about to faint.”

“It’s from my brother,” she breathed. “This is from my brother.”

McQueen stared at her like she’d grown a second head in the past three seconds.

“Your brother?” he repeated. “I’ve known you seven years. You never told me you had a brother.”

Allison looked at him with tears in her eyes.

“That’s because...I don’t.”

Chapter 2

McQueen sat her in a chair and poured her a tumbler of bourbon, which Allison nearly dropped. She’d almost fainted. Truly fainted. She wasn’t a fainter. She’d never been a fainter. But seeing that name on that envelope had nearly sent her falling to the floor. If McQueen hadn’t been there she might have passed out cold.

“Drink,” he ordered, and she took a sip. It hit the back of her throat and set fire to her brain.

“Whew. That’s strong.” Too strong, but it stopped her hands from shaking.

“That’s panic-attack bourbon,” he said. “Hundred-ten proof. Feel better?”

“I feel like I’m going to faint but now it’s for a totally different reason.”

“We’ll take that as an improvement.” Gently he removed the glass tumbler from her hand and set it on the side table. “Now, tell me what’s going on?”

“Why?” She met his eyes with confusion.

“Why? Because I say, ‘Hey, you have a package from Oregon,’ and then you nearly faint on me?”

“I’m not your responsibility anymore, remember? We had that talk.”

“Soon as I walk out that door,” he said, pointing at the white door with the white knob, “it’s over. Not until then.”

“It’s no big deal. Don’t worry about it.”

“Who’s Roland Capello? Don’t say he’s your brother. I know he isn’t.”

Allison didn’t want to tell him the whole sordid story, but she didn’t want to fight with him about it, either. McQueen had a strong personality and an even stronger will. Better to tell him and get it over with.

“He was my brother,” she said. “Once. A long time ago.”

“How was someone once your brother? Stepbrother?”

“Adopted,” she said. “Me, I mean. Sort of. It’s complicated.”

“Here. Drink more. You’ll feel less complicated in no time.”

He pressed the glass into her hand and she took another sip. Rough stuff but the buzzing in her head distracted her from the wild beating of her heart.

“You told me your mom died when you were seven, right?” McQueen said. “Car accident?”

“Drunk driving,” Allison said. “She was the driver. I didn’t know that until I was a lot older. I guess people didn’t want me blaming her for dying. I didn’t have any relatives around. Mom had moved us from Indiana to Oregon for a boyfriend but they split up. When she was gone, they stuck me in foster care. I was in one of those group homes with a bunch of girls. They were older and mean, and I was tiny and scared all the time. Then one day this man showed up in a big black car and took me home with him. Dr. Capello. He’s a very famous philanthropist and neurosurgeon.”

“Never heard of him.”

“Well, he’s famous in Oregon the way you’re famous in Kentucky.”

“So, pretty damn famous, then,” McQueen said. Allison ignored that.

“Dr. Capello inherited a fortune from his parents and I think he had his own money, too.”

“I never met a broke neurosurgeon.”

“He was known for helping needy kids. I think in the beginning he did pro bono surgeries and that sort of thing. But at some point he became a foster parent. He took in a bunch of kids.”

“An Angelina?”

Allison smiled. “Yeah, an old, male Angelina.”

“How old?”

“Very old. Fifty, I think.”

McQueen, age forty-five, gave her a dirty look.

“I was one of the kids he took in,” she said. “Lucky me.”

“And Roland?”

“Him, too. Except Dr. Capello adopted him,” Allison said. “I haven’t heard from him since I left The Dragon. That’s why I was so surprised.”

“The what?”

Allison smiled behind her glass of bourbon. “The Dragon—that’s what the house was called. You know how beach houses have funny names? Sandy Soles and Blue Heaven or whatever? Dr. Capello said we lived at the edge of the world and on old maps that’s where ‘there be dragons.’ And the house was big and green with shingles like scales. It kind of looked like a dragon when you saw it from a certain angle.”

McQueen nodded his understanding. “So you lived there with a bunch of other foster kids. Was it as bad as I’m imagining?”

“It was paradise,” she said. “Xanadu.”

“Xanadu?” McQueen repeated. “Like the movie?”

“Like the poem,” she said. “‘In Xanadu did Kubla Khan / A stately pleasure-dome decree...’ I used to have it all memorized. Anyway, it was lovely there.”

She couldn’t sit still anymore so she put her glass on the table and stood up. She went to the bookshelves that lined the walls and started searching for a book, not because she wanted to read it, but to find something she’d slipped inside it long ago.

“You know that’s crazy, right?” he said.

“What? Didn’t everyone live in a magical beach house with a famous doctor as a kid?”

“Cricket.” McQueen hated sarcasm as much as he hated when she wore jeans.

“I know it sounds nuts,” she said. “I do, but it seemed normal at the time. I was seven, though. I still thought Santa Claus was real. Of all the kids, Roland was the one I was closest to. He was older. He was nice. I just... I never thought I’d hear from him again. That’s all.”

McQueen leaned back in his armchair and steepled his fingers. He did this when he was thinking. She had a feeling he was thinking, That’s not all.

“What aren’t you telling me?” he asked.

“That I want you out of my apartment right now,” she said casually, without malice and without much truth, either. She ignored him as best as she could as she studied her shelves.

“About your brother. Usually when nice people send me mail, I don’t almost lose my lunch.”

“I’m done talking about this with you.”

“I’m not done listening.”

“Well, there’s nothing more to tell.”

“We’ve been sleeping together for six years, Allison. I know when you’re faking it with me. You’re faking right now. You went white as a sheet when you saw his name on that envelope. That’s not like you. You are not a drama queen. You don’t overreact. When we were mugged in Milan, I was the one who puked afterward, not you. There is something you’re not telling me, and I’m not leaving until I know what it is.”

“You’re being nosy.”

“I care,” he said.

“You have an interesting way of showing it,” she said. She’d found her book at last, but didn’t open it.

McQueen sighed. He beckoned to her and she walked to him, sitting in front of him on top of the coffee table between his knees. He leaned forward and took the book from her hand and put it aside. He raised her hand to his lips, kissed her knuckles, before turning her hand over. He caressed her palm with his fingertips, a sensual touch but also comforting.

“Did something bad happen to you in that house?” he asked, meeting her eyes. If she’d thought for one single second that McQueen was prying out of curiosity or nosiness or because he felt entitled to her secrets, she would never have answered. But the man who’d asked that question wasn’t McQueen the rich jerk who was dumping her, but McQueen the scared father who’d burn the world down if anyone hurt his children.

“Dr. Capello didn’t molest me if that’s what you’re asking.”

McQueen took a heavy breath, relieved on her behalf.

“That’s what I’m asking,” he said. “So nobody hurt you, then?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Tell me what happened.”

“It’s not—”

“Tell me what happened and I’ll leave.”

“You promise?”

He carved an invisible X on his heart with his finger. “Once I know you’re okay, I’ll go.”

Allison hadn’t thought about her old life with Dr. Capello and his kids in a long time. She tried not to think about them, she certainly never talked about them and she never ever invited memories into her mind. They came sometimes, however, uninvited, creeping like ants through a crack in the wall.

“You wouldn’t be this freaked out if it was really that good there,” McQueen said.

“I’m not freaked out,” she said, maybe a lie, maybe not. She was just...surprised, that’s all. “You’d be shaky, too, if your brother contacted you out of the blue after thirteen years.”

“True. Because I don’t have a brother, even an almost-brother. You do.”

Allison released his hand and picked up the book she’d found, an old copy of Shaw’s Pygmalion, the pages highlighter-yellow from her days as an English major in college.

“Allison?”

She gave in.

“The last summer I was there, someone in the house maybe possibly pushed me down the stairs.”

“What?” McQueen said, eyes wide with fury.

Allison shrugged, said nothing.

“An accident?” McQueen asked.

“So I was told.”

“But you don’t think it was an accident?”

Allison held the book to her chest.

“My great-aunt was seventy when my mom died. She was living in southern Indiana. That’s why I went to live with Dr. Capello instead of her. But I still called her once a week to check in. The day of my fall—or whatever it was—someone apparently called her, pretended to be me and told her that there was a killer in the house and I needed her to come get me.”

McQueen started to speak.

“Before you ask,” Allison said, “I don’t know who it was who called or who pushed me—if someone did push me. When I fell, I hit my head so hard I don’t even remember falling. I don’t remember waking up in the hospital. I don’t remember much of anything from around that time. What I do remember is that I was living at The Dragon, happiest kid on earth, and then I was in Indiana later that summer, living with my aunt in her tiny apartment.”

“That must have been a hard hit,” McQueen said. “What did the police say?”

“There wasn’t even an investigation,” she said. “There was no evidence other than the phone call, and everyone chalked that up to my aunt being old and hard of hearing, maybe even confused. Everyone but me. That woman could hear a pin drop and she had all her faculties intact to the day she died.”

“No witnesses?” McQueen asked. Allison ignored the urge to roll her eyes. He was talking like a cop.

“Nobody came forward that I know of.”

“Kids can be really violent,” McQueen said.

“Not these kids,” Allison said.

“Then who did it? Someone did something or you never would have had to leave.”

“I’m telling you what my aunt told me when I started asking her why I was with her and not with the Capellos anymore. Apparently Dr. Capello was the one who found me at the foot of the steps bleeding from the ear. He said he was too panicked to do anything but scream for someone to call 911. If it had been an accident I’d like to think whoever it was would have admitted to it. But nobody ’fessed up. Not even when my aunt flew out to pick me up and take me home with her. When I went to live with her, she wouldn’t let me contact the Capellos. She thought... She didn’t know what to think. And the Capellos never contacted me, either, after that. Probably because my aunt told them not to. Thirteen years of radio silence. Until today.” She glanced over at the table where the package from Roland still sat, unopened.

“So you never called? Never visited?” McQueen asked.

“I wanted to when I was a kid and then a few years passed and the whole thing kind of felt like a good dream with a nightmare ending. When I was old enough to go back on my own, I just...didn’t. If they’d sent me even one birthday card, I might have. But they didn’t.”

