“I want to…park.”

In the moonlight, Chessie sent her husband a sultry look.

“As in…?”

“As in teenage-just-got-the-license park.” She flipped up the armrest, then slid across the front seat to snuggle next to him.

Nick glanced at his watch.

“Not on this date, mister!” she exclaimed, pulling the watch from his wrist and tossing it into the back seat.

“You folks need to move along.” The gruff voice seemed to be right in the car with them.

“What the hell!” Nick raised his hand to shield his eyes from the brightness.

“Nick?” The voice behind the blinding light boomed with amusement. “Chessie? For the love of Mike, you’d think the two of you could take it home.” The police officer lowered his flashlight. It was George Weiss. Their neighbor. “Or at least a hotel room.”

“We were watching the moon rise,” Chessie explained sweetly.

“Among other things,” George added. “I’m going to give you kids my usual safe-sex lecture.” He dug into his pockets. “And these.” He handed Nick a couple packets of condoms.

“Save the lecture, George,” Nick muttered. “We’re heading home.”

“Don’t let me come back in an hour and find you here.” George grinned as if he were really enjoying this. “I’d have to write you up.”

Dear Reader,

Independence Day was probably the most difficult book I’ve written. It’s not about a traditional courtship, the kind that always provides me with such a lovely escape. This is a book that addresses the question “What happens after happily-ever-after?” More often than not, it’s a roller-coaster ride of peaks and valleys. Sometimes the romance fades. Sometimes the passion gets lost in careers and families and pressing responsibility. This could be my life—and writing about issues that cut so close to the bone was very uncomfortable….

But is the rosy glow of courtship retrievable in a marriage? Absolutely, yes! Or so believes my heroine, Chessie McCabe. But for her, it will take a revolution. Little does she know that her quest to rekindle the passion in her workaholic, emotionally AWOL husband, Nick, will throw her family into turmoil and lead to a journey of self-discovery. Chessie and Nick learn that as great as the need for food and shelter is the need to be seen and heard.

Married twenty-nine years, I learned a lot from Chessie.

All my best,

Amy Frazier

P.S. So involved was I with this fictional couple that my daughter began to worry about them, too, calling from college for updates…. So, Sarah, did I guide them safely through the storm?

Independence Day
Amy Frazier

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

EPILOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

“ON STRIKE, I SAID!” Exhilaration racing through her veins, Chessie McCabe threw another armload of dirty laundry from the bedroom window. “I’m on strike until my needs are met!”

Crumpled socks, T-shirts, shorts and underwear surrounding them like some freak snowfall on the summer-green grass below, Chessie’s husband and two teenage daughters gaped up at her. She didn’t blame them. This wasn’t her usual behavior.

Her usual behavior involved patience. Large dollops of nurturing. Calmly maintained family schedules. An abundance of behind-the-scenes hugs, kisses, back rubs, pep talks and emotional support. Not public hysteria.

Well, this might be public, but it wasn’t hysteria. It was a personal Fourth-of-July rebellion. And long overdue.

“Mom!” Fourteen-year-old Gabriella seemed about to die of mortification. “What are we supposed to do with this stuff?”

“I don’t care. Wash it in the harbor. Pound it on the rocks. String it from boat to boat to dry. It’s your dirty laundry. From this day forward, I wash my hands of it.”

Her husband, Nick, eyed her silently. Even from her perspective at the bedroom window, Chessie could see the muscle along his jaw twitch. Not a good sign. And normally one that would send her into peacemaker mode. But not today. Today, the three of them could try to smooth her ruffled feathers.

“Let me make one thing perfectly clear,” she declared, empowered by her second-story podium and the resonant Maine air. “I love the three of you very much. But I’ve spoiled you all rotten. From this day forward, my needs are as important as yours.” She held her fist aloft in a militant salute. “Chessie McCabe is a doormat no more!”

“Mom!” Gabriella jerked her head toward the sidewalk opposite the McCabe cottage. “People…”

Chessie noted with some satisfaction that several obvious out-of-towners, cameras slung round their necks, had stopped on their way to the planned festivities at the village square. Had stopped and begun to stare at the little drama playing out on the front lawn. A small crowd. How handy. Every woman on the verge of rediscovering herself should find an audience.

She grinned. They probably thought this was all part of the town-sanctioned fun, a quaint reenactment of some obscure New England history. Tourists always thought Down-Easters so colorful.

Well, she’d show them colorful.

She plucked Nick’s jockstrap from the bedroom floor behind her. With a whoop of pure abandon, she snapped the strap slingshot style, sending it arcing over her family’s heads to settle on the roof of the purple martin birdhouse in the corner rose garden.

