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Her eyes narrow. “That you’re just friends.”

“Mmm-hmm,” I throw back at her. “See?”

“I’ll find out the truth, you know.”

Yeah. I know. But for now, I’ll keep lying to you and to myself and to whoever else asks.

“First the farmers’ market? Then the bonfire? Then the hike?” She scoots a stool over so she can sit while she’s working—but she doesn’t keep working. “And all the kayaking? Explain that, buddy.”

I shrug. “Hattie pretended she doesn’t hate me at the farmers’ market because she can’t stand bullies. Probably kept me out of a fight.”

“Yeah, okay fine, that tracks,” Rowe says.

“And nothing happened on the hike or at the bonfire. You were all there.”

“We weren’t there the whole time, though,” she counters.

“I don’t know what to tell you, Rowe,” I say. “You’re barking up the wrong tree.”

“She never lets any of us kayak with her,” Rowe says, practically a harrumph, then finally goes back to snapping beans. “You guys are making this like . . . like a routine.” Her eyes dart to mine. “You practically have your own language.”

“A few days on the lake is not a routine,” I say, even though I really want it to be. “Besides, I’ve just barely been back here. There’s years of me being gone that I have to make up for.”

There’s a lull. Outside, I see Briggs cleaning the grill in preparation for the big meal he’s about to cook up.

And boy, do I envy that man’s grill. A Pitts & Spitts pellet grill and smoker, two racks, a section for live charcoal. You could grill food for two whole counties and still have room for ten steaks. I make up my mind that once I buy a house, I’m buying one of those grills.

“But you like her, right?” Rowe says, pulling my attention back.

For a second, I consider spilling every single thought that’s been running around in my head since the second I saw Hattie in Seb’s that first day.

But I know better than to go there, so I fix my face and say, “Of course. I like all of you.”

“Nice try.” Rowena says, still skeptical.

“It’s the truth. I do like all of you.” I snap a bean. “Well, maybe not Boone. He smells like a barn.”

She narrows her eyes through my joke. “Fine. Well, when you decide to admit your real feelings to yourself, you come talk to me.” She goes back to the beans. “Maybe I can help.”

I’m this close to taking her up at that offer when Hattie strolls in from outside. She looks at me, then at her sister, then grabs a can of Coke from the fridge and walks back out without a word.

“Boy, she’s hard to read,” I say.

Sometimes it seems like we’ve got the potential to be a lot more than friends, and other times it still feels like she’s making up her mind about me even being here.

“Can you blame her?” Rowe snaps a green bean and tosses it into a bowl. “I mean, she did kind of fall apart after you left.”

I frown. “She did?” I don’t want to know this, but maybe I need to. I need to understand the hurt I caused in order to make it right.

“Yeah, Noble. Like . . . bad.” Her expression shifts, like she’s trying to decide how much to say. “You know Hattie, she’s not great with huge displays of emotion. And she was already struggling because she . . . you know . . .”

She’s looking down, and stops, then looks up at me and tilts her head slightly, and I realize what she’s saying.

To Hattie, my leaving was all rolled up in Hunter’s death. One big, glaring mess of pain raining down on her at the same time.

Her cold shoulder makes a lot more sense.

“I want to fix it,” I blurt.