“I can’t believe you never told me any of this,” he said, shaking his head.

“You never asked. You never wanted to know, did you? Then you’d have to think of me as a real person,” she said. McQueen had the decency to look ashamed of himself.

“You still could have told me.”

“You still could have asked,” she said. “Anyway, doesn’t matter. Ancient history. I’m over it all.”

“Except you aren’t,” he said. “Except you see the name Roland Capello on that envelope and you turn white as a ghost. You take a book off the shelf and hold it so tight for some reason your hands shake.” He took the book from her hands. “Except you...” He flipped through the book and found a page marked by a photograph, which he pulled out. “Except you keep a picture of your old family pressed in the pages of that book.”

Allison swallowed. “Except all that,” she said.

McQueen was staring at the photograph he’d taken out of her book. Allison didn’t look at it. She didn’t have to. She saw it in her mind’s eye. There were three kids in the picture—all three in red hoodies. One boy with dark blond hair that fell past his ears, one girl with hair so red it was almost orange and one boy with black hair straight as an arrow. They all held sparklers in their hands and in the background of the photo was the ocean, vast and gray.

“Roland?” McQueen asked, pointing to the one with black hair.

“That’s Deacon. Roland’s the dirty blond,” Allison said. “The girl’s Thora. Dr. Capello gave us those red sweatshirts. He said it made it easier for him to find us on the beach when there were big crowds.”

“Sweatshirts on the beach?”

“It was Oregon,” she said.

“And where are you in this picture?” McQueen asked.

Allison pointed to the left side of the photograph that had been torn away.

“There,” she said. “I don’t know who has the other section. I found this in my suitcase when I unpacked at my aunt’s.”

“So there were four of you?”

“No, there were others,” she said. “But they were fosters, like me. There was an older girl named Kendra. And a boy about my age or a little older named Oliver. A few others but they didn’t stay long. Roland, Thora and Deacon were the three kids Dr. Capello adopted.”

“Did he want to adopt you?”

“I think so,” Allison said. “But he didn’t.”

Allison took the photograph out of McQueen’s hand, slipped it back in the pages of the book, walked over and put the book back on the shelf.

“There, I told you everything. Now you can go.”

“Not until you open the package.”

“Why do you care?”

“What if this Roland guy is writing to confess to the crime?”

“Roland was sixteen by then, almost seventeen. He had a summer job in another town. He wouldn’t have been home at the time. Trust me, I thought about this a lot after I left them.”

“So you aren’t over it.”

“I was twelve living with an elderly woman in a retirement community. Not like I had much else to do.”

“Then maybe Roland knows something and is finally coming clean.” McQueen stood up and followed her to the kitchen.

“Maybe he is,” Allison said.

“Open it.”

“I will.” Allison turned to face him. “Soon as you’re gone.”

“Cricket...” He put his hands on her hips.

Allison touched his face, his five-o’clock shadow that always came in about an hour early every day.

“Goodbye, McQueen,” she said, taking his hands by the wrists and removing them from her body.

His shoulders slumped in defeat before he straightened up again and picked up his keys off the table and shoved them in his pocket.

“All right,” he said. “You win. But do me a favor, okay?” He went to the door. “Keep in touch.”

Allison opened the door for him and he started to walk out. Then stopped. Then turned back. She knew it was coming and she knew she could stop it. She didn’t.

He took her face in his hands and kissed her lips, a long lingering kiss, a kiss she returned. The kiss was a bad idea, a terrible idea, but at least it gave her the chance to pull away first.

“I always knew I’d regret getting involved with you,” Allison said.

“Then why did you do it?” he asked.

“Because I knew I’d regret not getting involved with you even more.”

He laughed and that was a shame because McQueen had a good laugh. Too good. He kissed her again.

“One more time,” he said against her lips. “Maybe that’ll make you feel better.”

Allison let him take her into the bedroom.

She didn’t want it, but she needed it.

Anything was better than being alone.

Chapter 3

Last times were no time for anything fancy. McQueen stripped her naked, put her on her back in the bed and kissed every inch of her like he was kissing every inch goodbye. Allison sighed with pleasure when he entered her. It was either sigh or cry and she refused to give in to her tears again. McQueen kissed her neck and said into her ear, “And to think I always thought I was the first rich son of a bitch to take you in from the cold.”

“Oh, you were,” she said, almost smiling. “Dr. Capello wasn’t a son of a bitch.”

Dr. Capello was, in fact, an angel. At least, that’s how she’d once thought of him. Until age seven, Allison had lived in a little town called Red, where even the trees in spring were a dull shade of brown. High desert, they called it, past the Cascades, which might as well have been a sky-high wall for how well they trapped the rain on the other side of the mountains. Although Allison’s teachers had said they lived an hour’s drive away from mossy green forests and three hours from the ocean, she had never believed them. The whole world was high desert to her until that day the man with the brown beard came to the house where they’d taken her because she had nowhere else to go.

Allison lived in the single-story house with siding the color of desert sand, and shared a room with three other girls, all of them older. Older and terrifying. All three of them resented the intrusion of a “little girl” into their tween kingdom. It was 1997 and she had no idea who those boys were in the posters on the wall and not knowing who the Backstreet Boys were was apparently enough of a crime to render Allison unworthy of friendship or even basic kindnesses from anyone but Miss Whitney.

She’d gone to find Miss Whitney that day, because one of the girls—Melissa, the biggest one who called all the shots—had slapped Allison for daring to sit in the wrong chair. Allison had taken her tearstained red face to Miss Whitney’s tiny office in the hopes of being allowed to hide there and read all day. Miss Whitney had let her do that a time or two. Apparently Allison was “adjusting poorly” and suffering from “profound stress,” and she needed a “more nurturing environment.” Allison wasn’t sure what all that meant, but she’d heard Miss Whitney saying that on the phone to someone the day before. What Allison really wanted was her mother back, but Miss Whitney had reminded her—kindly and more than once—that her mother was never coming back. They’d been trying to find her long-gone father instead, or another relative for her to live with. No luck yet, except an aunt deemed too old to handle a seven-year-old girl.

The first time she’d seen the man with the beard he’d been hugging Miss Whitney in her office. Allison stood in the doorway and stared at the man who was tall and dressed in what looked to her like blue pajamas. He patted Miss Whitney’s back very hard as he hugged her, which made Miss Whitney laugh and wince, wince and laugh.

“My God,” the bearded man said as he pulled back from the hug. He’d seen her lurking in the doorway. “Is this her?” He turned to Miss Whitney, his brown eyes wide.

“That’s her. That’s our Allison.”

Immediately, he squatted on the floor to meet Allison eye to eye.

Allison took a step back, afraid she’d broken a rule.

“It’s all right,” the man said, and his beard split apart in a big smile that showed a row of bright white teeth. “Don’t be scared.”

“I’m not scared,” Allison said. “Are you?”

He grinned at that. “Surprised. You look a little like another girl I used to know.”

“I thought the same thing when I saw her,” Miss Whitney said. “Cousins at least. Should I not have called?”

“No, no...” the bearded man said. “It’s fine.”

“Why are you wearing pajamas?” Allison asked the bearded man. She knew they were pajamas because the pants had a drawstring on them like her pajamas. Zipper meant outdoor pants. No zipper meant indoor pants. That’s how her mother had explained it.

The bearded man laughed and it was a nice laugh and he had nice eyes. Nice, not like pretty, but nice like kind.

“These are called scrubs,” he said. “They’re not pajamas. Doctors wear them.”

“Are you a doctor?” Allison asked.

“I am.”

“Is somebody sick?”

“You tell me,” the bearded man said. “You don’t look too good.”

“I got hit.”

“Hit?” the bearded man said, and looked up at Miss Whitney.

“Melissa?” Miss Whitney asked.

Tears welled up in Allison’s eyes again and she nodded.

“I’ll be back,” Miss Whitney said with a put-upon groan.

“You go jerk a knot in Melissa’s tail,” the bearded man said. “I’ll get Allison here back in working order.”

He stood up straight and Miss Whitney patted him on the arm as she left the office. They were alone together now, Allison and the bearded man.

“Does it hurt?” he asked, his hand on his chin.

“A little.”

“It’s okay if you cry,” he said. “I can tell you want to.”

“Katie said I shouldn’t cry.”

“Why not?”

“They don’t want you if you cry too much.”

“They?”

“People who take kids home with them,” she said.

The bearded man cupped his hand by his mouth and whispered, “I don’t mind if you cry. No skin off my rosy nose.”

That made her feel better, so much better she didn’t want to cry anymore.

“Let’s go find a bathroom,” he said.

Allison showed him where it was. He put her on the counter, wetted a washcloth and pressed it to her cheek.

“How’s that now?” he asked. “Better?”

“Lots.”

“Fantastic,” he said. “Another patient cured. That’ll cost you two bits.”

“What’s a bit?”

“I have no idea,” the bearded man said. “Used to hear it on TV all the time—shave and a haircut, two bits. Never did figure out how much two bits was.”

Allison looked around, saw a tissue box and ripped two pieces off one tissue.

“Here,” she said, holding them up in front of his face. “Two bits.”

“Are you sure?”

“You said you didn’t know what they are,” Allison said. “So how do you know those aren’t bits?”

The bearded man looked at the two tissues in his hand, stuck his lips out and nodded.

“You’re a very smart little girl,” he said. “I accept your payment. And I give you a clean bill of health. Now tell me, what’s going on with you and this Melissa?”

“I sat in her chair. She didn’t like that.”

“And she hit you?”

Allison said nothing.

“You know,” the man said, “sometimes kids learn to hit from their parents. Their parents hit them and then they don’t know any better.”

“I know not to hit,” Allison said.

“That’s because you’re so smart,” he whispered again. A whisper, then a wink. She didn’t know why he was whispering. Everyone in the house was a shouter. Melissa shouted and the other two girls shouted and Miss Whitney shouted at them all to stop shouting. Allison didn’t shout. She cried. She hid. She slept. But she never shouted.

“How’s the patient?”

Allison turned to see Miss Whitney coming into the bathroom.