Seventeen-year-old Isabel slouched against the white picket fence around the front yard, embarrassment clouding her sober features.

Nick glanced from the stranded athletic supporter to the smirking tourists to his daughters to his watch. That damned watch. Then, with the same practiced patience he’d use as high-school principal on any one of his recalcitrant students, he stared up at his wife and cleared his throat.

“Chessie,” he said, enunciating carefully. “The parade starts in ten minutes. I have a speech to give in thirty. Could we discuss this later?”

Chessie took a deep breath for courage. Across the street her friend Martha Weiss stood in her doorway, a bemused expression on her face. “Could we discuss this later?” she repeated, returning her gaze to Nick. “I don’t think so. What I want from the three of you is a little bit of now.”

One of the tourists, a middle-aged woman wearing an enormous red hat and a purple jersey tunic, applauded.

Feeling a glorious sense of release, Chessie slammed the window shut. She picked up her empty coffee mug, then headed downstairs to her studio and her potter’s wheel in the barn. Not that she expected to get any work done immediately. Nick and the girls wouldn’t let her opening salvo go unanswered. Oh, no.

Hormonally charged Gabriella wouldn’t lose this opportunity to tell her mother—yet again—how she was absolutely ruining the teenager’s life. While sweet, sensitive and poetic Isabel would take the opportunity to watch life unfold before her, ever the observer, marginally the participant.

And Nick…

Nick. Nick. Nick.

Nick, the proud and virile man Chessie had married eighteen years ago, would inwardly seethe at this inconvenient show of emotion, this lack of family solidarity. Nick, the workaholic and determined provider she’d followed around the country as he’d climbed his way from beginner teacher to full-fledged-high-school-principal-on-the-fast-track-tosuperintendent…this Nick wouldn’t be amused by her rebellion. Her husband, the now restrained and emotionally distant man she loved as a part of herself, but no longer understood, would instantly go into denial.

He’d try to find a way to minimize her outburst, pull his family together in a semblance of greeting-card perfection and still make his speech in the village square with five minutes to spare for schmoozing.

Well, not today. Today spin control wasn’t going to cut it, not when the new and improved Chessie refused to be spun.

In the dining room, Chessie glanced out the window and saw her family in the yard, trotting in line toward the barn. Grim Father Goose and his irate goslings. They knew her well enough to anticipate her destination.

Working her way through the cluttered kitchen, she placed her empty coffee mug precariously on top of the mound of unwashed dishes in the sink and sighed. The dirty dish fairy wasn’t going to do the job this morning. Nope. She’d just wiped scullery duty from her priority list.

Steeling her will toward the revolution, she went out the kitchen door and through the furnace room. Oh, to get her hands in some therapeutic clay. As she opened the door into the barn’s lower level, three stern faces brought her up short.

“What’s all this about?” Nick asked, not without genuine concern.

Chessie moved toward the stairs leading to her studio and classroom. “I’ve chosen today to grant the three of you—and myself—emotional independence.” She brushed past them. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, the creative juices are flowing.”

“But it’s the Fourth of July,” Gabriella whined. “You’ll miss the parade and Daddy’s speech.”

“I’ll open the loft windows.” Their cottage was only one door removed from the village square. “I’ll hear the band and, with the PA system, Daddy’s speech.”

Isabel frowned. “But we won’t be together.”

Pausing, Chessie turned to her older daughter. “As cruel as it sounds, sweetie, we’re none of us joined at the hip. And I need to work.”

“Geez, Dad,” Gabriella groused, “she was sane at breakfast.”

Yes, she had been sane at breakfast.

It was after breakfast she’d needed to take fifteen minutes—fifteen minutes—for herself in her studio to sketch out the plans for the piece that had been buzzing inside her head for days now, the piece that might prove to be a significant advancement in a career that had never fully taken root because the family moved every couple years for Nick’s career.

But noooo…her own fifteen minutes were not to be.

Nick couldn’t find his red suspenders. Gabriella couldn’t find her favorite jean shorts. And Isabel couldn’t find her iPod. All three looked to Chessie to produce the missing items as if by magic. When she’d finally got into the bathroom to wash her face and run a brush through her hair, she’d been met by the avalanche of dirty laundry.

The proverbial straw.

She was expected to be a 24/7 concierge for everyone else, but wasn’t allowed fifteen uninterrupted minutes to be herself. Not someone’s wife. Not someone’s mother. Not someone’s maid. Herself. A concept she’d almost forgotten the meaning of.

She felt her face go red with frustration.

“Mom?” Isabel’s worried voice brought Chessie back to the barn and the present. “Are you all right?”

