inona’s life was proof positive that if you got a good education, worked hard, and kept believing in yourself, you could succeed. She gave this inspirational speech—the story of her triumphs—all over the county, to church groups and classrooms and volunteer organizations. They believed her, too, and why not? The measure of her success was visible to the naked eye: she lived in a gorgeous, flawlessly remodeled Victorian mansion, drove a brand-new, totally-paid-for ice-blue Mercedes convertible, and periodically bought and sold local real estate. Her client list was so extensive that in nonemergency situations, people often had to wait two weeks for an appointment. And best of all, her neighbors had grown accustomed to taking her advice. She’d proven, over time, to be right about almost everything, and it was flattering to know that her calm, rational decision-making skills were recognized and admired. In retrospect, even the ugly business with Dallas had bolstered her reputation. Everyone ultimately agreed that she’d been right not to represent Dallas, and Vivi Ann had come back to the family, just as Winona had hoped. Now they were together again; sometimes the ragged seams showed or buried resentments poked through, but they’d learned how to ignore those moments and go on, how to change the subject to something safe. All in all, Winona felt they were as strong a family as most and better than plenty.

Not everything was perfect, of course. She was forty-three years old, unmarried, and childless. The children she’d never had haunted her, came to her sometimes in her dreams, crying to be held in her arms, but as much as she’d wanted that fairy tale, it hadn’t happened for her. She’d dated plenty of nice men over the years (and a few real losers), and she’d often hoped. In the end, though, she’d remained alone.

Now she was tired of waiting for the life she’d once dreamed of, and had decided to try another road. Career had always been her great strength, and so she’d try to find fulfillment there.

With this shiny new goal in mind, she stood on the sidewalk, studying the booth she’d just erected and decorated. It was really just four card tables tied together and draped in red fabric that fell almost to the cement. Behind it was a huge banner, strung between weighted poles, that read: THE CHOICE FOR MAYOR IS CLEAR. VOTE GREY. On the table were hundreds of brochures, complete with photographs of her great-grandfather standing by a handmade OYSTER SHORES POP. 12 sign, as well as a detailed description of Winona’s political position on every issue. Other candidates could blow hot air about their beliefs; not her. She intended to crush the competition with the force of her convictions. Two large glass bowls held hundreds of VOTE GREY buttons.

Everything was ready.

She checked her watch. It was 7:46 in the morning.

No wonder she was out here pretty much all alone. The Founders Day festivities didn’t start until noon and none of the businesses were open yet. She leaned back against the streetlamp and looked up and down the street. From her vantage point in front of the Sport Shack, she could see everything from Ted’s Boatyard to the Canal House Bed and Breakfast. The usual Founders Day signage was in place—banners decorated with covered wagons set against a beautiful ocean-blue backdrop, hand-painted pioneer-themed artwork on the glass storefronts, and blinking lights twined around the streetlamps.

As she stood there, the clouds overhead thinned out a little and the shadows lifted. By eight o’clock the rest of the vendors had shown up, waving at Winona as they passed, in a rush now to get their stalls ready by noon, and by nine o’clock the stores were beginning to open. All up and down the street one could hear the tinkling of bells that meant doors were opening.

Memorial Day Monday had always been the start of the week-long celebration. The same street vendors showed up year after year, selling the same things: homemade scones with jam, churros, fresh lemonade, oyster shooters, barbecued oysters, and the ever-popular Conestoga wagon hand puppets. All day long, throngs of people would fill this one street, walking from booth to booth, eating food they didn’t need, and buying junk they didn’t want, and come nightfall a bluegrass band would set up in the Waves Restaurant’s parking lot, position speakers in the corners, and everyone from five to seventy-five would dance. It was the unofficial start of summer.

She walked down the street and bought herself a latte. By the time she got back to her booth, Vivi Ann, Noah, and Aurora were there. No doubt Vivi Ann was afraid to leave her delinquent son home alone.

“We’re ready to help,” Vivi Ann said, smiling.

“I was hoping you’d show up,” Winona said.

“Hoping?” Aurora arched one perfectly plucked eyebrow. “I know an order when I hear one. What about you, Vivi?”

“Oh, she definitely ordered us here.”

“I don’t know why. You two are total bitches.” Winona grinned. “Thank God you’re cheap labor.”

