Bree stared at the bees and lit another cigarette just as Toby came out of the woods. Someone was with him. She shielded her eyes and saw a good-looking man walking at his side. He was big all over, tall, with wide shoulders and a broad chest. One of those attractive men who stood out in a crowd. The kind of man—
She sprang off the step.
“Hey there, Bree,” he said. “It’s been a long time.”
Thirteen years fell away. His physical transformation meant nothing. She hated him now as fiercely as she had the last time she’d seen him. “Toby, get in the house,” she said stiffly. “I’ll be there in a minute.”
“Hold on.” He ruffled Toby’s hair as if he had that right. “You remember what I said, Toby. Summer people are naturally paranoid. You can’t keep going over there.”
“I wasn’t doin’ nothing bad.”
The hair tousle turned into a knuckle rub. “Sooner or later, he’ll find out about your grandmother. And just so you know … You can’t cash a check he’s made out to her. Now you go inside while I talk to Bree.”
Bree clenched her hand into a fist. Mike Moody ranked along with her ex-husband, Scott, as someone she’d never wanted to see again. She’d known Mike still lived here, since his face stared out from half a dozen billboards along the island’s main road, but she’d intended to make sure she never ran into him. Yet here he was.
Toby stomped into the cottage. Mike came forward with his big suck-up smile and his hand extended to shake. “You’re looking great, Bree. Beautiful as always.”
She pressed her arms to her sides. “What do you want?”
He let his arm fall but didn’t lose his phony smile. “Not even a ‘hello’?”
“Not even.”
He’d been a smelly, weaselly-eyed fat kid with bad skin and crooked teeth who’d tried unsuccessfully to worm his way into their group of summer kids each year. But the only islander they’d let in was Star. Mike was too loud, too uncool. Everything about him was wrong—his clothes, his snorty laugh, his unfunny jokes. The only one who’d tolerated him had been David.
“I feel sorry for the kid,” David had said after one of her brothers had insulted Mike. “His parents are both drunks. He’s got a lot of problems.”
“We all have problems,” Star had said. “You’re only sticking up for him because you’re kind of an outcast, too.”
Had he been? Bree didn’t remember it that way. From the beginning, David had fascinated them. He was charming, charismatic, good-looking. Raised in poverty in Gary, Indiana, he was attending the University of Michigan on a full scholarship. At twenty, he was the same age as her oldest brother, but David was more worldly. Although she couldn’t remember any of them saying it out loud, they all thought it was cool to hang out with a black kid. Beyond that, there wasn’t one of them who didn’t believe David was destined for great things.
Mike gestured toward her cigarette. “Those coffin nails’ll kill you. You should give that up.”
He was still uncool, but in a different way. The crooked teeth, acne, and extra pounds might be long gone, but he still tried too hard. The scraggly, dirty blond hair of his teenage years had been tamed by an expensive cut, then overtreated with grooming products. His cheap summer wardrobe of ill-fitting shorts and T-shirts had given way to white slacks, a high-end polo shirt, and a belt with a Prada logo, all of it too ostentatious for casual island living, although not as objectionable as his heavy gold-link bracelet and college class ring.
Her cigarette burned close to her fingers. “What’s this about?”
“Toby’s run into some trouble with the new folks next door.”
She tapped the bottom of the filter with her thumb and said nothing.
He jingled the coins in his pocket. “No one seems to have told the new owner that Myra passed, so he thinks she’s still taking care of the place. But turns out Toby’s been doing the job ever since Myra got sick. I didn’t know about it till just now, or I’d have put a stop to it.”
The cigarette burned her fingers. She dropped it and stubbed out the butt with the toe of her sandal. A twelve-year-old trying to do an adult’s job. She should have paid more attention to his disappearances. Something else to make her feel incompetent. “I’ll talk to him.”
She turned away to go into the house.
“Bree, we were kids,” he said from behind her. “Don’t tell me you’re still holding a grudge.”
She kept moving.
“I tried to apologize,” he said. “Did you get my letter?”
She was good at walking away from her own anger. She’d spent ten years doing exactly that. Ten years pretending she didn’t know Scott was a serial cheater. Ten years avoiding a confrontation that would end her marriage. And look where it had gotten her. Exactly nowhere.
She whipped around. “Do you still spy on people, Mike? Are you still the same sneaky rat now that you were then?”
“I had a crush on you,” he said, as if that justified everything. “The older woman.”
A year older. She dug her fingernails into her palms. “So you went to my mother and told her you’d seen David and me together. Great way to get the girl.”
“I thought if the two of you broke up, I’d have a chance.”
“Never in a million years.”
Once again, he dug his hands in his pockets. “I was seventeen, Bree. I can’t change the past. What I did was wrong, and all I can do now is say I’m sorry.”
She and David hadn’t suspected Mike was spying on them that night when they hid in the dunes and made love. Mike had gone to her mother the next day, and Bree had been sent off the island that same afternoon into exile at her horrible Aunt Rebecca’s in Battle Creek. Bree had never come back to the island, not until three weeks ago when she’d gotten word that Myra had died and left Bree responsible for her grandson.