Nick glanced at his watch. Again with the watch. “Girls, for whatever reason, I think your mom needs some time alone. We can all meet up for the picnic later.” He leaned over and kissed Chessie on the forehead. A very chaste kiss, infuriating in its total lack of passion.

“Do your thing,” he murmured in a tone that bordered dangerously close to patronizing. “Get it all out of your system. Come to the parade later if you can make it. Either way, we’ll have fun this afternoon on the islands.” He delivered his lines with administrative deliberation. “I’m counting on you. As I always do.”

Poor Nick. He didn’t have a clue that the rules had changed this morning.

If his kiss hadn’t been so platonic and his tone so dismissive, Chessie might’ve limited her initial declaration to the shower of dirty laundry. But it seemed her family still needed a more public nudge.

FROM THE PODIUM in front of the flagpole, Nick looked out over the attentive crowd. As he spotted his daughters and the rest of the McCabe clan—his father, Penn, his sister Mariah, and his brothers Jonas, Brad, with Emily and their four children, and Sean, with Kit and Alexandra—he felt very proud. He’d delivered a worthy speech—brief, patriotic and stirring—and he’d delivered it from the heart. Despite Chessie’s unaccountable behavior earlier, he felt a real sense of hometown satisfaction.

“And in closing, I ask each and every one of you,” he concluded with conviction, “as you enjoy today’s activities, to count your blessings. There is no finer, freer place to live than Pritchard’s Neck, Maine.”

As the applause broke out around him, a flash of sunlight on metal captured his attention. Ever the principal, Nick worried that a brass player with the high-school band had gone AWOL for a smoke behind the library—until he saw Chessie in front of the library, adjusting a slapdash sandwich-board sign over her shoulders as she held aloft Nick’s battered junior-high-school trumpet. The sign secure, she put the instrument to her lips and delivered one short, sour blast.

The band leader glowered at his brass section.

Nick’s sense of hometown satisfaction sprang a leak.

It wasn’t at all unusual for Pritchard’s Neck residents and visitors to bring noisemakers to the Fourth of July parade and speech as part of the celebration and the local color. Chessie could toot her horn till the mackerel ran without raising an eyebrow. But the sign gave Nick pause.

In bold capital letters the board read, CHESSIE MCCABE ON STRIKE UNTIL HER NEEDS ARE MET. How many ways could that be taken? And how many people had noticed?

Nick felt the color drain from his face.

He heard a high-pitched, synchronized squeal from the front of the crowd. It appeared Gabriella and Isabel had just spotted their mother.

Damage control his middle name, Nick gave the band leader a curt nod. Quentin Landry, one of Nick’s high-school faculty, responded immediately by having his students play a rousing exit march.

Snapping photos as if in pursuit of a Pulitzer, the tourists who’d witnessed the literal airing of McCabe dirty laundry earlier crowded around a sweetly smiling Chessie. It would be just Nick’s luck if one of them worked for The New York Times Sunday magazine. His wife’s behavior—today’s behavior—certainly fit the eccentric mold outsiders often formed of Mainers, delighted in spreading in travel articles. But Nick—specifically, his career—couldn’t afford eccentricity.

Grinding his teeth, he made his way off the bunting-trimmed podium.

Gabriella and Isabel assailed him. “Dad—”

“I’ll take care of it.” He gave each daughter a quick hug. “You know your mom—always on the cutting edge.”

“But—”

“Go get the picnic hamper. We’ll all four be on our way in just a sec.” He could only hope.

The two girls stared at him.

“I promise,” he said, grimacing.

What had gotten into his wife? Because of her artistic nature, he expected her to be occasionally, creatively quirky. In private. She’d always been sensible in public. Supportive.

Fully intending to keep his private and his public lives separate, Nick pushed through the crowd around the library entrance. “Excuse me,” he said, grasping Chessie’s arm and propelling her through the doorway into the small book drop foyer. “Show’s over, folks.” The sandwich board banged him in the shins.

Closing the outer door with difficulty, he turned to Chessie. Heatstroke might be a reasonable explanation for her bizarre behavior this morning. But she beamed up at him, her hazel eyes clear and purposeful.

“Performance art?” he asked, hopeful.

“Absolutely not,” she replied with a seriousness that short-circuited his brief glimmer of optimism.

“Are you angry with me? With the girls?” Arguing on one of his rare days off wasn’t his idea of fun. He hated confrontation on the home front. He relied on Chessie to negotiate peace.

She cocked her head. “Angry is such a negative word.”

“What then? Pick a word, any word. As long as it explains why you threw our laundry onto the front lawn. Why you’re wearing a…a picket sign.”