“She’s on track to make a full recovery,” the bearded man said. “If we can keep her out of the path of slappers.”

“That’s not going to happen in this house,” Miss Whitney said with a sigh.

“No word on the father?” he asked.

“No father on the birth certificate. Sole living relative is a great-aunt who would take her if nobody else turns up. But she’s seventy, lives in Indiana, and she’s been sick.”

The bearded man harrumphed. Allison hadn’t ever met her great-aunt, a lady named Frankie who lived really far away, though she’d seen Christmas cards from her.

“I gotta figure something out here,” Miss Whitney said. “Allison weighed forty-seven pounds when she got here. Yesterday she weighed forty-two. One month.”

The bearded man harrumphed and whistled this time.

“Let me talk to her,” he said.

“You are talking to me,” Allison said.

“She’s very bright,” the bearded man said to Miss Whitney.

“Told you so. Reads on a fifth-grade level. Eats like a toddler.” Miss Whitney patted Allison on her knee. “Sweetheart, this is a good friend of mine. Vincent Capello. He’s a brain surgeon. We used to work together at a hospital in Portland. He was nice enough to come all the way out here to check on you. Brain surgeons usually don’t make house calls, so you should feel very special.”

“She is very special,” the man said. Allison grinned, happy to have someone being nice to her for the first time that day. She was still sitting on the bathroom counter. She wasn’t tall enough to be able to jump down without help yet and the bearded man, the doctor, had left her up there.

Miss Whitney left her alone again with the man who didn’t do anything at first but tug his beard hairs.

“Do you like it here, Allison?” he asked.

Allison’s mother had taught her not to complain, ever. Not so much out of politeness but because it never helped anything.

“I like Miss Whitney,” Allison said.

“She is a very nice lady.” The man nodded in agreement. “Do you like the girls here?”

Allison didn’t answer.

“Allison? Do you like the other girls here?”

“I’m not supposed to say.”

“Why not?” The bearded man furrowed his brow.

“If you can’t say something nice, you shouldn’t say anything at all.”

He laughed.

“I guess I have my answer. You have quite the moral compass, young lady,” he said. “Adults could learn from you.”

She smiled broadly. She didn’t know what a moral compass was, but she knew a compliment when she heard it.

“Miss Whitney says you aren’t eating. Want to tell me why?” he asked.

Allison had dropped her chin to her chest. “Not hungry.”

“Does your stomach hurt?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“No?” he said. Allison stopped talking and hoped he would, too.

“Have you ever seen the ocean?” he asked her. That was not the question she’d been expecting.

“No.”

“You know what it looks like?”

“I saw pictures,” she said.

“We can do better than that.” That’s when he plucked her off the counter and set her on her feet. He took her by the hand and led her out to the back porch. There was nothing back there but a slab of concrete where a few old chairs sat looking at a yard of scrubby dirt backed by a hill of scrubby dirt. Everywhere she looked out there she saw nothing but scrubby dirt.

“See all that?” the doctor said, pointing from one end of the hill to the other.

“I see dirt,” she said.

“Okay. Now imagine everything you see is water,” he said.

Allison’s eyes went wide. She stared at the dirt and in her mind’s eye it started to change color from brown to gray to blue. The hills turned to waves, the raw wind became an ocean breeze and the concrete slab they stood on became a raft, bobbing and floating on an endless sea.

“I see it,” she said, grinning up at him.

“That’s the ocean,” he said.

“It’s lovely,” she said.

“Lovely? Yes, it is lovely, isn’t it?” he said, laughing. “That’s where I live, you know. On the ocean.”

“In a boat?”

He laughed again. “No, in a house. But the house is right on the beach and you can see the ocean from almost all the rooms.”

Allison couldn’t imagine that. She never even looked out the windows in this house. Nothing to see but dirt out the back windows and other sand-colored houses out the front.

“Can you swim in it?”

He stroked his beard. “You can swim in it. Might not want to. It’s kind of cold, but my son swims in it a lot.”

“You have a son?”

“I have two sons,” he said, smiling with pride. “And a daughter. They’re all kids like you. Some bad things happened in their lives so now they live with me in my house by the ocean.”

“Is it pretty?”

“The ocean?”

“The house.”

“If I told you it looked like a dragon, would you believe me?”

“No,” she said, laughing. That was the silliest thing she ever heard. “Dragons have wings. They have fire in their noses.”

“I promise it looks like a dragon.”

“You’re lying.”

“I’m not,” he said, and looked hurt. Then he grinned. She liked him so much when he smiled like that. “It’s a sea monster, I swear.”

“I know a water poem,” she said. “Do you want to hear it?”

“I want to hear your poem. Go for it.”

Allison recited for him.

“The sun was shining on the sea,

Shining with all his might:

He did his very best to make

The billows smooth and bright—

And that was odd because it was

The middle of the night.”

The man laughed heartily, a Santa Claus laugh, though he didn’t have a Santa Claus belly.

“That’s wonderful, Allison. Did you learn that in school?”

“I taught it to myself,” she said. That was true but she didn’t tell him why she’d taught it to herself. He’d probably laugh at her. “Can I come to your house and see the ocean for real?”

He squatted down low again so they were the same height, and while he wasn’t smiling with his mouth, he was smiling with his eyes.

“I would take you to see it,” he said, “but we have a rule at my house—everybody has to eat every single day.”

She gave that a good long think and then made up her mind.

“If I could see the ocean, I would eat,” she said.

“You promise?”

“I promise.”

“Every single day?”

“Every single day.”

“Good,” he said. He stood up again. “It’s a deal. Let’s go get you packed.”

“You mean it?” She couldn’t believe it, but she couldn’t believe this smiling man who wore pajamas to work would lie to her, either.

“I mean it.”

She raced to her room and found her suitcase. She didn’t have much to pack but one suitcase of her clothes and one bag of her books. Miss Whitney hugged her for a long time and kissed her cheek and told her she was a lucky little girl, because she was going to a wonderful home. Over Allison’s shoulder, Miss Whitney winked at Dr. Capello. When Allison started out the door, her small hand in Dr. Capello’s big strong hand, the other girls did nothing but wave half-heartedly from the couch where they sat playing a dumb video game on a too-small television.

The next thing Allison knew, she was sitting in the shiny smooth back seat of a big black car. A fancy car, fancier than any one she’d ever seen, and they were driving through the desert.

The big black car started up a hill, except it wasn’t a hill because hills weren’t nearly this tall. The man with the beard—he told her to call him Dr. Capello for now—told her it was actually a volcano named Mount Hood, but she didn’t believe him. She’d seen volcanoes in her science book. They had fire coming out of the top and they didn’t have trees everywhere. Then they were going down the other side of the big mountain and it was green, green, green everywhere she looked. The desert had turned into a forest so green and big she expected to see the Jolly Green Giant from the TV commercials wander onto the road and wave as they passed by. She was looking for him when something hit the car window hard enough to make her jump.

Water, a big fat drop of it.

“Just rain,” Dr. Capello said. “It’ll be raining at home, too.” That morning she’d woken up in a desert and now she was being taken to a place where it rained so hard it rained on the ocean.

“What’s your son’s name?” Allison asked.

“Which one?” Dr. Capello asked from the front seat.

“The one you said swims a lot.”

“That’s Roland. He’s twelve.”

“Is he nice?”

Dr. Capello kept his face forward but even looking at his profile she could see him smile.

“Let me tell you a little something about my son,” he said. “Roland Capello is the nicest boy in the world.”

* * *

“You’re smiling again,” McQueen said as he quickly dressed. Allison was still in bed, still naked. Let him leave her this way. Let this be the last image of her in his memory. “Told you that would help.”

She rolled onto her side and watched him put on his shoes.

“It helped, all right,” she said, and kept it to herself she’d been lost in the past the entire time he’d been inside her. He stood up.

“You’ll be okay?” he asked.

“I’ll be fine,” she said, already feeling the first stirrings of panic again. “I am fine.”

He bent over the bed to kiss her lips, and she gave him her cheek instead. He didn’t argue.

On his way out of her bedroom, he paused and looked back.

“Will you let me give you one piece of advice?” he asked.

“Do I have to?” she asked.

“I have been on this earth twenty years longer than you.”

“All right, tell me,” she said.

“When distant relatives contact you out of nowhere, it’s never good. Never. Never,” he said.

“Never?”

“Never. They either want money or they want something from you more valuable than money. The more I think about it, the more I think you should let me take that package down to the Dumpster.”

“This was my family, McQueen.”

“Was,” McQueen said. “Thirteen years ago and they haven’t contacted you in all that time? What’s the lady’s name who opened her box and screwed us all over?”

“Pandora?”

“Right.” He pointed at her and nodded. “Don’t be like her.”

“You’re telling me that’s Pandora’s padded envelope?” Allison asked.

“Pandora’s box sounds a lot better,” he said. “I have to go. Meeting in half an hour. You’ll at least think about it?”

“I’ll think about it,” she said. “Have a good life.”

“Yeah,” he said. “You, too, darlin’.”

She waited for him to leave. He didn’t.

“I never thought it would end like this,” he said, still looking at her. “I’ve been waiting six years for you to get shed of me. I thought any day now you’d tell me it was over, that you’d met someone, that you’d fallen in love.”

There was nothing safe Allison could say to that so she said nothing at all. McQueen waited. She kept her silence. He turned and then, at last, he was gone.

The door shut behind him and Allison sat on the bed, her chin to her chest. She didn’t cry. She wanted to but she couldn’t find her tears. What she wanted was a shoulder to cry on but she had none. The last shoulders in her life that weren’t her own had just walked out of the door.

She was twenty-five and college-educated. She had a roof over her head and she had money. She had food and she had clothes. She had a car and she had a letter of recommendation from the wealthiest man in the state she could use to get a job pretty much anywhere. She was fine. She was fine. She was fine. She told herself a thousand times she was fine.

She wasn’t fine.

She was alone.

Alone on her bed, she was a seven-year-old girl again, staring at the front door waiting for someone to come through it and knowing, deep down, that no one ever would.

Her worst nightmare. She was all alone.

