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Running into his broad chest, feeling his big hands on my shaky arms, looking into those dreamy hazel eyes that had once been my entire world had taken the last little bit of my heart that was still intact and crushed it.
Not for any logical reason, mind you. It’d been seventeen years since I’d seen him. Seventeen years since he’d snapped me out of my naive twenty-year-old self and helped me learn that even the person you felt closest to on this earth could let you down.
I’d gone to college in California, grown up, and married and divorced someone else during that time. From what I’d heard through the grapevine—my aunt and her beloved friends, the Diamonds—Cash had stayed in the Navy for a few years, returned to Dragonfly Lake eventually, and had married and divorced himself.
One look at him, though, and all those years had disappeared in an instant. Logical thought had been sucked out of my head, and my heart had taken over for about three beats. Just long enough for the composure I’d been fighting tooth and nail to hold in place for the past eighteen hours to collapse.
Those three heartbeats had been enough for me to register that Cash Henry was one of those guys who looked even better at almost forty than he had at twenty-three.
Then my eyes had filled with goddamn tears. There was no hiding my annoyingly fragile state from anyone on that sidewalk, so I’d done the only thing I could do. I’d retreated, like a turtle pulling into its shell.
Before I could reach the refuge that ancient Chevy offered, I felt a gentle feminine hand on my back.
“Darling girl, you’re not alone.”
Even if I hadn’t recognized Rosy McNamara’s voice, the jangling of her multiple bracelets would’ve given her away. Relieved that it wasn’t Cash who’d followed me, I let her pull me into her side as we kept walking, not daring to attempt words.
Even though I hadn’t seen this woman for several years, she was one of my aunt’s people, a member of her tight circle of friends. I felt closer to Aunt Phyl just being near Rosy, and I allowed her to guide me to the truck. When I started toward the driver-side door, though, she took my hand and stopped me. I had no choice but to meet her gaze, and I swiped at my eyes as I did so.
“Let me drive you to the inn, Ava.” The compassion in her voice and the kind concern in her crystal-blue eyes nearly did me in.
I cleared my throat in an attempt to break through the grief that was finally leveling me. “I’m fi—”
“You’re not fine, darling girl. No one would expect you to be fine. I’ve got your bags from Bergman’s here.” She looked into the plastic bags I’d totally forgotten about in my rush to retreat. “These look like something Halstead would ask for. Am I right?”
I nodded, my determination to resist her help weakening by the second. I didn’t even know what half the stuff in that bag was and had only made it through Halstead’s list with the help of Jake Bergman, who’d also recognized me, offered condolences, and unknowingly helped set the emotional stage for the shit show that had just happened on the sidewalk.
“Let me take you home. I’ll deliver these things to the maintenance god himself, and you can steal a few minutes alone,” Rosy said.
“I need to cover the front desk—”
“I’ll take care of that too. I know my way around dear Phyllis’s antiquated setup.”
That elicited a bittersweet smile from me. I’d never questioned how close those women were. It gave me a measure of peace to know that Phyllis had had good, caring people in her day-to-day life. My aunt and I had FaceTimed weekly, but I always felt bad about not seeing her in person more than once or twice a year. Those women, the Diamonds, had been here every day for her and she for them.
“I’ll take you up on covering the front desk,” I said, “and I’ll take these to Halstead. I need to keep busy—and there’s plenty to get done.”
Rosy took a gentle hold on my arm and steered me toward the front end of the truck. “You’re facing a lot, darling girl. You’re smart to let us Diamonds help you. Phyllis was one of ours, and we’ll do anything for her and, by extension, you.”
Because her kind words had my throat swelling with a ball of emotion, making it impossible to speak, I nodded and went around to the passenger side. I kept my eyes to the ground, my hair draping over the sides of my face, and I didn’t look back once to see if Cash was still nearby. I didn’t want to know. Didn’t want to care about him any more than I cared about a stranger on the street.
My aunt’s fifteen-year-old truck was huge, but Rosy handled it easily, as I was pretty sure she handled most things. The woman had raised a handful of boys and taken over running the marina when her husband passed away. She was the free spirit of the Diamonds, a senior citizen flower child, with her arms full of bangles and beads and her fingers accented with large-stoned rings—in citrine yellow today to coordinate with her moss-green, tunic-length, short-sleeved shirt, her botanical-print baggy pants, and a flowy cape thing in the same print that hung over one shoulder. She looked eccentric and put together at once.
When she caught me studying her from the side, she sent me a sympathetic smile.
“Pretty rings,” I said to head off more condolences.
“I love the splashes of color,” Rosy said with a glance at her knuckles on the steering wheel, “and they pack a heck of a wallop when I punch someone.”
A halfhearted, disbelieving laugh gurgled out of me. “You punch people often?”
“Only when I have no other choice.” There was no hint of humor and no sign of exaggeration in her tone. Just matter-of-factness. She turned off Honeysuckle Road onto the inn’s property, following the short but windy road through the trees, past the overflow lot and the main parking area. With an easy familiarity, she took the gravel drive to the cottage and pulled the truck up where I’d found it. She reached over and squeezed the back of my hand before I could open the door and escape. “How are you holding up, Ava? Phyllie’s passing is quite the shock.”
I swallowed, my glance going out the windshield and landing on my aunt’s home.Myhome until I was twenty. It looked…empty. Lonely.
After a slow, shaky inhale, I said, “I was doing okay until back there…” I shook my head. What the hell had that been on the sidewalk with a guy I no longer knew? Ridiculous, that’s what. “I’ve been holding everything at bay, trying to get as much done as I could…”
I sensed Rosy nodding next to me. “Sometimes when something awful happens and there’s no way to make it better, it helps to keep yourself busy.”