“You noticed.” She sighed. Her angelic expression hinted at sarcasm.

“Of course I noticed.”

She patted his arm. “That’s a start.”

“A start?” In exasperation, he rubbed his hand across his forehead. “I have one day to relax before summer school begins. The driver’s ed car’s in the shop. The state accreditation team’s making its first visit in two days. The air-conditioning in the science lab has been acting hinky. My best English teacher just told me she’s pregnant and won’t be back for the fall term…” He took a deep breath. “I wanted one day—one day—to recoup with my family.”

“I needed fifteen minutes to work on an idea,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.

“An idea for a pot?”

“Sort of.”

“And we didn’t give it to you.”

“That’s what I thought at first. But then I realized you three wouldn’t give it if I didn’t take it. Couldn’t take advantage of me if I didn’t let you.”

As he tried to digest this, she flashed him a grin. Her megawatt smiles never ceased to take his breath away, but this one felt like a shot to the solar plexus.

“And now that you’ve asserted yourself…” He hesitated, wary. “And now that we’ve taken notice…we’ll kayak to the islands for a picnic?”

“Not exactly.”

“Honey,” his holiday slipping away, he glanced at his watch “the tide’s only going to give us so much leeway.”

“Ah, yes. Time and tide wait for no man.” Her shoulders drooped slightly. “The high-school principal’s credo.”

“Are you trying to pick a fight? Is your p—”

The librarian poked her head into the foyer. “Is there something I could help you find?”

If only. “No, thank you,” Nick replied. “We’re okay.”

As the librarian made her way back to her desk, Chessie glared at Nick. “No, my period isn’t coming,” she whispered, “if that’s what you were about to suggest. It isn’t always about hormones.”

He backpedaled. “Chessie, give me some credit. Is your…pot you wanted to work on under deadline?”

Nice save. His wrist, the one with the watch on it, twitched.

“Not in the usual sense.” She narrowed her eyes. “I told you a trustee for the Portland Museum of Art loved the idea for this piece. She wants it for her private collection. And she carries such influence in the New England art world that a successful sale might be the opening I’ve been looking for. The opening that could take my career to the next level.”

“I didn’t understand.” A library patron tried to enter the cramped foyer with an armload of books, but the heavy sandwich board Chessie still wore got in the way.

“Sorry.” Awkwardly, Nick and Chessie squeezed farther back into the corner.

“I know you didn’t understand,” Chessie continued, lowering her voice even more. “Neither did the girls. That’s just the point. But you will.”

Nick felt queasy. He liked explanations. Concise and logical explanations stripped of a storyteller’s suspenseful pacing. He didn’t like surprises. Pinching the bridge of his nose, he said, “Give me a hint.”

“Let’s just say I’m having my midlife crisis. I’ve worked hard for it. I deserve it. And I’m going to enjoy it.”

“Chessie. You’re only thirty-seven.”

“And getting older by the minute.” She reached for the door. “Go on. Take the girls to the islands. I’ll spend the afternoon in my studio. We’ll watch the fireworks together from the terrace tonight.”

He stayed her hand on the knob. “You’re kidding about the midlife crisis.”

She paused. “If that explanation gets you thinking about the lopsided dynamics of our family life, so be it.”

“What lopsided dynamics?”

“Hadn’t noticed, had you?” Chessie bristled, an unusually combative look in her eyes. “How about my unappreciated backstage roles as the family’s chief cook and bottle washer, laundress, taxi driver, mediator, cheerleader, nurse, convenient lover and general bend-over-till-I-can-touch-my-nose-to-my-behind Gumby?”

“You can’t possibly think of yourself that way.”

“I don’t, but the rest of you—”

“Shh!” A child in the picture-book section put her finger to her lips.

With effort, Nick closed the door between the foyer and the main reading room. “What’s gotten into you?” He wasn’t a stupid person. He was the principal of a regional high school.

She paused, leveling him with her gray-green stare. “I have work. Work I need to do for myself. For a change. It’s not as if I’m abandoning you. I don’t always have to be the recreation director. It will do the three of you good to spend some time alone together. To have your routine jostled a bit.”

His work routine was always being jostled. He didn’t like upset in his personal life.

“We’ll talk later,” she offered. “There’ll be a quiz on what you’ve learned this morning.”

He didn’t react to her attempt at humor. “I’ll carry the sign home for you.” He needed to take charge, even in this small way.

“Nick, Nick,” she purred, “you always were my knight in shining armor.”

“Were?” He stiffened. “So what am I now?”

“Your armor needs a little buffing.” She wriggled out of the sandwich board.