Or was she?

Allison grabbed her robe, pulled it on and went into the kitchen again. She stood by the table, looking at the envelope. Allison told herself she was doing it to spite McQueen, but even she knew she wasn’t telling herself the truth.

She picked up the envelope and ripped it open.

Chapter 4

Inside the envelope she found a letter. Before she lost her courage, she unfolded it and read.

Dear Allison,

What to say? I’ll be quick. It’s been thirteen years and I know I should leave you alone but you’ve been on my mind a lot lately so I’ll get to the point fast. Dad is dying. Stage five renal failure. He doesn’t know I’m writing you. I didn’t want to get his hopes up. Fact is, he’s always missed you. Any time your name comes up, you can tell he’s full of regret. So am I. If you have it in your heart to come see him one last time, I’d be forever grateful. If you don’t, I don’t blame you. But if you do come, we’re still at the old house, and you’re sure to find one of us here day or night. Dad’s determined to die at home in his own bed, and we’re going to do the best we can to honor his wishes. If you want to come, all I ask is please come soon. He doesn’t have long.

There’s so much more I want to say to you, but I’ll end here. I’ve taken up enough of your time.

Roland

P.S. Found this while digging through the attic. If you read as much now as you used to, you probably want it back.

P.S. #2. I think about you every time it rains.

A humble letter, humble and polite. Humble and polite and adult. It wasn’t until Allison read that letter that it hit her: Roland Capello wasn’t sixteen anymore. What sixteen-year-old boy says things like “I’ve taken up enough of your time”? What sixteen-year-old boy talks about stage five renal failure? What sixteen-year-old boy knows anything about regret?

In her mind Roland had been forever sixteen. Tall and thin with long coltish legs covered in light blond hair. Board shorts, ripped and faded T-shirts, hair long enough he could tuck it behind his ears. Wraparound sunglasses like Bono’s, worn up on his head more often than over his eyes to hold his hair back.

Allison had to walk away from the letter for a few minutes simply to recover from the simple realization that as much time had passed for Roland as it had for her. She was thirteen years older and so was he. Roland’s birthday was in July. Roland, eternally lanky and lean and sixteen, was now thirty. A grown man. And here she was, twenty-five and freshly dumped. Adults now, both of them.

She stood in the middle of her living room and breathed through her hands. When she looked up, she was jarred by her surroundings—the gray walls and the mullioned window and the red sofa with its intricately carved oak arms. For a split second she’d been back in the past where the walls were floor-to-ceiling windows instead of floor-to-ceiling bookcases and outside the door there was ocean, not asphalt.

Still shaking, Allison walked back to the table and the package and the letter. Dr. Capello was dying. She wasn’t ready to deal with that yet so she turned her attention instead to whatever it was Roland had sent her. She pulled it from the padded envelope and removed the newspaper wrapped around it. And as soon as she saw it, tears scalded her eyes.

It was a book, of course, a battered old yellow paperback with a winged centaur on the cover and three children riding on its back. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle.

“Oh, Roland...” she breathed. “You remembered.”

She sat down because she couldn’t stand anymore. Allison slowly flipped through the book. The pages had grown so soft and supple with age it felt like she was holding not a book but another hand in her hand. She opened it to the middle and pressed her face into the pages. She inhaled the scent of paper, ink and glue, and if they could make a perfume that smelled like old books, Allison would wear it every day of her life.

Roland had read this book to her. He’d read it to her the first night she’d spent at The Dragon. Not the whole thing, of course, but the first few chapters while she sat on his lap in the big blue reading chair with the other kids in the house gathered around on the rug, and she was in charge of turning the pages.

She’d loved him for letting her turn the pages.

And when Allison flipped to the final page of the book she wept openly. Written on the inside back cover in cornflower blue crayon were two words—Allison Capello.

“All right, this is how we do it,” Roland had said, taking her onto his lap and wrapping his big hand around her tiny hand. “C is an O and it’s trying to touch its toes but it can’t quite reach. And a is a little o with a line on the right side to keep it from rolling away. Make another little o for the p and put a long line on the other side. That’s its tail. P’s have straight tails. E’s have eyes. See? It’s looking at us and smiling. And l is a straight line. Do it again. Two l’s. And then one more o and there you go.”

Roland had taught her how to write her name. Not Allison Lamarque, the name she had been given, but Allison Capello, the name she’d coveted.

Allison put the book back onto the table next to Roland’s letter. She’d faced the existence of the letter and survived.

Now she had to deal with the content.

Dr. Capello was dying.

How was that possible? She’d joked that Dr. Capello was old but only to insult McQueen. He was never old to her. When they played frisbee on the beach, he played the hardest. When they cooked hot dogs on the campfire, he ate the most. He was always good for a piggyback ride up and down the halls. He didn’t read bedtime stories to them. They read bedtime stories to him. “One more page,” he would say, pretending to pout, and they’d roll their eyes and tell him it was time for him to go to sleep.

He worked, yes, but still made as much time for them as he could. He chose his cases carefully, picking the poorest and the sickest kids to bless with his talent. He didn’t have to work at all, as Dr. Capello had inherited a fortune from his parents, a fortune he spent helping kids, especially his own. Being taken away from that family had hurt worse than losing her mother because at seven, Allison hadn’t understood quite how long a time “never again” really was. By twelve, she was starting to have an idea. By twenty-five, she knew. And what she knew was “never again” was too damn long.

And now Roland wanted her to come back.

Allison knew she shouldn’t go. There were great reasons not to go back. Someone had tried to get rid of her and they’d succeeded. Maybe it was a prank, maybe it was something more sinister, but she couldn’t deny someone wanted her gone.

Then again...

She had fifty thousand dollars in cash on her kitchen table.

She had nothing to do and nowhere else to go.

She had freedom to go anywhere she wanted, which she hadn’t had since the first night she’d spent with McQueen.

McQueen would tell her not to go. He’d tell her it wasn’t safe, and he’d tell her she owed them nothing. He’d tell her not to open up an old wound. He’d tell her to take the money and run. And all that was good advice.

But.

McQueen had dumped her an hour ago, so why the hell should she give his opinion any weight? She shouldn’t. She wouldn’t. She’d do what she wanted to do and no one could stop her. There. Finally, Allison found one good reason to be happy that she was a free woman now.

After all...it would only take a few minutes, right? A few minutes, an hour tops. She could fly out to Portland, rent a car and make a vacation of it. She could drive the 101 all the way down the California coast if she wanted. She’d pop in to see Dr. Capello. It wouldn’t be fun, but it wouldn’t be awful, either. A one-hour visit to her childhood home followed by a nice long overdue vacation to celebrate her newfound freedom... Why not?

She knew seeing Dr. Capello again, and seeing him dying, would break her heart.

But as her heart was already broken, Allison had no excuse not to go.

So she went.

Chapter 5

It wasn’t until the wheels touched down at Portland International Airport that Allison realized she had never really believed she would go back. For two days, she’d been running on adrenaline, powered by the need to keep thoughts of the breakup at bay. Yet once she was in Oregon, the frenzy of energy disappeared and it took everything she had to disembark and collect her luggage. When the lady at the rental car counter asked her what brought her to Portland, Allison had been too dazed to think of a decent answer.

“I have no idea,” she said, and the lady looked at her with a mix of confusion and sympathy. She didn’t ask Allison any more friendly, prying questions after that.

The city was as green as she remembered and the rivers that bisected Portland still as blue. She took the highway to an exit that read Ocean Beaches and wondered how anyone managed to drive past that sign without immediately turning onto it and heading straight for the ocean. Very quickly the shining city faded behind her and lonely farms and hilly pastures popped up along the road. But soon enough those were gone, too, replaced first by patches of trees and then by full forests with branches so verdant and thick they formed an archway over the road, like soldiers forming an honor guard.

As she neared the coast, the clouds grew heavier, denser, stranger. The forests turned dark and eerie. In sunlight, the low-hanging mossy branches would look innocuous. At dusk, they looked like skeletal fingers pointing at her, the moss like skin falling off the bone.

Allison nearly jumped out of her seat when she banked around a curve and saw a fiendish grinning red-eyed face glowering at her from the side of the road. Once her heart slowed, Allison laughed at herself. During her flight to Portland, she’d reread A Wrinkle in Time. The villain in that book was a man with glowing red eyes who tried to get the three brave children to submit to him and allow him total control of their minds. She was glad McQueen wasn’t there to see her jump at the sight of someone’s stupid joke. Someone had nailed red safety reflectors to a tree trunk in the shape of eyes and a monstrous mouth. That was all.

When Highway 26 met the famous coastal 101, Allison turned south toward the cape. She’d spent the evening before online, reading everything she could about the Oregon coast and deciding where she would go and what she would see after she made her obligatory stop at The Dragon to pay her respects to Dr. Capello. It was a vacation, Allison told herself. No pressure. Just fun. If she were going to come all the way to the other side of the country, she might as well make an adventure of it.

Except, as her drive took her closer and closer to her old home, her sense of adventure left her and low-level panic took its place. Her heart beat rapidly and she had to stop at one of the highway’s scenic viewpoints simply to catch her breath. She leaned against the long stone wall and gazed down at the ocean. It had been a long time since she’d seen the Pacific Ocean. Panama City Beach it was not. The waves were white-capped and hitting the beach hard, and she knew those blue-silver waters were like the siren’s song—lovely, yes, but ice cold and deadly. The scenic marker warned that what she was looking at wasn’t simply a nice ocean landscape, but the notorious Graveyard of the Pacific. Ship after ship after ship had gone down in those waters. No wonder Dr. Capello had called his house The Dragon. Allison imagined all it would take was two steps forward, and she’d fall off the edge of the world into oblivion. To think she used to swim here. Well, if she’d been brave enough and stupid enough to swim in a graveyard, surely she could be brave enough and stupid enough to go home for an hour.

Calmer now, Allison got back into her car and headed south toward Cape Arrow. The whole place wasn’t much more than a collection of pretty beach houses on a hillside overlooking the ocean. It was an isolated, lonely sort of place, and Dr. Capello’s house was the most isolated of them all, a mile farther down from the cape and situated on a solitary spit of land amid deep tree cover. She didn’t know the street names and the GPS wasn’t helping. She turned it off and let memory alone guide her to the correct turn.

