I walked to meet her as my kids lined up for lunch.
“Thanks for coming by today,” I said, keeping my voice light and friendly. “I’m really looking forward to your feedback.”
Alright, so that was a lie, but it couldn’t hurt to be polite, right?
“Are you?” Anne’s voice was like ice, and she wrinkled her nose like she’d stepped in something smelly. “Well, I’ll be in touch with your results. I think having an evaluation from someone with educational leadership experience will be instructive for you, to say the least.”
She said ‘instructive’ like it was a threat, and I had to work to keep my smile in place. I tried to distract myself as I walked my kids to the cafeteria, but I couldn’t shake her words. Or her tone of voice. Why couldn’t Dustin have knocked over that flower pot yesterday?
But that wasn’t fair, if I were being honest. If Anne were determined to give me a crappy evaluation, it wouldn’t have mattered if I’d taught the smoothest class in the history of public education. She would find a way to mark me down no matter what.
It didn’t help that last night’s dream still swirled in the back of my mind, spewing up emotional baggage like a hurricane. It would be a few days before I was able to push my memories of Connor back into the little box where I kept them.
For now, all I could do was wait.
3
Connor
“Holy shit, you really are here.”
Em, my little brother, bounded into the room—because that’s truly the only way to describe the way he moves, like a golden retriever on Adderall—and stared at me like he thought I might be a hologram. His boyfriend, Tate, followed him into the room at a more normal pace, made eye contact once, and immediately looked away.
I made Tate nervous. I probably could have done something to alleviate that, but life’s short, and scaring Tate was one of its simple pleasures. Besides, it never hurts to instill a healthy degree of fear in the guy who could break your little brother’s heart.
“I told you he was here,” Deacon said from the other side of the room, where he and Mal stood cooking by the stove.
Well, Mal cooked, and Deacon stood around trying to look like he knew what he was doing. He wasn’t fooling any of us. Luckily, the great room where we were all gathered was a big, open space, so we could all watch and make sure Deacon’s hands stayed far away from anything we’d have to eat later.
“I know, but I sorta thought he might have already gotten sick of you and left before I could get here,” Em said with an impish grin.
Deacon scowled, and I rolled my eyes, but let’s be real—Em did have a point.
“Anyway,” Em continued, crossing the room to pull me into a hug that I endured with as much grace as I could muster. “What I really want to know is why you’re here. Deacon didn’t say on the phone.”
“That’s because he hasn’t told us yet.” Deacon threw me an exasperated look. “He’s been about as talkative as a tree stump—”
“So, the usual.”
“—And he just turned up here an hour ago with an overnight bag and a dog I didn’t even know he had.”
Em pulled back and frowned. “You have a dog?”
I shrugged. “Yeah.”
“Since when?”
“Since always?”
“He’s so informative, isn’t he?” Em said to Deacon, who snorted. Em looked back at me. “How have you never mentioned you have a dog? And where is she, anyway? Or he? Or... they?”
“It never came up. And Roxie—she—is back in my room. She’s pretty friendly, but I wasn’t sure how she’d do with the cats.”
Deacon’s daughter Lily had adopted a passel of stray kittens about nine months ago, and even though Roxie had never exhibited anything like the prey drive hounds were supposed to have—unless you counted her unparalleled skills at stealing food off your plate when you weren’t looking—I still figured it was better to be safe than sorry. A tangle of cats tussled in front of the fireplace on the other side of the great room, so I’d left Roxie in my childhood bedroom.
The Wisteria Inn, where the guests stayed, was actually the main house up at the front of the property. When my parents bought the place, they’d refurbished an old garage in the back of the property into a guest house for our family to live in. A string of bedrooms ran along a veranda on one side of the upper floor, with the great room taking up the entire length of the building on the other side.
“How do I know she actually exists, then?” Em said with a grin. “This phantom dog of yours?”
“You can go visit her, if you like.” I walked over to the kitchen and grabbed a beer out of the fridge. I got one for Em, too. “No one’s stopping you.”
“Yeah, except with my luck, you’d be gone by the time I got back. Anyway, that’s not important. You still haven’t explained why you’re here.”
Em took the beer I offered him, passed it to Tate silently, and gave me an accusatory look before getting one of his own. I leaned against the kitchen island and tried not to look like I’d forgotten Tate on purpose. I didn’t even want to drink my beer, particularly. It was just nice to see him squirm.
“You haven’t even given me the chance.”
“Well, I’m giving you the chance now.” Em pointed his beer at me and narrowed his eyes. “Explain yourself.”
I had, actually, been avoiding explaining the situation, because—well, because nothing. I had no good reason not to tell them, other than a years-long habit of telling people as little about my life as possible. I sighed.
“I took a job working for that non-profit that’s trying to preserve McIntyre Beach. I’ll be here through the council vote, so, a couple of months. Doing clean-up work, sample collection, and trying to stop the vandalism that’s been happening. And liaising with whatever citizens’ committee is trying to save the beach too, though I hope not too much of that. I told Tom I wasn’t good with paperwork.”
Em’s eyes, which had gotten wider and wider as I talked, went saucer-round at the end, and cut quickly over to Deacon, who made a definite face, and shrugged back at Em, before he noticed I was watching.
“What?” I demanded.
“What do you mean, what?”
“What was that look for?” I glared at him, then at Em. “You guys just looked at each other like—well, I don’t know what. But it was something, and that’s why I’m asking.”
“Is that what you’re doing?” Deacon said mildly. “Asking? Gosh, I could have sworn it sounded more like accusing. Must have gotten my definitions mixed up.”
“Shut up. You know what I mean.”
“I really don’t,” he said, still infuriatingly calm. “I’m just surprised you decided to take a job on Summersea. Even a temporary one. Isn’t that enough reason for some kind of look, if that’s what it was?”
“Yeah, it is a little surprising,” Em chimed in quickly. Too quickly, if you asked me. “Aren’t you the same guy who vowed to like, never return to Summersea after you left it.”