Confused, Nick took the bulky sign from her and, with difficulty, turned it inside-out so the words were hidden. He opened the door as if nothing had happened.

But something had.

When they’d married eighteen years ago, they’d been in total agreement. He’d be the breadwinner. She’d keep home and hearth. Now Chessie wanted to change the agreement. It made Nick, a man who never tinkered with what worked, want to reach for the antacid tablets.

Chessie knew that, after her demonstration, Nick would want to make it home without attracting any more attention. But the sight of Penn, along with Sean, Kit and Alex waiting for them outside the library told her escape would be impossible. McCabes—even in small groups—were notorious for practicing family by committee.

“So, this is what you had in mind when you said you had other plans and couldn’t come to the family picnic,” his father said.

Chessie saw Nick flinch. “I was going to take my family to the islands,” he replied, a defensive edge to his voice. “I never have time to get out on the water. It seems I rarely have time to see my wife and daughters.”

“Is that what Chessie’s demanding?” With an amused twinkle in his eye, Penn indicated the now reversed sandwich board. “More attention?”

“Pop, butt out.” Good-naturedly, Sean nudged their father.

“Hey, I’m just wondering if I should be wearing a protest sign,” Penn retorted. “I’m his old man, and I never see him.”

“I’m busy, Pop. Making a living.”

“We all are,” Sean noted. “So…great speech.”

“Aunt Chessie, can I play your trumpet?” Sean’s nine-year-old daughter Alex piped up. Nick looked relieved to be out of the spotlight for a moment.

“Sure.” Chessie relinquished her noisemaker. “Do you think you can play it better than I did?”

“You weren’t very good,” Alex said with her typical candor. She put the trumpet to her lips, then blew till she was red in the face. Only a hiss of air came out. With a frown she lowered the instrument. “But you’re better than me.”

The adults laughed.

“Take it home with you,” Nick urged. “You can practice.”

“Oh, thanks.” Sean ruffled Alex’s hair. “Just what we need. More noise in the house.”

“Your Uncle Nick’s afraid Aunt Chessie might try to make a point with it again,” Penn declared dryly.

“So…” Kit indicated both the trumpet and the sandwich board. “Are we talking about this?”

“Sure,” Chessie replied as Nick said, “No.”

If anyone would understand her mission, it was Kit. At twenty-five, her sister-in-law had been on her own for nine years—nine unconventional years—until Sean convinced her that loving him and Alex didn’t mean she had to give up her individuality.

Nick looked at his watch. “The tide…”

“You know McCabe parties go on forever,” Sean said. “Stop by when you get in.”

“Thanks.” Nick smiled, but he didn’t say they’d be there.

Chessie wondered about that as they made their way home. Nick had told her that moving this last time was a good idea because they’d settle into a ready-made family. She and the girls had done the settling, but Nick remained strangely aloof.

“Are you and your family okay?” she asked.

“Why wouldn’t we be?”

She didn’t pursue the issue. Nick’s relationship with his family had always been…special. His mother had died when he was twelve and Jonas, his youngest brother, just one. Nick had been old enough at the time to shoulder some of the responsibility of looking after the kids. She could see where the experience had honed his deeply ingrained provider instinct. But when he’d left for college nineteen years ago, he’d left for a future away from Pritchard’s Neck. And when they’d returned last year, Nick had never seemed completely at ease with either his father or his siblings.

He seemed as emotionally AWOL with them as he was with her.

Chessie couldn’t control his relationships with others, but if her strike woke her husband up, she might not be the only one whose needs were met.

CHAPTER TWO

“CHESSIE?” Nick glanced at his watch. Seven-thirty. “We’re home!”

“I’m up in the bedroom.”

She sounded rational. With some sense of relief that she hadn’t ambushed him with more laundry, he climbed the stairs. Yet today’s explosion—having gone beyond anything she’d ever pulled on them before—still worried him. He was tired from exploring the islands with the girls, but he needed to get to the bottom of this before the situation escalated.

But what was the situation? What did she really want from them? From him? She’d spoken in riddles.

Chessie had mentioned a project that was important to her. He’d always liked her interest in ceramics because it seemed to relax her, but maybe the self-imposed pressure to excel had gotten out of hand. Maybe she actually needed to lay off the pottery for a while.

Maybe he could engineer a short break for the two of them, since he’d chosen not to take his scheduled vacation this year. The AP science teacher had promised his spring term students a bus trip to Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire next week. A reward for passing their Advanced Placement exams. Maybe he and Chessie could hook up as chaperones. It wouldn’t be a real vacation, it wasn’t an overnight trip, but it would be a change of scene. Maybe he could afford one more day off work. If he could only get next fall’s hiring completed this week.