Then, at last, after thirteen years, there it was.

Allison pulled in, stopped and got out of her car at the end of the long winding drive that led from the highway down to the beach. The eight-foot-high wrought-iron gates that stretched across the entrance of the driveway were open, but then again, they always had been. Iron and seawater were a bad combination and the gates were so rusted she doubted they could ever be closed again. She stepped through the gates to where the trees parted. Long ago she’d stood right here with Dr. Capello as he showed her the house, her new home, for the very first time.

“See it?” he’d asked her. “You see the dragon?”

She’d rolled her eyes, too smart for her own good at that age.

“It’s a house,” she’d said. A big house, yes. A tall odd house with blue-green shingle siding and a sort of square turret on top, but still...a house.

“Don’t look at the house,” Dr. Capello had said as he knelt down next to her. He pointed to the ocean. “Look there. Look at the water. You’ll see the house out of the corner of your eye. And then tell me that doesn’t look like a dragon.”

She’d taken a heavy breath, the breath children took when adults insulted their intelligence. But she’d done it, anyway. She’d gazed far past the house onto the ocean. She saw the whitecaps of the waves, the water running up the beach and running away again. And there in the corner of her eye, she saw a dragon.

He was sitting up, this dragon, prim as a cat with four paws daintily placed together, a straight back and his head—the square sort of turret room on top—held high. The green rain-drenched shingles were his scales and the shimmering windows his wings and the gray deck his tail wrapped around his feet. Looking at the square turret, she could make out the back of its head, which meant the dragon, too, gazed out at the ocean, just like she did.

“I see it...” she had breathed. “I see the dragon.”

Dr. Capello had laughed softly. “In the winter, when we use the fireplace, smoke comes out of his nose.”

“Is it dangerous?”

“Oh, very. It wouldn’t be a dragon if it wasn’t dangerous.”

“He’s lovely.” So lovely the dragon was, she couldn’t help but try to get a closer look. She turned her gaze from the water to the house and in the blink of an eye...

“He’s gone,” she had said.

“Well, that’s what happens when you look too close at magical creatures. You can only see them when you aren’t looking at them.”

“That’s silly.”

“That’s magic for you.” Dr. Capello lifted his hands as if to say he didn’t make the rules. “It’s wonderful but fragile. You have to be very gentle with it.”

Although she was twenty-five and knew better, Allison couldn’t help but look for the dragon where the house stood. As she’d done eighteen years earlier, she gazed out at the water, letting the house hover in her peripheral vision. At first nothing happened. She saw a house and nothing but a house. All the magic long gone. As she was about to give up, get into her car and finish her drive, she saw it. For a split second, she saw the shingles transform into shiny scales and the wraparound porch turn into a tail and the windows on the third floor shimmer like silvery wings.

Maybe there was a little bit of magic in the old house yet.

Allison’s heart ached looking at the house that had once been her home. She wanted to drive away right then and never look back. She’d told no one she was coming for that very reason. And yet she got back behind the steering wheel and drove down, down, down the winding road to the house. She parked the car where Dr. Capello had always parked his. No cars were there today. She got out and walked the flagstone path to the side door, which was the family’s entrance. She took a breath and rang the doorbell. When there was no answer, she knocked. When there was no answer again, she walked out onto the deck. The house was as close to the beach as it could be without being on the beach itself. The beach that day was deserted. It seemed no one was at home.

Allison didn’t know what to do. Roland had said someone was always at the house, but it seemed she’d come at the one time no one was there. Maybe she was too late. Maybe Dr. Capello was already gone. Regret tasted like copper in her mouth and she almost wept with disappointment. She’d tried so hard to tell herself she’d made this trip to clear her conscience, but the tear she shed was proof she’d come here wanting more than to do her duty to a nice man who’d taken care of her a long time ago.

She’d really wanted to hug her Dr. Capello one more time.

A sound echoed from the side of the house and Allison spun around, suddenly alert and afraid. It was a sharp loud sound followed by a soft sort of grunting noise. Then she heard it again. Then again.

She walked around the deck to an arched wooden door that, if she remembered correctly, led to Dr. Capello’s wildflower garden, something her aunt Frankie had always called an “oxymoron,” like “bad children.”

Quietly and carefully Allison unlatched the gate and pushed through the door. Ten yards away, a man stood with his back to her, chopping firewood. He wore a yellow-and-black-checkered shirt and he was tall and broad-shouldered with blond hair pulled into a short ponytail at the nape of his neck. He lifted the ax with ease and brought it down with precision. Another log was sundered and the two pieces fell on each side of the tree stump.

The man went for another log to split but stopped. He stood up straight and turned around. He must have seen her out of the corner of his eye. He let the ax blade fall into the stump and it stayed there embedded in the wood even as he walked away from it and toward her.

He took one step forward into a shadow cast by the tree, and when he stepped out of it again, the man had turned into a twelve-year-old boy. Gone were the jeans and flannels, the big shoulders and strong forearms, and in their place stood a lanky boy of twelve wearing black basketball shorts and a T-shirt with cut-off sleeves.

Allison remembered...

She remembered the first moment she saw him on the deck, Mr. In-Charge-Because-Dad’s-Gone. She and Dr. Capello stood under his big black umbrella. The hard rain had turned into a light drizzle. She remembered thinking how funny it was that the boy was on the deck lounging in a chair like he was sunbathing in the rain. Rainbathing?

“Roland?” Dr. Capello had said. “Come meet Allison. Allison, this is my son Roland.”

The boy with the stick legs so long she wondered if he could even see his feet slowly rose from his deck chair and walked over to her. Roland wore sunglasses with water droplets on the lenses. He shoved them up on his head to hold his damp hair out of his face. The boy looked at her for a very long time and then at his father.

“It’s all right,” Dr. Capello had said, and she wasn’t sure if he was speaking to his son or to her. “Go on. Say hello to Allison.”

“Hey, Al,” he said, smiling. Allison stepped back away from him so far she’d bumped into Dr. Capello’s legs. She had no idea who these people were, where this house was. She wanted her mother or Miss Whitney. She wanted to be anywhere but here.

“Hey, hey,” the boy had said. He had his elbows on his knees as he squatted, and even in her panic she admired his balance. “Don’t be scared.”

“She’s tired,” Dr. Capello had said. “And probably hungry.”

“Are you hungry?” Roland had asked. “I make a good grilled cheese.”

She shook her head no.

Roland had glanced up at his father as if looking for guidance, but Dr. Capello hadn’t done or said anything. He simply waited like he was watching a TV show, but she wasn’t sure what the show was—The Roland Show or The Allison Show.

“Will you help me with something?” Roland had asked her then. “I’m supposed to read the bedtime story tonight. I need someone to help me turn the pages. Can you do that for me?”

Bedtime story? She hadn’t had a bedtime story since her mother died. Slowly, Allison had nodded. She could definitely turn pages in a book.

He held out his hand, and it was a nice hand, not the sort of hand that she could ever see slapping a little girl for sitting in the wrong chair. She put her hand in his, and before she knew it, he’d stood straight up and swooped her into his arms. It was so sudden, she’d been shocked into laughing. And he’d smiled at her and carried her into the house. She’d clung to him tightly the whole way, pressing her nose to his hair. He’d smelled like the rain. After that, Allison didn’t remember ever crying for her mother or Miss Whitney again.

Allison took a step forward and Roland, the man, not the boy, caught her up in his arms. She felt the warm flannel of his shirt against her cheek and the hardness of his broad chest against her breasts. She was seven again in his arms, and safe again in his arms, and home again in his arms. And when was the last time she’d felt all three? Here. With him. Thirteen years ago.

“I knew you’d come back,” he said.

She looked up at him. “I came back.”

Still holding her by the shoulders, he stepped back and looked at her face, and she wondered if he was trying to see the girl in the woman or the woman in the girl.

“You’re beautiful. When did that happen?”

She blushed. “I didn’t realize it had.”

“It did.” She made a horrible face at him. “Stop that,” he said. He nodded. “Better.”

“What’s this?” She lightly tugged on the chin hairs of his almost-beard. “You going full hipster on me?”

“Not trying to grow a beard, I swear,” he said. “This is what happens when I go two days without shaving.”

“God, you’re old.”

He sighed heavily. “Remind me why I invited you here again?”

Allison grinned. “What are you doing out here? Who needs firewood in September?”

“Ah, you know how it is. We get about one month a year when the trees dry out enough to collect and chop firewood,” he said.

“I heard grunting sounds. I’m glad it wasn’t what I thought it was.”

“Nah,” Roland said. “Now if it had been Deacon...”

“I didn’t need to hear that,” Allison said.

“You and me both.”

Roland smiled and it was a smile she’d never seen before. She remembered all his smiles. As a little girl a little bit in love with him, she’d counted up his smiles and cataloged them. He’d had six smiles. One—that laid-back, lazy, too-cool-for-school smile.

Two—the half smile, bottom lip out in casual agreement, and a knowing nod.

Three—the full smile with the wink of gentle “Dad’ll never catch us in the cookie jar” mischief.

Four—the sudden and slightly insane smile given the second Dr. Capello’s back was turned, the one to trick her into laughing and trick Dr. Capello into asking, “What’s so funny?”

Five—the back-flat-on-the-beach-baking-in-the-sun sleepy smile.

And her favorite, smile number six—the secret smile and a jerk of the head to follow him outside or upstairs. Wherever he was going, she would go, too, even if it was just to the deck to do homework alfresco.

The smile her gave her now was a new one, one she’d never seen him wear before, but it was already her new favorite.

Four hours too late but she thought she might have an answer for the lady at the rental car place who’d asked her what brought her to Oregon.

Maybe it was him.

Chapter 6

They sat on the deck in the white Adirondack chairs where they used to do their homework, boards across their laps as desks and black beach rocks on their papers to keep them from blowing away. The front section of the deck was flat with no railing, so they could sit and look at the ocean without anything in their way. The setting sun had lit the sky on fire and the red tendrils of flame stretched from the horizon to the back of the world where it was already night.