Aurora studied the booth and frowned. In her trendy low-rise designer jeans with stiletto-heeled sandals and a fitted white blouse, she looked more like a celebrity than a small-town doctor’s ex-wife. “I can’t believe you put pictures of the flag all around your banner. Rectangular shapes are bad for women; everyone knows that. And your slogan: Vote Grey. Seven years of college and that’s your best shot?” She turned to Vivi Ann. “Fortunately originality isn’t valued in a politician.”

“I suppose you could do better,” Winona said.

Aurora made a great show of thinking. She frowned deeply, tapped one long, acrylic-tipped nail against her cheek. “Hmmm... it’s difficult, I’ll agree. I mean, your name is Win. But how, oh, how could you use that?”

Winona couldn’t help it: she burst out laughing. “How could I miss that?”

“You’ve always been a see-the-trees, miss-the-forest gal,” Aurora said. “Remember when you took your first driving test? You were so busy looking ahead to the stoplight and calculating how many feet it would take you to stop at that speed and wondering when to hit your turn signal that you drove right through a four-way stop?”

That was the thing about family. They were like elephants. No one ever forgot a thing. Especially a failure, and a funny failure was as durable and reusable as plastic.

She was about to offer to get coffee for everyone when she noticed Noah going through her purse. “Noah,” she snapped. “What are you doing?”

He should have looked guilty, but that was the thing about Noah: he never behaved as you expected. Instead, he looked angry. “I need a pen to do my homework.”

My ass, Winona thought, but said, “How very enterprising of you.” She plucked a pen off the table and handed it to him, then retrieved her purse.

For the next eight hours, she and her sisters handed out brochures and buttons and gave away candy. Sometime after three, Aurora disappeared for half an hour or so and came back carrying quart-sized margaritas in Slurpee cups. After that they really had fun. Winona wasn’t exactly sure whose idea it was, but after they’d given away all the promotional items, while the other business-oriented booths were shutting down for the night, the three of them ended up standing in the middle of the street, arms slung around shoulders and waists, doing the cancan and singing, “Can can can you vote for Win?”

Laughing, they walked back to the booth, where Noah sat like a little black rain cloud.

“Could you be more weird?” he said to Vivi Ann, who immediately lost her smile.

It pissed Winona off. The last thing her sister needed was an angry, maladjusted kid to hurt her feelings. “Could you?” she asked Noah.

“Who wants another drink?” Aurora said quickly. “Everyone? Good. Come on, Noah. You can help me carry them back. It’ll be good practice for senior year.”

After they were gone, Winona went over to Vivi Ann, who was standing by the banner’s stanchion, looking out across the crowded street. Through the colorful, moving blur of people, Winona knew what her sister was staring at. The corner of the ice-cream shop and the start of the alley.

Cat Morgan’s house was long gone, of course; now that clean, well-tended alley led out to the Kiwanises’ park. But no matter how many signs they erected or ads they placed in the newspapers, to the locals it would always be Cat’s alley.

“Are you okay?” Winona asked cautiously.

Vivi Ann gave her one of the Teflon smiles she’d perfected in the past few years. “Fine. Why?”

“I heard Noah got in a fight again.”

“He says Erik, Jr., and Brian started it.”

“They probably did. Butchie’s kid has always been a bully. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

“I gave Noah the benefit of the doubt the first few fights, but now... I don’t know what to do with him. Even if he’s not starting the problem, he’s finishing it, and sooner or later he’s going to hurt someone.”

Winona considered her words carefully. Of all the land mines buried in the dirt of their past, none was more easily triggered than discussions about Noah’s problems.

The past year had changed everything; it had happened almost on the day of his thirteenth birthday. In one summer he’d gone from being a skinny, smiling Labrador retriever of a boy to a sullen, sloop-shouldered Doberman. Quick to anger, slow to forgive. He’d caused talk in town with his temper. Some even whispered the word violent, usually paired with just like his father.

Winona thought he needed counseling at the very least and possibly placement at a school for troubled teens, but offering Vivi Ann that advice was problematic. Especially coming from Winona. Their reconciliation was complete, but a little conditional. Some things were just out of bounds. “It’s not surprising that he’d have trouble dealing with... stuff,” Winona said. She never mentioned Dallas’s name if she could avoid it. “Maybe he needs counseling.”

“I’ve tried that. He wouldn’t talk.”

“Maybe get him into sports. That’s good for a kid.”

“Could you talk to him? You remember what it was like to be picked on, don’t you?”

Winona didn’t want to agree. The truth was that she didn’t like Noah lately. Or, maybe that wasn’t quite accurate.

