in the lawyer’s office to sign the agreement. He did all the work, so he got a larger percentage. Zoey had maintained ownership of the farmhouse on the property and still lived in it. Zoey’s sister had been good with that—he hoped Zoey’s niece would be, too. Actually, he hoped she’d just want to sell out.
“You’ve never met her?”
“Yeah, I did. Well, saw her, anyway.” She’d sat with Zoey at Marynell’s funeral in California six months before. Cass Gentry was tall and nearly too slim—her black dress had been too big on her, but her posture was military straight.
She’d also been wearing a wig, which he’d wondered about but hadn’t mentioned to Zoey even on the long plane trip home. Zoey was a close friend, but she was as private as they came. All she’d ever said about family was, “You know that word dysfunction? Well, we invented it.”
Cass hadn’t looked either right or left during the funeral, and when he’d gone to see if Zoey was ready to return to the hotel, her niece had disappeared.
“So, she’s coming today?” asked Seth. “Here or to Zoey’s?”
“I don’t know. She’s staying at the lake for a while, I guess. She might just go there. I don’t think she and Zoey are close.”
“So.” Seth handed down the bag of apples from his shoulder, his muscles bulging with the effort. “Have you decided?”
“Decided what?” Luke knew what the kid was talking about. He’d been asking every other day for two weeks already.
“You know.”
Seth had been hassling him for an answer ever since their parents had followed their dad’s auto industry job to Detroit in June. It had been fine this summer. Seth stayed with Luke and spent the occasional “parental unit” weekend in Michigan; sometimes the folks drove down instead. It would be different during the school year. High school senioring was busy stuff, plus their father and mother still worked—they’d used up most of their time off this summer. “Have they said anything more?”
“Mom doesn’t want me to stay here in case you get another job somewhere else. Dad’s waffling back and forth. But they’re going to let me if you say it’s okay.” Seth came down the ladder. “I know it’s asking a lot, letting me stay with you the whole school year. I cramp your style and all. But geez, Luke, I don’t want to change schools now. I want to spend my senior year as a Miniagua Lakers running back, not a benchwarmer at some school around Detroit where I don’t know anybody.” He grinned hopefully. “Don’t forget, me being here keeps you off the ladders.”
There was that. Luke wasn’t precisely afraid of heights, but he wasn’t crazy about them, either. Zoey had nearly laughed her head off when she’d found that out. “Son,” she said, “you do realize you just bought half of sixty acres of fruit trees, right?”
He’d realized it, all right, but when he bought into Keep Cold Orchard, he’d planned on it being an investment, his house on the lake a weekend getaway. However, when the company where he had been an engineer closed its doors three years before, he put his severance pay into his retirement account and went to work for himself at the orchard. He didn’t intend it to be his life’s work, but it was satisfying for now.
“You are good for something.” He grinned at his brother and looked at his watch. “You need to call it a day and get something to eat before practice.” The football team was doing two-a-day practices and Seth was working several hours at the orchard between them. It was a brutal schedule.
They unloaded at the apple barn and Luke tossed Seth his car keys. “I’ll take the orchard pickup home. Be careful.”
“All right if I go out after? Just swimming over at the public beach. Playing some music.”
“Just swimming and music,” Luke reiterated. “No booze or anything else that will get us both in trouble with either our parents or the law.”
“Gotcha.”
Luke was the last one to leave the orchard. That was a promise he’d made to himself and the employees when he became a hands-on boss. Most of the time it worked out well, but there were occasional middays that found him asleep on the couch in the office.
“That’s why it’s there,” Zoey had said. “Anything happens, they’ll wake you up.”
“Anything” usually meant something had broken down. Luke had gotten good at keeping the sorting machine and the tractor running. The cider press, an antique by any standard, presented more of a challenge. He’d taken to calling it Rachel’s Revenge because his two-years-younger sister had been threatening retribution for years for brotherly sins both real and imagined.
“Mr. Rossiter?”
The voice came as he was locking the door of the apple barn behind him. He turned, squinting into the setting sun. “Yes? We’re closed, but can I get you something quick?”
“I’m Cass Gentry.”
“Oh.” The sun moved enough that she became less of a silhouette and more of the tall, slender person he remembered from Marynell’s funeral. She wasn’t as slim now, and the cap of light brown hair was almost certainly her own, but he’d have recognized her anywhere. He extended his hand. “Nice to meet you. I expected you earlier today.”
“My apologies. I underestimated the time it took to drive from the western edge of Missouri with an unfriendly teenager.”
He smiled at her. “I’ve done that. Well, to Detroit, anyway. Two hundred miles of loud silence.” He was inexplicably disappointed that she had a child. Did that mean there was a husband, too? He gestured toward the door. “Would you like to look around?”
“No, it’s all right. I’ll come back tomorrow. I didn’t even think about what time it was when I came by. I just dropped Royce off at the house we’re renting and came here. I thought a little time apart might be a good thing.”
“Probably,” he agreed. “A little breathing space never hurts. How old is your daughter?”
She smiled at him this time, the expression hesitant enough he thought maybe she didn’t use it much. “My sister is sixteen. Going on thirty. Your son?”
Luke nodded in acknowledgment of her remark. “My brother is seventeen going on twelve. My father was transferred to Detroit with his job and Seth’s a senior in high school. It looks like he’s going to spend the school year with me.” He wasn’t sure what they’d do if an ideal engineering job presented itself, but he wasn’t going to worry about it—there were worse things than long commutes.
“Ah. Royce’s mother, a couple of my dad’s wives removed from my mother, was deployed to Afghanistan. It’s probably her last deployment—she’s ready to retire—but she had to go. Royce preferred my company to our father’s. At least she did before driving across country with me. I think now her choice might be up for grabs.”
“Have you seen Zoey yet?”
“No.” She looked uncomfortable. “I don’t really know her very well anymore. Royce knows her even less. She met her when my mother died, but only briefly.” She hesitated, looking up at him in the darkness that followed the sun’s drop into the horizon. “You were there, weren’t you?