“Where is everybody?” Allison asked after settling down in her chair. Roland set his chair close enough to hers that their shoulders brushed.

“Who is everybody?” he asked.

“You know. Everybody?” she said. “Dr. Capello. Thora. Deacon. Oliver. Kendra.”

“I forgot how long you’ve been gone. Kendra and Oliver left the same year you did. Their families took them back. Haven’t talked to either of them in years,” he said.

“That’s too bad,” she said. She didn’t remember them very well but she remembered liking them both. Kendra had been a reader like her, and Oliver, though quiet, had been a sweet little guy. “But I guess they were happy to get to go home.”

“I guess,” Roland said.

“What about the Twins?”

“Deacon and Thora are good. They still live here. They’re with Dad at the hospital tonight.”

“How’s he doing?”

Roland shrugged. “He’s okay for a dying man. He had some tests run today and they wore him out, so they admitted him for the night. Famous brain surgeons get lots of attention at small-town hospitals.”

“I bet,” she said. An awkward silence descended. Allison wasn’t sure what to say next. She didn’t want to ask questions about Dr. Capello’s illness that Roland didn’t want to answer, but maybe he needed someone to talk to. Maybe he needed someone to talk to about anything but that.

“He’s got two weeks,” Roland said, interrupting her nervous train of thought. “If that.”

“Jesus.”

Roland nodded, tight-lipped and blank-faced. No more smiles.

“Should I go to the hospital to see him tonight?” she asked. “Or should I come back tomorrow?”

“Come back? Aren’t you staying?” He looked at her in confusion.

“I hadn’t planned on staying. I’m taking a long vacation,” she said. “I’m starting in Astoria and driving down to...well, until I get tired of driving or I hit Mexico.”

“We have plenty of guest rooms,” Roland said. “You can stay here.”

“Or I can go see Dr. Capello tonight and get out of your hair.”

“You’re not in my hair. Plus, it’s late. And he’ll be home tomorrow morning. You really want to leave already?”

Allison pulled her legs into her chest and wrapped her arms around her knees, resting her head on her arms. Something about this house made her feel like a kid again, a scared kid.

“I can stay a few minutes,” Allison said.

Roland nodded again, rested his head against the back of the chair and stretched out his long legs in front of him.

“I didn’t get you into trouble, did I?” Roland asked. “Mailing you at your boss’s company address?”

“My boss? Oh,” she said, flushing pink. “My boss. No. Not in trouble.”

“I wasn’t stalking you, I promise. Just Googling. I found your name in an article about some big hotel grand opening. Said you were Cooper McQueen’s assistant and you planned the party?”

Allison tensed. McQueen was not a topic she wanted to discuss.

“Sort of,” she said. “It was a temp job. I don’t, ah, I don’t work for him anymore.” McQueen’s real personal assistant had been sick one week, and he’d sweet-talked Allison into taking over managing the guest list. At the party, a society reporter had cornered her and asked her what she did for Cooper McQueen. Since the truth would have been unreportable, Allison had lied through her teeth.

“I’m glad the package got to you, anyway,” Roland said. “Couldn’t find an address for you anywhere. You’re a little off the grid, kid.”

“I’m, ah, sort of subletting,” she said, not ready or willing to tell Roland the truth yet. Or ever. “The apartment’s not in my name. I’m glad I’m not too late.”

“Never too late to come home,” Roland said, and squeezed her hand.

They fell into another silence but this one far less awkward, more companionable. Maybe it was because he was still holding her hand. Maybe it was because she was getting used to this tall handsome man who shared her former brother’s eyes and smile.

“So...anything new with you?” she asked. “Married? Kids?”

He shook his head slowly. “No wife. No kids.”

“What about Deacon and Thora? Either of them married or anything?”

“We’re all on our own out here. What about you?”

“Free as a bird,” she said.

Allison waited for him to say something else, more small talk, more catching up, but he didn’t seem in the mood for it.

“Let’s walk down to the water,” Roland finally said.

“I don’t know about that. Are you going to throw me in like you used to?” she asked.

“Do you want me to?”

“Not while I’m wearing suede boots.”

“Got it. I’ll take off your boots, then throw you in. Come on,” he said, standing. He held out his hand to help her up and she took it. He dragged her to her feet with ease, and she followed him down the deck steps to the beach below. The wind whipped through their hair, clean and cool, as she and Roland strode across the sand, Lawrence of Arabia in blue jeans. The water rushed up the shore. Allison danced backward away from the wave but Roland let it hit him, and the water turned his brown boots to black.

“Can I ask you something?” he said, and went on before she could answer. “Is it my fault that you never came back after you left?”

“Your fault? Why would it have been your fault?” she asked.

Roland looked at her, a long look, almost a guilty look, and all of a sudden it came back to her, a memory she’d either forgotten or repressed.

From her first day in this household, she’d been treated like the baby of the family. The youngest child, the smallest, she’d fit into that role like she was born for it. Thora did her hair. Deacon walked her to class. Roland carried her on his back or his shoulders when they went anywhere because her legs had been too short to keep up with the older kids. But time passed and by her twelfth birthday, she and fifteen-year-old Thora were sharing clothes, even bras.

It was the first week of June in her last summer at The Dragon. Allison had turned twelve the month before, and Roland had one more week left of his sixteenth year. A heat wave had hit and they were all miserable. Like every other house on the Oregon coast, it didn’t have air-conditioning, and Dr. Capello had taken the kids to the state park nearby where they could hide from the heat in the cool of the damp, dense forest. But Roland was going to start his summer job as a waiter at Meriwether’s the next day and had wanted to stay home. And if Roland was staying home, so was Allison.

They were out on the deck in the hopes the ocean breeze would give them some relief from the stuffy house. Roland stripped out of his shirt but the heat was still too much for him, so there was nothing left to do but throw himself into the ice-cold ocean. Allison followed him out to the beach where they’d both stripped to their underwear. Roland went straight to the water, not even pausing once to acclimate himself to the cold. She ran in after him, watching him dive like a dolphin into the lively waves. He stood up in the waist-high water to push his hair out of face and that’s when she’d noticed something about him she’d never noticed before. His biceps. Of course she’d known he had biceps. Everyone with arms had biceps. Even she had biceps, though her body was too soft to see any definition. But Roland had them. And triceps. Deltoids. All those muscles they’d studied in PE. Except in gym class, the muscles had looked like raw meat, but on Roland they were like...art. Like beautiful works of art, and when you saw beautiful works of art, you were supposed to stare at them, weren’t you? So she had stared.

She’d stared at the water running down his arms and over his shoulders as he stood up. She stared at the lingering droplets on his stomach and had this strange strong urge to lick them off him, which was bizarre because nothing tasted much worse on the tongue than ocean water. Deacon always called it “whale piss.” She’d stared so hard she hadn’t noticed the wave until it had knocked her under. Roland grabbed her quickly and pulled her out of the water and into his arms. Without thinking, she’d wrapped her arms and legs around him like she’d done a hundred times before, and he’d carried her out of the ocean. He dropped down onto the soft sand, her still in his arms.

When they hit the sand she’d had to straddle him or fall over. So she’d straddled his hips. And then she’d stayed there. There was no reason for her to stay on top of him as long as she did, and there was no reason for him to let her sit on top of him for as long he did. There was no reason for her to wrap her arms around his shoulders, and there was no reason he should let her kiss him. But she did and he did.

Allison had kissed him a million times before but this kiss was different. It wasn’t a pucker-upper sort of kiddy kiss, but she opened her lips a little against Roland’s and he must have, too, because she remembered feeling his breath inside her mouth. Some sort of instinct made her move a little on top of him. It wasn’t much, a mere shifting of her hips against his hips and then a second hard shifting after that. Roland moved once under her, then winced like it had hurt, though it hadn’t hurt at all when his hands lightly scoured the backs of her thighs. It lasted an eternity. It was over in two seconds. Without a word, he’d lifted her off him, dumping her onto the sand, and rolled onto his side away from her.

Lying there, under the hot sun, she told herself she was shaking and quivering because of the wave that had knocked her over. She willed Roland to face her and say something. When he didn’t, she’d rolled over toward him. She’d studied his long lean back, the line of his spine, the smooth skin caked with sand. With her fingertips she counted his ribs—one, two, three, twelve on the left; one, two, three, twelve on the right. It had never felt wrong to touch him before and yet it did now. And yet she still did it. Until he stood without warning and started back to the house.

“Better get cleaned up before everybody gets home,” Roland had said. He wasn’t looking at her as they walked. His head was down, his eyes on his feet.

“Okay,” she’d said. She’d agreed without argument, though there was literally no reason to get cleaned up before everyone got home. Nobody would have cared that they’d dunked themselves in the ocean. That wasn’t against the rules. But there was one ironclad rule in the house, and that rule was that the boys should never touch the girls and the girls should never touch the boys. Not touching like hand-holding or playing tag. But touching touching. Kissing and touching. Grown-up sorts of touching. And that’s what she and Roland had done on the beach. They’d broken that rule. She’d broken that rule.

Allison had grabbed a sandy stiff beach towel off the deck and wrapped it around her before heading to the deck door.

“Allison,” Roland had said. Usually he called her “Al” or “kid.” Why all the syllables all of a sudden? She’d looked at him, towel clutched to her body, and waited. “No more white T-shirts in the water, okay?”

Allison had flushed red to the roots of her hair. She’d stammered something along the lines of “Oh, right,” and then fled into the house. In the bathroom, she’d locked the door behind her before looking in the mirror. Deacon’s old T-shirt she’d thrown on so thoughtlessly clung to her body, the outline of the most private parts of her body showing through. If she could see it, Roland had seen it. Allison had brothers. She understood what had happened.

As an adult, she knew it was hardly breaking news when a sixteen-year-old boy got an accidental erection from an adolescent girl in a white wet T-shirt squirming on top of him. As a child, however, she’d been mortified, ashamed and grief-stricken, like she’d broken something between them that could never be fixed.