He frightened her. No matter how often she told herself that he was just a boy and that he’d had a rough shake and that the teen years were hard, she couldn’t quite make herself believe it. When she looked at him, all she saw was his father.

Dallas had almost ruined this family once, and she was terrified that his angry, violent son would finish the job.

“Sure,” she said to Vivi Ann. “I’ll talk to him.”

I can’t believe I used to like Founders Days. What a joke. Like people don’t think I’m enough of a loser already, I have to sit in Aunt Winona’s “campaign center” and hand out cheap buttons to old people.

When they started that stupid kick dancing in the street I wanted to hurl. Of course that’s when Erik Jr. and Candace Delgado walked by. I totally wanted to smash his grinning face, and Candace looked like she felt sorry for me.

I HATE THAT.

I’m so sick of people thinking they know something about me just because my dad shot some lady.

Maybe she gave him one of those you’re scum looks. Maybe That’s why he shot her.

I’ve tried to ask my mom about it, but she just looks like she’s gonna cry and says none of that matters anymore, that the only thing that matters is how much she loves me.

Wrong.

She has no clue how I feel. If she did she’d take me to see my dad.

That’s the first thing I’m gonna do when I get a license. I’m gonna drive to the prison and see my father.

I don’t even want to talk to him. I just want to see his face.

You probably want to know why, don’t u, Mrs. Ivers? U think I’m being an idiot to want to see a murderer and you’re wondering if I’ll steal a car to do it.

Ha ha.

You’ll have to wait and see.

In June, the Bits and Spurs 4-H Club was having their first official get-ready-for-the-fair meeting. The girls, and several of their mothers, were in the cottage, seated on the floor, on the sofa, on the hearth. The pine-plank floor was dotted with blank squares of poster board. On each white sheet sat a bucket of supplies. Colored markers, rulers, glitter paint, decorator scissors, Scotch tape; more than twenty years of experience had taught Vivi Ann exactly what they would need. Trends came and went, the words changed with the generations, but how girls expressed themselves remained the same: with bright colors and glued-on glitter.

Vivi Ann stepped around the room, positioning each of her girls in front of a piece of poster board. “Go ahead and begin,” she said finally. “Start with your horse’s name. It’s his stall, remember, and neatness and spelling count. The barn judges will read every word.” She stepped over one girl’s outstretched legs and sidled past another. At the dining room table, she paused. From here, she could look out through the old, rippled kitchen window and see the shingled exterior of the addition.

Noah’s light was on.

To the girls, she said, “Excuse me for a minute,” and walked into the new wing of the house. To the left lay her bedroom and bathroom. She turned right and went down to the end of the hall. She hadn’t found the time yet to pick out carpeting for this area, so her cowboy boots creaked on the springy plywood flooring.

She knocked on Noah’s door, got no answer, and went inside.

He was on his bed, knees drawn up, eyes closed, rocking out to music on his iPod. White wires snaked down from the buds in his ears and plugged into the thin silver player.

At her touch he flinched and sat upright. “Who said you could come in my room?”

Vivi Ann sighed. Did they really have to have the your-room-my-house conversation every day? “I knocked. You didn’t answer.”

“I didn’t hear you.”

“That’s because you listen to music that’s too loud.”

“Whatever.”

She refused to take the bait. Instead, she reached out to tuck the hair behind his ear the way she used to, but he shrank back from her touch. “What happened to us, Noah? We used to be best friends.”

“Best friends don’t jack your Xbox and TV out of your room.”

“You got suspended from school. Was I supposed to send you flowers? Sometimes parents have to make hard decisions to do what’s best for their kids.”

“I don’t have parents. I have you. Unless you think Dad is making hard choices about me in his cell.”

“I don’t know why you’re so angry these days.”

“Whatever.”

“Please stop saying that. Come on, Noah, how can I help you?”

“Give me back my TV.”

“That’s it, that’s your answer. You get in a fight at school and—”

“I told you it wasn’t my fault.”

“Nothing ever is, is it? You’re like a fight magnet, I guess.”

“Whatever.” He glared at her. “You know everything.”

“I know this: you’re a member of the Bits and Spurs 4-H Club, and as such, you’re supposed to be making a poster for your stall.”

“You’re crazy if you think I’m showing at the fair this year.”

“Then I’m crazy.”

He jumped off the bed. His iPod swung from his earbuds and then fell, clattering to the plywood floor. “I won’t do it.”

“What’s the alternative? You going to sit in this room all summer, staring at where your TV used to be? You don’t do sports, you won’t do chores around here, and you don’t have friends. You can damn sure go to the fair.”

