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Chapter Three

Cindy was full-on shakingwhen Wayne found her on the back porch. The woman was now forty-seven years old but didn’t look a day over forty, with glorious dark blonde curls that wafted down her shoulders and almond-shaped blue eyes. Wayne hadn’t seen her in several weeks, and he realized, with a jolt, that she really did look a bit like Elise Darby.

All this time...

“Wayne...” Cindy breathed. She jumped up from her rocking chair and wrapped her arms around him. Her head fell against his chest.

For a moment, Wayne was transported back to Tara’s funeral. Was that the last time he had hugged Cindy like this?

When Cindy pulled her head back, she wiped the tears from her eyes and said, “I’m sorry to call you like that. I didn’t know what to do.”

“No, I get it,” Wayne told her.

“I poured you a glass of whiskey,” Cindy said. “Wine seemed a little too...” She snapped her fingers, looking for the word.

“Celebratory?”

“Something like that.”

Wayne sat in the other rocking chair, the one Fred normally sat in. In other, happier times, he and Tara had sat across from them, glasses of wine in-hand, as they laughed through the night.

“I just can’t get my head around it,” Cindy continued, her eyes shadowed. “I haven’t heard a single thing from him since he left the island. I’ve thought about it all the time. Thought—what if he died somewhere, somewhere in Asia or something, and nobody knew how to contact me?”

Wayne’s shoulders were heavy. He scooped his back and stared into the amber liquid of his whiskey. “Michael’s a responsible kid. No matter what happens, he has you and Fred as parents. He can’t shake that.”

Cindy’s chuckle wasn’t a happy one. “You know as well as everyone that Michael looked at you and Tara more as parents than Fred and me. He spent so many evenings over at your house instead of ours.”

Wayne twitched at the memory.

“You know Tara loved that kid,” Wayne affirmed. “She couldn’t have children of her own, and when you gave birth to Michael...”

“You don’t have to tell me,” Cindy said. “I remember it all clear as day. Twenty-four years ago, me and Tara and baby Michael went everywhere together. Tara used to sew him little outfits to wear. She used to babysit him for hours at a time, so I could get some shut-eye.”

“She made it pretty clear to me that if we were going to work, I had to make sure to include Michael in my understanding of who she was,” Wayne said.

“Just because she wasn’t related by blood, she was still that boy’s aunt,” Cindy breathed. “He trusted her much more than he ever trusted me. I think he always resented being from the Swartz family. He hated having that target on his back.”

Michael said that over and over again. He resented being rich. He wanted nothing to do with the Swartz money.

In some ways, his leaving was no surprise at all.

But his return? That was a huge shock.

There was something in the air that year. Maybe that very thing had dragged Elise Darby back to the island where her parents had met and fallen in love.

Maybe that very thing in the air had led Wayne to believe that for the first time in a very long time, he could find love again.

He glanced at his phone once again. Elise hadn’t texted him back.

Profound sorrow stirred in his stomach.

“I just can’t get my head around it,” Cindy whispered. “There’s no telling where he’s been, or what he’s been up to, or even why he left... I know Tara’s death really took something out of him. It took something out of all of us. But he was a sensitive guy.”

Wayne closed his eyes. In the months after Tara’s car accident off the island, Michael had tried several times to reach out to Wayne. Wayne had been a shell of his previous and now current self. He had hardly eaten anything; he’d had perpetual grey shadows under his eyes; he’d allowed his dark hair to grow long, nearly to his shoulders. Making conversation with anyone had been a huge struggle, and he hadn’t exactly welcomed Michael.

Michael had thought of Tara as a second mother, yes.

But Michael had a mother.

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