“I can’t believe it...” she breathed. “I’d forgotten all about that day. Completely forgotten.”

At the water’s edge they stood side by side, precisely in the same spot where it had happened. He’d brought her there to remember, and she had remembered. The memory—so long forgotten—hit her like a wave, and like a wave it left her cold and shaking and wet.

“I always worried it was... I thought that was the reason you didn’t come back.” The solemn, stricken look on his face hurt her worse than hate would have.

“God, no.” She waved her hands in denial. “No, Roland, absolutely not. What happened that day... No, that was not why I haven’t come back before, I swear. I can’t believe you thought that.”

His shoulders slumped in obvious relief.

“I was sixteen and you were twelve,” he said.

“Nothing happened,” Allison said. “Nothing. Yes, I freaked out afterward but that was from embarrassment, not... I don’t know, trauma?”

“I know what a kid freaking out looks like. This was different,” Roland said.

“Was it? I don’t remember much after that day,” she said, realizing as she said it that that day, that incident, was the last thing she remembered from her final summer at The Dragon.

“What do you remember?”

“I remember the wave hitting me,” she said. “I remember you carrying me to the beach and not letting me go even after I was safe. I remember kissing you and, after, you telling me not to wear white T-shirts in the water anymore. I remember running to the bathroom to cry. After that day, it’s all a blank. But that’s... I’m sure that’s because of the fall. I’m the one who was grinding on top of you, not the other way around.”

“I might have done a little grinding,” he said, wincing.

“It was, like, three seconds,” she said. “And I was on top.” She’d hoped the joke would bring back his smile but it didn’t.

“You really don’t remember anything after that?” he asked.

She shrugged. “Nothing,” she said. “What did I do?”

“You blanked me. Completely. I tried to talk to you about it, to make sure you were okay, and you wouldn’t say a word to me. You’d hide in your room when I was around.”

“Sounds like a very typical twelve-year-old-girl reaction to extreme humiliation.”

“I hoped that’s all it was, but I never knew for sure. When Dad said your aunt was taking you home to live with her because of your accident... I don’t know. I’ve never been able to shake the feeling it had something to do with me.”

Allison couldn’t believe she’d forgotten that day, that moment with Roland. Her first kiss. And with Roland of all people. What other lovely and terrible memories had her head injury stolen from her?

“No, of course that wasn’t it.”

“Then what was it? Why did it take Dad dying to get you back here?” he asked. He still looked equal parts relieved and confused.

“You don’t know?” she asked.

“Here’s what I know. You and I were alone at the house. The ‘incident’ happened. You stopped talking to me. I’m at work a couple days later, and Deacon called and said you fell down the stairs and you were going to the ER. Next thing I know, your aunt showed up and told Dad she was taking you home with her. I told him we had to stop her, but Dad said we had to let you go. What I don’t know is why you didn’t come back on your eighteenth birthday. Or nineteenth. Or anytime between then and now.”

“There’s a lot more to it than that. Dr. Capello didn’t tell you about the phone call?”

Roland looked at her, wide-eyed and baffled. “What phone call?”

“Roland... I thought you knew,” she said. “Someone called my aunt. It was right before my... Before I got hurt. Whoever called her, they pretended to be me. They told my aunt someone in the house was going to kill me. And then, bam, next thing she hears I’m in the hospital with a head injury.”

Roland rubbed his face and shook his head. “Dad said you fell. That’s all he told us. So who the hell called your aunt?”

“I don’t know,” Allison said. “My aunt said it sounded like me, but she also said the person cried the entire time on the phone, sounded hysterical. I’ve never figured it out.” She knew it had to be one of the kids in the house but she could never picture any of them betraying her like that for any reason.

“Why would anyone pretend to be you? Why would they say those things? I know none of us would do that,” Roland said. “I was at work. And Deacon and Thora were devastated when you were gone. I’d never seen either of them cry so hard. Thora screamed at Dad to find a way to force your aunt to give you back to us. Deacon tried to talk Dad into buying you back from your aunt. I cried. Kendra cried. God, even Dad cried when he thought no one was looking.”

The thought of them all weeping for her, mourning her, broke Allison’s heart all over again. Had she lost her family over a dumb prank gone wrong? Or had something truly sinister happened? Both seemed impossible to believe.

“I cried, too,” Allison said. “But Aunt Frankie wouldn’t even let me talk about visiting. No letters. No phone calls. I guess she told Dr. Capello you all weren’t allowed to contact me, either.”

“Dad said something about your aunt not wanting us to call you. But he said it was because she didn’t want you getting homesick or trying to run away or something. He never told us... Why would he never tell us about that?”

Roland stepped back from the water and sat on the sand. She sat next to him.

“I can’t believe Dr. Capello didn’t tell you about the call,” Allison said. “I thought you knew.”

“Do you really think someone tried to kill you?” Roland asked. “Not by accident, I mean?”

“It doesn’t make much sense but...something bad definitely happened and then I never heard from you or your dad or anyone again. That’s why I didn’t come back before. Whoever wanted me gone got what they wanted.” Allison forced a smile. “See? Not your fault at all.”

Roland rolled onto his back and lay in the sand. Allison stayed sitting upright. She didn’t really want sand all over her black T-shirt or in her bra.

“I want you to know I never forgot about you,” Allison said. “I would have come back if I hadn’t been too scared to. Sometimes I dreamed about...”

Roland took her hand again and twined his fingers within hers, hers within his, and rested their joined hands on his chest.

“Tell me what you dreamed of,” Roland said.

She smiled and looked up at the gray late-evening sky. The first stars were peeking out from behind the dark curtain of night, and she was alone on the beach with the first boy she ever loved, holding his hand with no witness but the ocean.

“I dreamed you’d come and find me,” she said.

“Why me?”

“Wishful thinking,” she said. “You were always my favorite.”

“Favorite sibling?”

“Favorite person. Ever. On earth. I was a little in love with you. And maybe a little in lust...”

Roland did a double take.

“What?” she said. “Twelve-year-old girls think about sex. News at eleven.”

“I’m stunned. Stunned, I tell you,” he said.

Allison tried to punch him in the arm, but he caught her hand before she could make contact and then held it a moment before suddenly letting it go as if he realized he was doing something he shouldn’t.

“You can hold my hand,” she said teasingly. “I’m not going to jump on you and start grinding again.”

“Too bad.”

She went to punch him again, and once more he ducked and caught her hand, and with one impressive show of strength he swooped her up into his arms and carried her to the edge of the water.

“No, no, no! Don’t you dare!” She screamed and laughed and laughed and screamed.

“You’re going in the drink,” he said.

“I’m wearing suede!”

“Fine,” he said with a sigh, and then dumped her on her feet on the dry sand. “But only because of the suede. You probably need a dunk in cold water. Not that it helped last time,” he teased.

“It’s not my fault you were so sexy at sixteen. I lost my head. I won’t do it again, I promise,” she said.

“Good.” He pinched her nose. They were having the conversation they should have had thirteen years ago. Better late than never.

“Unless you want me to do it again,” she said, grinning.

“Behave, twerp. I’m...unavailable.”

“Ten minutes ago you told me you weren’t married and you had no kids,” she reminded him. “And don’t call me twerp, jerk.”

He laughed and her heart danced a little in her chest. She was too happy. Happiness like this scared her.

“This is...a little different.”

“Now I’m intrigued,” she said, more nervous now than curious.

“I’ll tell you, but you have to promise you won’t act weird after I tell you,” he said. “Everyone acts weird after I tell them.”

“I will not act weird,” Allison said. “Promise. I’ll tell you my weird thing if you tell me your weird thing. Deal?”

“Deal,” he said. They shook hands to make it official.

“Now tell me.”

“Before I came back here to help take care of Dad, I was living...in a monastery,” he said.

“You were living in a monastery? Okay. Why?”

He smiled at her, almost apologetically.

“Same reason anyone who lives in a monastery lives in a monastery,” he said. “I’m a monk.”

Chapter 7

“Holy shit.”

That was either the most wrong thing for Allison to say or the most right. She couldn’t be sure.

Roland lay on his back on the sand, hands twined behind his head, and quietly smiling. He must be used to reactions like that. One didn’t normally suspect ruggedly handsome men of about thirty to be monks. At least, she didn’t. She laughed but it wasn’t a happy sound. Fifteen minutes ago it seemed like the only things that had changed since she left were their heights and weights and ages. But as Roland lay there on the sand waiting for her to say something else, something not stupid...she realized everything had changed. Absolutely everything. She had no idea who this man was.

“I didn’t know monks were, you know, still a thing,” Allison said, trying to hide her shock behind flippancy.

“We’re still a thing,” he said.

“It’s just... I’ve never met a monk before.”

“Have you ever been to a monastery?” Roland asked. “Because that’s the best place to meet them. Often the only place.”

“You’re laughing at me.”

“A little. But quietly and on the inside.”

“You’re really a monk. An actual real-live monk.”

“I really am. I belong to Saint Brendan’s. It’s a couple hours down the coast.”

Roland’s choice of verb stung. He wasn’t a member of Saint Brendan’s. He didn’t live there. He belonged to them. A tiny part of Allison had once thought he belonged to her. A bigger part of her once dreamed she belonged to him.

“So what’s it like being a monk?” she asked, talking over the pain. “Can you work miracles? Recite a Bible verse? Sing a monk song? Monks sing, right? They sing and swing that smoky ball thing?”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, kid, but you were born to be the baby sister.”

“Hurtful,” she said, shaking her head. “Very hurtful.”

“I shocked you, didn’t I?” he asked. He rolled up off the sand and looked intently at her.

“Yeah,” she said with real feeling. He had shocked her, and like an electric shock, it had hurt. “I could probably shock you, too, if I wanted. Which I don’t.”

Why should she care if he was a monk or not? It was an interesting job, yes, but what did that have to do with her?

“A monk,” she said again. “That wouldn’t have been in my top one hundred guesses. Are you currently a monk? Or an ex-monk?”

“I’m a monk on abbot-authorized medical leave.”