He looked so hurt that Vivi Ann wanted to apologize. She shouldn’t have said that about his lack of friends.

“I can’t believe you said that. It’s not my fault I don’t have any friends. It’s yours.”

“Mine?”

“You’re the one who married a killer and an Indian.”

“I’m tired of this same argument, Noah, and I’m tired of you sitting around doing nothing and feeling sorry for yourself.”

“I’m not showing at the fair. Only girls show horses. I take enough crap already. All I need is Erik, Jr., to see my pink and blue glitter why-I-love-my-horse poster.”

“That was a great poster. Everyone loved it.”

“I was nine. I didn’t know any better. I am not showing at the fair this year.”

“Well, you’re not sitting home all summer.”

“Good luck with making me move,” he said, putting his earbuds back in.

Vivi Ann stood there, staring at him. She could actually feel her blood pressure elevating. It was amazing how quickly he could get to her. Finally, remaining silent by force of will, she left his bedroom, slamming the door behind her. A juvenile show of irritation that nonetheless felt good.

In the living room, she paused. “I’ll be right back, girls. Keep working.”

Grabbing a sweatshirt off the sofa, she left the cabin and walked down to the barn. It was full of trucks and trailers.

Inside the arena was carefully controlled pandemonium. Kids and dogs ran wild through the bleachers, chasing the barn cats around. Several women and girls were riding in the center of the arena, practicing flying changes. Janie, back from college, was working her mare along the rail, and Pam Espinson was leading her grandson on his new pony.

Vivi Ann scanned the crowd, finding Aurora in the stands watching her daughter. She put her hands in her pockets and walked over to her sister. All around her was the blurring movement of people on horseback, the vibrating thunder of hooves on dirt. She moved easily through the crowd and took a seat by Aurora. “It’s nice to see Janie riding again.”

Aurora smiled. “It’s nice to see her again, period. The house is awful quiet these days.”

“I wish,” Vivi Ann said.

“Noah?”

Vivi Ann leaned against her sister. “Isn’t there a rule book for raising teenagers?”

Aurora laughed and put an arm around her. “No, but...”

“But what?” Vivi Ann knew what was coming and tensed up.

“You’d best do something before he hurts someone.”

“He wouldn’t do that.”

Aurora looked at her. She didn’t say anything, but they both knew she was thinking about Dallas.

“He wouldn’t do that,” Vivi Ann said again, although her voice wasn’t as strong this time. “I just need to find him something worthwhile to do.”

Traffic on First Street was stop-and-go on this last day of school. No doubt all the graduating seniors in town were in their cars right now, honking to one another and high-fiving out their car windows as they passed. She saw a few yellow high school buses caught in the snarl, too, and could imagine their tired drivers’ reaction to all this.

If she’d left ten minutes earlier or later, she wouldn’t be stuck here. It wasn’t as if she were on a tight schedule—or like she didn’t have access to a calendar.

It was summer on the Canal now, on the very June day that most of the county’s schools ended for the year, and those two details combined to make a perfect storm of traffic. One blocky motor home after another inched down the winding road. Most of them were hauling other vehicles—boats, smaller cars, bicycles, Jet Skis. Nobody came to the Canal in these golden months to sit inside, after all; they came to play in the warm blue water.

Out on the highway, she drove past Bill Gates’s gated compound and the gorgeous lodge and spa called Alderbrook, where yuppies congregated for wine tastings, weddings, and hot stone massages.

As she drove, the Canal bent and curved beside her; sometimes the road was inches from the water and sometimes there were acres in between them. Finally, as she neared Sunset Beach, she slowed and turned onto the sloped gravel driveway that led to the house she’d purchased only last week.

Her newest project was a sprawling 1970s rambler, originally built as a summer home for a large Seattle family. There were six bedrooms, one bathroom, a kitchen the size of a toolbox, and a dining room that could comfortably fit a motorboat. A huge covered deck jutted out over the Canal, and to its right, stairs led down to the two-hundred-foot-long dock that was white with bird droppings. Every square inch of this place was dilapidated or rotting or just plain ugly, but the property made it all worth it. Along the road, huge cedars shielded the property and ringed the flat grass patch like a protective circle of friends. In front of the trees, in full bloom now, were giant rhododendron bushes and mounds of white Shasta daisies. The two-acre parcel sloped gently down to a sand beach. White pieces of opalescent oyster shells decorated the shoreline, interspersed with beautiful bits of gem-colored glass. A hundred years ago this stretch of sand had been a dumping ground for broken bottles. Time had taken that trash and turned it into treasure. Every time Winona looked at that impossibly colored beach, she thought of her mother and smiled.