There were far too many ifs and maybes.

He found himself stalled in the upstairs hallway.

“Do you plan to step over the threshold?” Chessie leaned against the bedroom door frame, looking up at him. Lost in thought, he hadn’t even noticed her. “I won’t bite,” she added.

“I wasn’t sure.”

“I said we’d talk later. Now’s good.”

“The fireworks start at nine.”

“Oh, we have plenty of time before the fireworks start.” With a gleam in her eye that could itself be described as pyrotechnic, she pulled him into their bedroom and closed the door firmly behind them.

Things were looking up.

He moved to take her in his arms.

“Talk,” she said, pushing him down to sit on the bed while she remained standing. “So…what did you learn today?”

He was in treacherous, uncharted territory. “Chessie—”

“Maaaa!” The adolescent shriek careened up the stairwell and through the closed door. “Are there any strawberries and whipped cream left over from breakfast?” Gabriella.

With a shudder, Chessie opened the door. “Miss McCabe, unless you broke both legs and at least one arm on your trip to the islands, you can open the refrigerator door and check for yourself.” Her shoulders seemed to droop. “Please don’t interrupt. Your father and I are in the middle of an important conversation.”

“It won’t interfere with us watching the fireworks, will it?”

“If you don’t give us ten minutes, the fireworks will begin early, I promise.”

Even from upstairs, Nick could hear Gabriella stomping off to the kitchen. He’d always admired Chessie’s infinite patience with their daughters, especially Gabby, who was proving a handful. This evening, however, that patience showed signs of wear and tear.

Breathing deeply, Chessie turned back into the room. “Where was I?”

“You wanted to know what I’d learned today.” He chose his words carefully. “I think perhaps you want more time to yourself.”

“Not quite. It’s more that I don’t believe you and the girls see me as being a self. I’m your wife, their mom. Outside of that, I think I’m a bit of a blur.”

“How can you say that?”

“Okay. What was I wearing this morning?”

A trick question. Was she wearing the shorts and T-shirt she had on now?

“Besides a sandwich board?” he asked, stalling.

Clearly impatient now, she crossed her arms over her chest. “Underneath the sandwich board.”

He frowned. Before she’d surprised him with her strike sign, she’d shown every intention of working on her pots. He hazarded a guess. “Shorts. A smock.”

“What color were my toenails?”

He glanced quickly at her feet. She wore sneakers. “Red, white and blue?”

“Have you ever seen me paint my nails? Ever? The girls, yes, but me? I don’t think so.” With an unexpected snort of laughter, she picked up a pillow from the window seat and threw it at him. “Red, white and blue. I’ll give you C+ for creativity.”

The fact that she didn’t appear angry seemed to augur the return of the old, familiar Chessie, mischievous but sweet. His exact opposite. Perhaps that’s why he’d been drawn to her back in high school—

Another pillow hit him in the head. “No daydreaming in class.”

“Then can we cut to the chase? My day off is almost gone. I’d like to spend the rest of it with my family. With you.”

“About this morning—”

“You’re forgiven.” He grinned, then immediately regretted his ill-timed humor as another pillow whizzed by his head.

“You and the girls mustn’t take me for granted any longer.” The renewed rebellion in her eyes told him this was no joke. “There are times I feel invisible.”

“Sweetheart.” He opened his arms to her. “You are the most colorful, least invisible woman I know. The girls and I love every quirky bone in your body.” Okay, so it wasn’t Robert Browning. He was a high-school principal—a weary high-school principal—not a poet.

“Do you understand how important my work is to me?” she asked.

“If there were a Maine Mom-and-Wife-of-the-Year Award, I’d nominate you in a heartbeat.”

“And my pottery?”

“I love your pots.” Better keep it simple. Talk of arts and crafts dragged him out of his league.

“Do you know how much money I put away from my teaching and sales last year?”

“I never asked because that’s your mad money.”

“Mad money? After taxes last year I added twelve thousand dollars to the girls’ college fund.”

Twelve thousand dollars? He nearly choked. He had no idea a hobby could be so lucrative.

“Mad money, indeed,” Chessie muttered as she closed in on him. “The negotiating price for this new piece alone is fifteen hundred dollars. This is art, Nick, not Play-Doh.”

“Fifteen—” He did choke. And sputtered. Chessie whacked him on the back. A little too hard, if you asked him. “We need to have a talk with our tax man. Have we declared your earnings?”

She sighed. “I filed separate forms as a self-employed businesswoman. I’ve kept my own books. I’ve joined the Better Business Bureau. Taken an Internet workshop on finances and investments.”