“So you’re planning on going back? I mean, after your... When you can?” she asked, and she wanted him to say, No, of course not.

“That’s the plan,” he said. “Though I’m trying not to think about it. The longer before I go back, the better.”

She nodded. “Right.”

“Are you upset?” he asked.

“Why would I be upset?”

He turned his gaze to the ocean waves. “Same reason Dad was upset. You think I’m wasting my life on a fairy tale. You think it’s medieval. You think I’d be happier doing a thousand other things with my life...” Allison could tell he’d heard those arguments a thousand times. “Dad’s not religious. He worships science. I broke his heart when I joined.”

“It’s none of my business what you do with your life,” Allison said. Roland looked at her, furrowing his brow as if she’d said something wrong.

“That’s the sort of polite thing strangers say. We’ve got too much history to be polite strangers.”

“What can I say? Roland, I was an English major. Most people thought I was throwing my life away on that, too. I’m not going to judge you.”

“No vows of celibacy and poverty with being an English major,” he said.

She chortled a dramatic, mocking chortle. “Oh, trust me—English majors and poverty go back as far as monks and celibacy.”

“Are these fake diamond earrings, then?” He tugged her earlobe and she batted his hand away, still playing the part of the annoying baby sister.

“These were a gift,” she said. “I couldn’t afford them on my own. I spend all my money on books.” It was McQueen who’d bought all her jewelry and her clothes including the ones she was wearing—suede boots, designer jeans, a leather jacket that cost McQueen as much as a small used car and La Perla underwear. If she were trying to pass for a starving artist, she wasn’t doing a very good job of it.

“I can believe that,” Roland said. “We’d have to take your book out of your hand to get you to eat. You loved them more than anything.”

“You don’t become an English major because you love books. You do it because you need books. It’s a codependent relationship.”

He grinned. “Very poetic. Spoken like an English major.”

“Why did you become a monk?”

“Guess for a similar reason you were an English major. I didn’t love God, but I needed God.”

“I didn’t even know you were religious.”

“In my own way,” he said. “The monastery hosts concerts all summer. Dad would take us to them sometimes if he liked the composer they were showcasing. We met a few of the monks and... I don’t know, I liked them. I liked being there. I felt safe there. When I made the mistake of joking with Brother Ambrose about how much I liked it there, he invited me to a discernment weekend. They recruit hard.”

“Looking for a few good monks, huh?”

Roland smiled. “They gave me some books to read, too. One of them was by a Cistercian monk, Thomas Merton.”

“He’s the Kentucky monk, right? I know that guy. I mean, not personally. I think he’s dead.”

“For a few decades,” Roland said. “Anyway, in his book he said the true self was the spiritual self. I didn’t know who my true self was. I thought maybe if I figured out who my spiritual self was, I’d know.”

“Did you find your true self?” Allison asked.

“I found out who I’m not,” Roland said. “And I found a little peace, which was more than I had before I went in.” He turned his face to her and smiled. “So that’s why I must politely ask you not to jump me. Now it’s your turn.”

Allison quietly panicked. How on earth could she tell Roland she’d been a billionaire’s mistress for six years now that she knew he was a monk?

“Nothing nearly that interesting,” she said, brushing the question off as nonchalantly as she could manage. “I haven’t been a nun, that’s for sure.”

Roland let it go and sat up again, and Allison almost reached out to brush the sand off his back. But she didn’t touch him, didn’t even want to. Everything was different now. He might have her old big brother’s face and eyes and smile, but this man sitting next to her was a complete stranger. A few minutes ago, she’d tried to punch him and he’d caught her hand—like when they were kids. And he’d swooped her up and pretended to throw her in the water—like when they were kids. But he was playing the part of the Old Roland for her and she was playing the part of the Old Allison for him. That might have worked except neither of them were very good actors. She’d made a mistake coming back here. She’d made a terrible mistake. She realized she’d come home to find her old family and her old family didn’t live here anymore.

She was as alone here as she’d been in her apartment right after McQueen had left her.

She’d come all this way for nothing.

“Well,” Allison said, standing up and dramatically brushing the sand off her clothes. “I should run along.”

“Allison?”

“It’s late. I didn’t mean to stay this long.”

“You’re really not staying here?” he asked. “Not even for a night?”

“Tourist season’s over. I can find a hotel easy.” Allison stood up and wiped the sand off her pants. “I’ll stay the night in Astoria and run by the hospital tomorrow morning.”

“Do you want to at least see the house again before you go?” he asked.

For his sake, for the sake of the hurt he was trying to hide, she decided to humor him.

“All right,” she said. “It would be nice to see the house one more time.”

In silence, they walked back to the deck, and at the side door took their sandy shoes and socks off and left them on the rack in the mudroom. She hung up her jacket, as well, and saw windbreakers and flip-flops, umbrellas and heavy winter coats. Something for every season on the coast. Roland stripped off his sand-covered checkered flannel and hung it up on a hook. Underneath he wore a plain white T-shirt that hugged his strong shoulders. She grinned to herself at the sight.

“What?” Roland asked.

“What’s a monk doing with big shoulders like yours?”

Roland laughed, almost blushed, modest as a monk.

“We carry the cares of the world on our shoulders,” he said. “It’s our version of resistance training.”

Roland opened the mudroom door to the house and said, “After you.”

She paused before passing through, a small pause, but Roland noticed.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “No one else is home.”

“Sorry. It’s a little weird coming back here,” she said. “Been a long time.”

She wasn’t scared of Roland, though he was a stranger now. And she wasn’t scared of anyone who might be lurking in the shadows waiting to jump out and throw her down the stairs. What scared her was the ache in her chest, the ache of longing for this house, this family, even though she knew better.

Allison stepped gingerly through the door into the foyer. Glancing around, she saw that little had changed since she’d left. There was the sunroom with the floor-to-ceiling windows. And she saw the same long ebony table with the wooden benches in the dining room—the perfect table for a family of eight. Roland led her down the hall and she saw the kitchen, which was much like she recalled except in her day the walls had been yellow and now they were painted red. Big kitchen. A family kitchen. Not fancy. Not formal. There were even drawings still hanging on the fridge. Allison walked over to inspect them. One drawing was of a series of brightly colored fish, all of them with human hairstyles. The Roland fish had long blond hair, the father fish had brown wavy hair and a gray beard, the Deacon fish had black hair sticking in all directions and the Thora fish had wavy hair the color of the setting sun. At the bottom of the page in a child’s hand was written The Fishpellos.

“I did that,” Allison said, staring at the Allison fish with the curly brown hair. “I was...nine? Eight?”

“Something like that,” Roland said. “My hair was never that long, though. You made me look like Bon Jovi. I mean, if he were a fish.”

“There’s nothing wrong with looking like Bon Jovi,” she said. She had added on to the drawing as the years passed and kids had come to the house and stayed. Oliver had a blond bowl cut so Allison had drawn him with a fish bowl over his head, while she’d drawn Kendra’s beaded braids as rainbow stripes. Even the cat, Potatoes O’Brien, got the Fishpello treatment. He was, of course, a catfish.

“Yours looks like you,” Roland said. “Got the nice pouty fish lips.” He made a fish face, mocking her rather thick bottom lip. McQueen had been a fan of her little lip bow, too.

Allison half laughed, half groaned. “I cannot believe this thing is still on the fridge. It’s so stupid.”

“Dad thought it was the cutest thing ever. He missed you, you know,” Roland said. “We all missed you.”

“Missed you, too,” she said quietly. “Didn’t realize how much until I got your letter.”

“I should have written you a long time ago,” he said. “I talked to Dad about you sometimes. I asked him once if he thought it would be okay to look for you. He said if you wanted us, you’d come back on your own. But you didn’t. I told myself you forgot about us. Better than thinking you hated me.”

“Don’t move,” she said.

“What?”

“Just...stay here.” Allison walked back to the mudroom, grabbed her bag off the hook and pulled out the photograph that she’d kept with her for thirteen years and four moves. She took it back to the kitchen where Roland stood waiting, back against the fridge.

“Here,” she said, and handed him the photograph. “Proof I never forgot.”

He took the picture from her and stared at it. Then he turned and put it on the fridge with a magnet. Then he took his wallet out from his back pocket and removed a photo of his own. It was the missing section of her picture, the torn-off part. With another magnet he put the two halves of the photograph together. Now it was complete. Allison in Roland’s arms, Roland standing next to Deacon standing next to Thora and all of them holding their sparklers together so that the four glowing tips became one.

“You gave me the picture?” Allison asked.

“I guess you really don’t remember anything from that time,” he said. “You were in the hospital and I wanted to go talk to you. Dad had told us you were going home with your aunt when you got discharged so I knew it was probably my last chance to clear the air with you. I waited until after dark and I snuck in to see you.”

Allison looked at him, stunned.

“You were asleep,” he said. “So not a big surprise you don’t remember that. But I talked to you for a long time, anyway. Probably my first confession.”

“What did you confess?”

“I said...” Roland paused. His eyes darkened. “I said I was sorry about what happened between us. I said I wished I’d been at home so I could have helped you when you fell. I said I hoped you’d get to come home to us soon. But if you didn’t, I wanted you to have this picture of us until you could come home again.”

Allison blinked and hot tears fell.

“I wondered where this picture came from,” she said. “I thought your dad put it in my suitcase.”

“I wanted you to remember us,” Roland said. “I should have given you the whole picture but I wanted to remember you, too. Monks don’t carry wallets but I had that picture of you in my prayer book until I left.” He paused and seemed to be deciding if he should say what he said next. “I prayed for you.”

“You did? What did you pray?” she asked, deeply touched. Had anyone else ever prayed for her?

“Nothing big. That you were happy. That you were okay. That you’d come home someday,” he said. “And here you are.”

She touched the photograph where the torn seams met. Seeing the two halves of the picture together again made the old wound in her heart, the one left when she was taken away, ache a little, but the good kind of aching, the kind of aching that meant the wound was healing.

“I’ll stay the night,” she said, smiling through her tears.

“You will?”

“Why not?” she said with a resigned sigh. “One night won’t kill me.”

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