Mike pulled his hands from his pockets. “Let me help you with Toby.”
“I don’t need your help. Leave us alone.”
He rubbed his gold bracelet with his thumb. “I care about the kid.”
“I’m sure it’s good for your image in the community to pretend to watch out for poor orphans.”
He didn’t display even a flicker of shame. “I knew you wouldn’t roll out the welcome mat for me, but I thought maybe we could work together on this.”
“You thought wrong.”
He gazed around at the weedy yard and small honey house with its peeling white paint and sagging tin roof. A gust of wind stirred the leaves but didn’t disturb his expensive haircut. “You won’t get much for this place if you try to sell it. There’s no water view, no beach access, and the cottage needs work.”
He wasn’t telling her anything she hadn’t already figured out. Unlucky in love and in real estate—that was her. The bank had foreclosed on the five-million-dollar house she and Scott had bought in Bloomfield Hills. The last she’d heard, they’d listed it for one-point-three million and still couldn’t move it.
Mike wandered toward Myra’s abandoned garden where young tomato plants were struggling to survive the weeds. “If you take Toby off the island, you’ll destroy the only security he has.”
“You don’t really think I’m staying here?” She said it as if she had a dozen other options when, in reality, she had none.
He still managed to look innocent as he drove in the knife. “I heard you didn’t get much in your divorce settlement.”
She hadn’t gotten anything. No help from her family, either. Her brothers had their own financial problems, and even if they hadn’t, she couldn’t have asked them for money, not when she’d turned a deaf ear to their warnings about Scott. As for her inheritance … That had been gone within a year of her mother’s death.
“Here, you have a house,” he said. “Myra kept Toby too close, so he didn’t have many friends, but his roots are here, and there’ve been enough changes in his life. I think David would want you to stay.”
She couldn’t stand hearing him sp
eak David’s name, not even after all these years. “Don’t ever come here again.” She turned on her heel and left him standing alone in the yard.
Toby was sitting at the small drop-leaf table in the kitchen, eating another bowl of cereal. The kitchen, along with the rest of the cottage, had been redone in the days of pickled oak cabinetry and butcher-block countertops. A pair of open shelves held Myra’s collection of honey pots and ceramic bees. Through the window over the sink, she watched Mike survey the yard as if he were appraising the property. Finally he walked away.
David had written her one letter.
I’ll always love you, Bree. But this is the end. I won’t be the cause of trouble between you and your family …
She’d been devastated. Her sole comfort had come from her phone conversations with Star. Myra’s daughter was her best friend, the only person who understood how much she loved David, how much more he was to her than a summer romance.
Six weeks after Bree left, Star got pregnant with David’s baby, and David dropped out of school to marry her. Bree had never spoken to either of them again.
Toby picked up his cereal bowl and slurped the remaining milk. He set the bowl on the table. “Gram told me you were rich. I bet you lied to her.”
“I was rich.” Bree gazed out the window. “Now I’m not.”
“Why?”
“Because I relied on a man to support me instead of figuring out how to rely on myself.”
“I knew you didn’t have any money.” It was an accusation, another reminder of how much he hated her. Not that she was too crazy about him, either. “When are you gonna leave?” he said.
It wasn’t the first time he’d asked the question, and she wished she had an answer. “I don’t know.”
He shoved back his chair. “You can’t keep sitting around here not doing nothing.”
He was right, and she needed to show him she had a plan. Something. Anything.
“I don’t intend to.” She turned away from the window. “I’m going to sell Myra’s honey.”
LUCY HAD NO INTENTION OF joining Panda for a chummy pizza dinner. Instead she put on her sneakers and headed outside. She hated to run, but she hated feeling like a slug even more, and she needed to work off her emotions from this miserable day.
From Goose Cove Lane, she turned out onto the highway. Eventually she passed an abandoned farm stand. Behind it, she glimpsed a small blue cottage. She heard another runner coming up behind her and didn’t have to look back to know who it was. “You’re not on the family payroll anymore,” she said as he reached her side.
“Force of habit.”
“I don’t like running, and I especially don’t like running with you.”
“Tough. This road’s too damn narrow. Get on the shoulder.”
“You can hear a car coming a mile away, and I’m doing this because I want to be alone.”
“Pretend I’m not here.” He slowed to keep from passing her. “You’re really not going back to Wynette, are you?”
“You’re just figuring that out?”
“I’d have bet anything you’d change your mind.”
“You’d have been wrong.”
“There’s always a first time.”
“You’re such a loser.” She cut across the road, turned around, and started back to the house.
He didn’t follow her.
When she got back, she biked to the beach at the south tip of the island and sat on top of a sand dune to watch the sun set over the lake. When she finally went back to the house, she found Panda sitting in one of the six mismatched chairs that surrounded the fake Victorian kitchen table she’d grown to hate, not just for its chipped green paint and ugly, too-bulky legs—one of which was propped up with a piece of folded cardboard—but because it symbolized everything that needed tending in this once-lively house.