He seemed to recall their tax man mentioning the separate filing, but the news had been overshadowed at the time by the threat of a sports-injury lawsuit at school.

“When did you do all this?” Her secret life astounded him.

“While the girls were in school. Any night you worked late.”

That could’ve been any night of the week.

“And you didn’t think I’d be interested?”

“I tried to tell you a dozen times,” she insisted, “but you weren’t listening.”

With a sinking heart, he took her point.

“Aha!” she exclaimed when she saw he understood. “And did you know I’m very close to opening that gallery I’ve always wanted? In the barn on the ground floor.”

He looked hard at this woman he’d underestimated. What else had she been up to in his absence? The possibilities racing though his mind made Nick feel—for the first time in his life—blown off course.

“How do you expect me to take you seriously when we haven’t talked about any of this?”

She seemed taken aback by his question, but only briefly. “So much of our ever-shrinking time together is spent discussing your job and how it affects our future. The rest of the time it’s the girls—”

“That’s a cop-out, Chessie, and you know it. You want recognition, but you’re not communicating.”

Her nostrils widened as she inhaled sharply. “Maybe you’re right…but today I woke up. I won’t ever be satisfied if I don’t tell you why I’m dissatisfied.”

“And how.” Smiling ruefully, he rubbed the back of his neck. “So…your pots can bring in that much?” Here he thought she’d been having a few friends over for coffee and crafts. “I’m impressed, Chessie.”

“Impressed with the idea of a real business, are you? But do you appreciate the woman behind the work?”

“Of course we do,” he replied.

“Let’s leave the girls out of this. I’ll deal with them separately. Do you appreciate me? All of me.”

Hell, yes. He gazed at her as she strode across the bedroom to stand in front of the window. She was tall and still had a great figure after two children. Her long unruly auburn hair was partially held back by a ribbon. Her skin seemed otherworldly. Creamy. Smooth. Cool, most likely. She was always blessedly cool to the touch on even the hottest summer day. There was nothing cool about her eyes, though. Fire and ice. That was his Chessie. And ever since high school she’d had the power to excite him. He felt himself grow hard.

“If wanting you can be construed as appreciation,” he ventured, “I’d say I recognize what a lucky man I am.”

“So you want to make love to me?”

“Now that’s a fact.”

“Perhaps because we always make love on nights before you start your workweek?”

He didn’t like this detour. “You make it sound like a routine.”

“That’s what I haven’t quite figured out.” Crossing her arms again, she began to tap her fingers restlessly on her elbows. “I’m not sure if you really want to make love to me…or whether you’re simply after a bit of release from tension.”

“You’ve been spoiling for a fight all day. It has to be hormones.”

Low blow. And one he instantly regretted.

She glared at him.

He pulled his frustration in line. “Is it so awful I want to make love to my wife?”

“What about foreplay? What about romance? What about extending these concepts beyond the bedroom door?”

She was losing him again.

“I want to feel newly and thoroughly wooed,” she explained. “No more school functions that do double duty as dates. No more chaste pecks on the forehead. No more checking your watch when I begin to talk.”

“I had no idea—”

“Well, now you do. For a change, I want pizzazz instead of Friday night pizza. I want my toes to tingle and not because the Volvo needs a tune-up.”

“Sounds good to me.” He moved to embrace her, but she stepped aside.

“Seriously, Nick. Is it so awful I want to bring our relationship in for an inspection and tune-up?”

“I never thought there were two people who agreed more on how they wanted their life together to unfold. I promised to provide for you. You said you wanted to be a wife and mother.”

“I did. Do.” She seemed to search for words. “But I was nineteen when we married. I couldn’t have anticipated how I’d grow. I love being a wife and mother, but I want to be other things as well. We need to rearrange our relationship a little bit to make room for all of me.”

“But why today?” He made the mistake of glancing at his watch.

“Ooh!” She grabbed two fistfuls of her hair. “Some day I’m going to flush that watch down the toilet.”

“Guys!” Isabel stood in the doorway. “I gotta use your bathroom. Gabriella’s hogging ours.”

Nick bristled. “Your mother and I are trying to have a conversation here.”

“Go right ahead.” Isabel whisked by them into the master bath, then slammed the door, making the pictures on the walls rattle in their frames. Behind the closed door the teenager broke into a caterwauling song of love lost.

Nick suddenly felt ambushed by females. His office at school, even with the attendant troubles, now seemed like a haven. Even the boys’ locker room would be a better hideout. An estrogen-free zone. Quelling his disloyal thoughts and mustering what little patience remained at his disposal, he stood. “Is it too much to ask for a little peace and quiet on my one day off?