She parked in the grass, grabbed a Diet Coke out of the cooler in the backseat, and considered how best to redesign the house. Obviously she was going to use the building’s footprint and remodel extensively. It was the only way she’d be able to have a house so close to the water these days. She could, however, go up a floor. That meant opening up the downstairs, making sure every room had a view, and creating a master suite, master bath, and office upstairs.

Perfect.

She retrieved her meatball submarine sandwich and her notepad from the car. Sitting on the front lawn, she ate her lunch and began drawing out interior plans. She was so enmeshed in the scale of rooms and the positioning of doors that she didn’t even notice that she wasn’t alone until Vivi Ann said her name.

Winona turned. “Hey. I didn’t even hear you drive up.”

“I didn’t mean to startle you.” Vivi Ann crossed the lawn toward her as Noah exited the passenger side of the truck. Making no move to join them, he stood there, hands in his baggy chewed-up jeans, shoulders slouched, hair in his face, looking put-upon and pissed off.

“You came out to see the new house, huh?” Winona said. As a rule, she ignored Noah’s presence whenever possible. It made life easier. “Can I show you around?”

Vivi Ann’s gaze swept the place. “What do you have to do before you begin tearing down walls?”

“Oh, lots. There’s always prep work. You should see the dock. Forty years’ worth of seagull crap takes a while to wash off.”

“That’s perfect!”

“I know. A dock adds over one hundred thousand dollars’ worth of value to this place.” Winona frowned. “Is that what you meant?”

Vivi Ann glanced over at Noah, who was studying his dirty fingernails as if he might find gold in there. “Noah doesn’t want to be in 4-H anymore and he’s refusing to show at the fair.”

“Uh. Duh. He’s a boy. Maybe you want him to take ballet, too.”

“I’m glad to see you understand the problem. It wasn’t quite so clear to me.”

“Of course it wasn’t. You were beautiful and popular. If you wanted to play football, the guys would have said it was cute. Hell, if you threw up at homecoming, the boys would’ve lined up to hold your hair and still thought you were adorable. A kid like Noah has to be careful: no math or computer clubs, no chess, and certainly no 4-H. He’s trying to make friends, not lose them.”

“And you said he shouldn’t be sitting around all day.”

“Did I? I think I said he needed counseling, too. He seems... angrier than normal.”

“What he needs is a summer job. And not at the ranch. We don’t need something else to fight about.”

“That’s a great idea. It would use up his time and give him self-esteem and...” Winona stopped. “No,” she said to Vivi Ann, shaking her head. “You aren’t thinking—”

“It would be perfect. He could clean up the dock. Eight hours a day, five days a week. You can pay him by the foot. If you pay him by the hour I think you’ll go broke and your dock won’t ever get cleaned up.”

“I’m supposed to pay him, too?”

“Well, he’ll hardly do it for free. And you’re rich.”

“Look, Vivi Ann,” Winona said, lowering her voice. “I don’t know about this.”

“Tell her you’re scared of me, Aunt Winona,” Noah yelled. “Tell her you think I’m dangerous.”

“Shut up, Noah,” Vivi Ann snapped. “She certainly isn’t afraid of you.” She looked back at Winona. “I really need your help here. You’re so good at solving problems. Aurora thinks it’s a great idea.”

“You ran it past her?”

“Actually, it was her idea.”

Winona was screwed. Any idea that had been vetted and approved of by half the family was a done deal. “He has to pull his pants up—I don’t want to look at his underwear all day—and he washes his hair on the days he works for me.”

Noah grunted. She didn’t know if he’d agreed or not.

Winona walked over to him, hearing Vivi Ann following her. “How does eight bucks a foot sound?”

“Like slave’s wages.”

Vivi Ann cuffed the back of his head. “Try again.”

“It sounds fine,” he grumbled, shoving his hands deeper in his pockets.

Winona was actually afraid his jeans would fall down in a heap around his ankles.

This was a bad idea. The kid was just like his dad: trouble. But she had no way out. “Fine. He’s hired. But if he screws up once—once—you get him back, Vivi. I’m no babysitter.”

Vivi Ann looked directly at Noah. “If you fire him, he’s competing at the fair. Is that understood?”

Noah didn’t answer, but the look in his eyes was pure teenage rage.

He understood.