Although the pizza box lay open in front of him, only a few slices were missing. He looked up as she came in, and the yellow light from the Tiffany-like shade hanging above the table shadowed his already swarthy skin. She addressed him impersonally, as if they were only the most distant of acquaintances. “I’ve been staying in your bedroom, and since you’re leaving tomorrow, I’d rather not move out for just one night.”
He propped his elbow on the back of his chair. “It’s my room.”
It was also the only bedroom on the first floor, which made it feel like a safe refuge from him. “I’ll be happy to make up one of the other beds for you,” she said.
“And if I object?”
“Then I’ll move, and you can sleep on my dirty sheets.”
He gave her his badass sneer. “Let me think about it.”
She countered with cool formality. “I’d appreciate it if you’d think quickly. I’ve had a long day, and I want to turn in.”
His sneer turned to a shrug. “Sleep wherever you like. I don’t care. And I’ll make up my own bed.” He turned to the door, then stopped himself. “One more thing. Leave the house alone. Everything stays the way it is.”
She’d see about that.
But he wasn’t done giving her a hard time. Not long after she’d turned out the bedroom light, she heard a knock. “I forgot my toothbrush,” he said through the door.
She got out of bed, retrieved his toothbrush from the medicine cabinet, unlocked the bedroom door, and pushed it through the crack.
From the angry way his jaw locked, she might as well have been holding a switchblade. “You locked the door?” he said in a voice that smoked like dry ice.
“Habit,” she replied uneasily.
“You locked the door?”
She’d come off like a kid if she mentioned how spooky the house was at night, so she shrugged.
His brows slammed together, and the corner of his mouth cocked with contempt. “Babe, if I wanted to get in that room, no lock would keep me out. But why would I bother? You weren’t that good anyway.”
She sucked in her breath and slammed the door in his face.
PANDA WANTED TO PUNCH SOMETHING. Himself. How many times was he going to blow it with her? But she got him so pissed off.
Bitch deserved it. If she hadn’t made me so mad, I wouldn’t have hit her.
He’d heard exactly those words during hundreds of domestic violence calls where some asshole tried to justify beating the shit out of a woman with the same excuse. The fact that he’d used words instead of his fists didn’t make him any better than they were.
He shoved his fingers into his hair. Be the best at what you’re good at. But everything connected with Lucy Jorik had been one big screwup after another, right from the beginning. As soon as he picked her up in that alley, he should have taken her back to her family. All those games he’d played trying to scare her off had done nothing more than make him feel like a colossal jerk. One mistake after another, each leading to the biggest mistake of all. That last night.
It had been hard enough keeping his hands off her when they were at Caddo, but that last night in the motel had snapped his self-control. He’d spent too many hours with her pressed against his back, too many days watching those green-flecked brown eyes flash tornado signals at him whenever she felt vulnerable.
He raised his fist to knock on the door again, then let his arm fall. What was the point of apologizing? The last thing she wanted right now was to see any more of him.
He headed down the musty old hallway and up the stairs of this haunted house he hadn’t been able to stop himself from buying. The life he’d lived had given him more than enough emotional shit to deal with. He didn’t need more, especially not with the daughter of the fucking president of the United States.
He couldn’t get off this island fast enough.
LUCY AVOIDED PANDA THE NEXT morning by slipping out through the sliding doors in her bedroom onto the deck that led to the backyard. She rode her bike into town and had coffee and a muffin at one of the Painted Frog’s outside café tables. Other than some assessing glances at her hair and tattoo from a co
uple of teenage girls, no one paid any attention to her. The feeling of leaving Lucy Jorik behind was heady.
After she finished, she rode toward the north tip of the island. She loved the island’s shabby edges. This was no playground for the rich and famous. Plumbers and shoe salesmen came here. Kids who attended state colleges and families pushing babies in Walmart strollers. If Mat and Nealy hadn’t come into her life, a place like this would have been her fantasy vacation spot.
The Fourth of July was almost two weeks away, but boaters were already out on the water. She passed a farm, then a wooden shack with a hand-lettered sign advertising the BEST SMOKED WHITEFISH ON THE ISLAND. A small inland lake spiked with cattails lay on her left, a marsh spread to her right, with the bigger body of Lake Michigan beyond that. Gradually the hardwoods shading the road gave way to pine, and then the trees disappeared altogether as the road narrowed into the exposed point of the island.
A lighthouse rose from a bedrock landscape that had long ago been swept clean by glaciers. She abandoned her bike and picked her way along a path. She nodded at the lighthouse keeper tending some orange impatiens in wooden planters near the door. Beyond the building, a jetty jutted into the water. The lake was calm today, but she imagined this place during a storm, with waves crashing over the rocks.
She found a spot to sit among boulders already warming from the morning sun. The ferry was a moving speck on the water as it coasted toward the mainland. She fervently hoped Panda was on that boat because if he was still at the house, she’d have to move out, and more than ever, she didn’t want to leave. The ugly words he’d flung at her last night still burned. People were never cruel to her, but Panda had been deliberately vicious.
She didn’t care why he’d lashed out at her or even if he believed what he’d said. His words had destroyed any lingering nostalgia over their great adventure. And that, ultimately, was a good thing.