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“This girl in Georgia won’t stop texting me,” he said with a funny sigh.
“The ladies can’t get enough of you,” Wayne returned, shooting him a sly grin.
That moment, the door jangled to reveal someone Wayne had never actually seen inside The Grind.
Alex Swartz stood in a black peacoat, his hands shoved in his pockets, and his dark eyes calculated and much too small. At that moment, the bagel flung out of the toaster and landed on the countertop.
“Hey there, Uncle Alex,” Michael said. “Haven’t seen you around yet.”
Alex was much lankier than any of the other Swartz family members. As he walked toward the counter, he looked like he was on stilts.
“No. It seems like the family has kept me out of the loop,” Alex said. “I regret that. Feels like we have a lot to catch up on.”
“Totally. I’d love to hear all your scheming. I hope you’ve gotten better since my teenage years when you tried to throw me under the bus for drinking underage on that boat,” Michael said, his eyes glittering with sarcasm and hint of animosity.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize that your business operated by picking at your customers,” Alex said. “I don’t think that’s any way to make money, but what do I know? I’m only the managing director of the Swartz Estates.”
“You always did talk about that business like you built it from the ground up,” Michael said.
Wayne’s stomach clenched. Alex wasn’t the kind of guy to make a casual visit into The Grind. There was a secret terror behind his eyes.
“What can I get you, Al?” Wayne asked. He knew that calling the man “Al” would drive him nuts.
As he winced, Alex said, “Maybe one of those maple syrup lattes.”
“Coming right up.” Michael whipped through the steps, frothing the milk, his eyes like a cat’s toward his uncle.
As Alex approached the counter, he removed his wallet and flickered his fingers across the green bills.
“Oh, you know what? I just had the funniest encounter,” he said.
“Is that right?” Wayne struggled to make his voice sound anything but flat.
“Sure. I was standing in at one of our bed and breakfasts. The Purple Dove.” Alex leaned forward, arched his brow, and added, “I always hated the name of that one, but apparently, Mom named it and you know how much Dad cared for Mom. He would have named it anything if she’d asked.
Anyway, suddenly, this man came in. He looked strange to me. Not from around here, you know? Handsome and well-dressed, with an accent that has nothing to do with Michigan. I asked him where he was from, and you know what he said? He said, California.”
Wayne’s heart dropped into his stomach. Michael appeared beside him with the latte and placed it on the counter. The silence continued to form over them like a cloud.
“Anyway, then I told him—hey! That’s funny. We seem to have a lot of California people coming to the island these days. I asked him who told our Michigan secret out west. Anyway, he said there’s this woman—his girlfriend; he said who he’s deeply in love with. He called himself a romantic, the kind of man to make big gestures. He said that they’re both writers. That she practically begged him to come out on her writer’s retreat so that he can help her with the final edits of her screenplay. Now, I don’t know about you, but I find that terribly romantic.”
Wayne’s face twitched involuntarily. Michael slid the latte further over the counter. Alex continued to blink at them, as though he had just dropped a bomb over their heads and wanted to see some kind of carnage happen before his eyes.
“Is that right,” Wayne said, making sure he sounded as disinterested as possible. “I sure do think Mackinac is a good place to write. Not that I’ve written anything more than an email in the past ten years.” His finger jumped around on the touchscreen computer to reveal the cost of the latte.
“Four dollars?” Alex whined. “Shouldn’t I get some kind of discount? Michael, here is my nephew, after all.”
Wayne wanted to punch him in the face. “We’re on hard times now that it’s the end of the season. Everybody else on the island understands that and it’s certainly not like you can’t afford it.”
“I see,” Alex said. He yanked out a fifty-dollar bill and placed it on the counter between them. “I hope you can make change.”
**
AS SOON AS ALEX LEFT, Wayne’s hand formed a fist and he smashed it against the side wall. Anger fell over him like a wave.
“Hey, hey...” Michael said. “Man, you can’t just punch walls.”
Wayne shook out his hand as pain permeated through his arm. “I just hate that guy so much.”
