the cemetery after the private graveside service Margaret Llewellyn had requested. “How could they not know I exist? I’m arguably the best thing that’s ever happened to you.”
“You’re twelve years old.” Tucker stared over at his nephew in disbelief. “No one uses the word arguably when they’re still wiping their noses on their jacket sleeves.”
They did when they were Charlie, who’d skipped third grade and was well on his way to passing over the eighth, as well. He was both brilliant and funny. Neither of those traits led to appropriate behavior, which he insisted against all parental objections was part of his charm.
“Get in the car, Charlie.” Jack waited for him to obey, then closed the door behind him and got into the front passenger seat. “You know I never come back here unless I have to.”
He was still trying to process the look on Arlie’s face when he’d introduced Charlie. She had looked, for just a heartbeat in time, completely stricken. She’d paled so much that the spray of freckles on her nose had stood out in stark contrast to her skin. He’d reached to touch her, but she’d backed away a step, shaking her head slightly before turning a smile on Charlie.
Tucker looked at Jack from behind the wheel. “He’s right, you know. Other than continuing to have me for a brother whether you wanted me or not, Charlie is probably the best thing to come into your life since you walked away from the lake.”
“See?” Charlie spoke up. “Except for the brother part, Tuck’s got it.”
Jack turned enough to look at the adolescent behind him. “You know, I can probably get your grandparents to take you back to South Bend with them. They can run you over to O’Hare and put you on a direct flight tonight instead of me flying with you tomorrow afternoon. Your mother would be glad you weren’t missing another day of school.”
Charlie grinned at him, metal from his braces glinting in the afternoon sun sifting through the car window, and Jack grinned back. He could no more resist the boy, who really was the best thing in his life, than he could fly.
“We need to stop and get Gianna a bottle of wine or some flowers.” He looked out the side window of the car. The autumn colors were beautiful. “Is there anywhere on the lake or do you need to stop in Sawyer?”
“We go right past Sycamore Hill, the winery the Grangers started up a few years ago. It’s between the golf course and Jesse Worth’s vet clinic on Lake Road.”
“Chris Granger?” He’d been Jack’s age and had lived next door, but they’d never been friends. The fact that he was Arlie’s boyfriend made it fairly certain they never would be.
“Yeah.” Tucker looked over at him, his expression undecipherable. “I guess he and Arlie have been seeing each other for a long time.”
“They have.” Jack continued looking out the window, noting the colors of the leaves as they went under the canopy of trees on the stretch of road they’d always called “the tunnel.” Jesse’s place would be next, where he’d opened his clinic on the family farm, and then the winery the Grangers owned.
Arlie and Chris Granger. Even thinking about them as a couple made his insides jump around. It had been so much better not knowing. In all the time he’d been gone, he’d managed not to call her, though he’d dialed the number at Christensen’s Cove at least a thousand times. He’d thought maybe Gianna would answer and he could just ask about Arlie to make sure she was all right. But he always hung up before anyone picked up on the other end. He’d written letters all through his first two years at college, trying to explain, to make her understand. He’d never mailed any of them, but he hadn’t thrown them away, either—they were in a wooden box he’d made, stuffed into the back of his closet in his house in Vermont.
Sometime during the summer after sophomore year, he stopped dialing her number, stopped writing letters he would never mail. He started dating again, albeit without his heart in it. He and Tracy, his study partner, shared a propensity for vintage TV shows and Chicago-style hot dogs. They spent most of their evenings together.
That winter, he married her, entering into a union they later referred to as the best marriage of convenience that ever took place on the campus of Notre Dame University.
Tracy was pregnant by a man she found out too late was married. When he was running one night, Jack found her standing on a bridge over the St. Joe River. “I can’t get an abortion and I can’t jump,” she’d said, turning tear-filled eyes to him. “It’s not the baby’s fault its parents are losers.”
As much as Jack liked Tracy and enjoyed her company, there was no real attraction there. Not to mention, he believed his time to love had passed him by. He didn’t particularly want children of his own, but neither had his father—something he and Tucker had known every day of their lives.
What if this had happened to Arlie? What if she’d been alone and pregnant? She hadn’t been—they had never been intimate after the accident—but what if she had and he’d never known? He’d have wanted someone to do what was right for his child.
Life had granted him no illusions about marriage, happily-ever-after or being a proud father at someone’s graduation. But he’d hated that his father hadn’t wanted him and Tuck.
“How can I help you?” He’d wrapped his jacket around Tracy and laughed, the sound nervous. “We could get married for a while. Get you through finals and decide what you want to do.”
They’d spent the first months of their marriage studying, learning to cook without poisoning themselves, watching Matlock reruns and deciding what to do after the baby was born. Finally, eight months into Tracy’s pregnancy, they’d made the decision to release the baby for adoption and have their marriage annulled. No harm, no foul, just gratitude for getting each other through a rough time.
But then there was Charlie. In the space of time between the obstetrician saying “you can push now” and a red-faced baby squalling his head off, Jack and Tracy learned that while love had definitely complicated their pasts, it just as certainly defined their future. They had ended their marriage, but that was the only part of the plan that came together.
Jack brought his mind to the present, looking back over his shoulder to smile at the boy who’d changed his life. Who’d made him decide maybe living was worthwhile after all. Whom he was afraid to spend too much time with.
“Did you bring homework with you?”
The boy rolled his eyes, their whiskey color reminding him of Arlie’s. “I did. It’s algebra and it’s probably going to be the sole reason I’m never accepted to a reputable college.”
“Good. Tucker can help you.”
Tucker tossed Jack a look of outrage. “I flunked algebra. In my freshman year. Remember? He’s in the eighth grade and can already run rings around me in anything mathematical.”
“I know you flunked it, but you did okay when you took it the second time. I, on the other hand, only passed it because Arlie helped me.”
“She’s a girl and she helped you with algebra?” Charlie scoffed.
“She did.” Jack unbuckled his seat belt when Tucker pulled in at the winery. “And I double dog dare you to take that tone with her. Unless she’s changed a lot, you won’t come out of it real well.”
Charlie