Her husband’s intransigence fueled Chessie’s determination. He wasn’t stupid. He wasn’t selfish. He was maddeningly preoccupied. But he’d been right about her needing to communicate if she wanted to be recognized—to be seen—and not simply as some competent mother of his children, some unobtrusive window dressing for his career.

“Some people are afraid of being fat and forty,” she said, persevering. “Do you know what I’m afraid of? I’m afraid I’m headed straight toward faded and forty.”

“It’ll never happen.” With obvious weariness Nick pinched the bridge of his nose. “Fear of fading? After today? You’re going to have to think of some other excuse to pick a fight.”

“I’m not trying to pick a fight.” She began to pace. “I’m trying to start a dialogue.”

“I’m sensing lovemaking is fast becoming a long shot,” Nick said, making sure Isabel couldn’t hear him over her hurting song.

“I’ll tell you what. Let’s get kinky. Tonight let’s perform that over-the-top sex act, listening. How about it?”

“Sarcasm doesn’t become you, Chess.”

A sudden overwhelming sadness sapped her energy. “I feel as if you’re slipping away from me.”

“Maybe that’s because I’m tired and I have a full day tomorrow. Trying to provide for my family.” His words sounded raw.

She knew this was how he showed love. By being responsible.

Crossing the room, she stood in front of him. “You are a wonderful provider, Nick.”

“Then where have I failed you?”

“It’s not a matter of failure.” She placed her hands on his cheeks, felt his warmth. Gazed into dark eyes that had always mesmerized her with their depth and intelligence. “We’ve drifted into a relationship that’s convenient. I want to rediscover the romance we shared when we were—”

“Hey, no time for gooey, guys.” Gabriella burst into the room. “Mom, I need your hooded sweatshirt. It’s getting chilly.”

“Excuse me.” Irritated, Chessie faced her daughter. “This is our bedroom. Please, knock. And you may borrow my hooded sweatshirt when you return the two tees you took last week.”

“They’re dirty…and out on the lawn.”

“Then I guess you have yard work and laundry to do before the fireworks.”

“Dad?”

“Your mother’s asked you to do two things.” Nick stood firm. “You have time before dark to start both. I suggest you get busy.”

The bathroom door swung open. “Are you guys fighting?” Isabel stood wide-eyed in the doorway. Chessie knew this was her seventeen-year-old’s biggest fear, that something would separate her family as it had too many of her friends.

“We’re not fighting, love,” Chessie denied. “We’re having a discussion.” Seizing the moment, she reached for the sheet of paper on her nightstand. “And I’ll take this opportunity to explain our new cooking schedule.”

Gabriella stepped to her father’s side. “Dad, she’s got that look in her eyes again.”

Chessie ignored the perplexed expressions on her family’s faces. “For a year now I’ve wanted to take the Art Guild’s figure drawing class. Call it career advancement.” She shot Nick a pointed glance. “But it’s Wednesday right while I’m preparing dinner. So I need help. To that end, I’ve made up a meal schedule.” She extended the paper to them, but the other three recoiled. “Each member of the family will be responsible for dinner on two assigned days of the week. Izzy and Gabby, you count as one person. I’ll take the extra day, but never Wednesday. That should free me up to attend class, starting tomorrow. Girls, you begin the rotation.”

“You expect us to cook?” Gabriella, her mouth working, looked like a beached fish gasping its last.

“You can start simple. Peanut butter sandwiches and milk. Carrot sticks. I’m not fussy.”

“Honey…” Nick assumed his official negotiator voice. “They’re just kids.”

“And they’ll remain children indefinitely if they don’t begin to take on some responsibility.”

“Tomorrow Mrs. Weiss promised to take Izzy and Keri and me to the mall.” Keri was the neighbors’— George and Martha’s—daughter and Gabriella’s best friend. “Dad, switch days with us.”

Nick’s eyes widened in dawning recognition. He spread his hands, palms up to Chessie in a conciliatory gesture. “You can’t expect me to—”

“Takeout. As I said, I’m not fussy. Now, I’ll post this schedule on the refrigerator and then I’m assuming fireworks position on the terrace while you girls take care of the laundry in the yard.” Amazed at how light she felt after this first transfer of duties, she smiled broadly. “Dibs on the hammock. But I’ll share with a like-minded romantic.” She could only hope.

Not waiting for further reaction from her shell-shocked family, she made her way downstairs, hoping she would draw Nick to her, not push him away.

“Maaaa!” Gabriella wailed behind her. “You’ve ruined the Fourth of July!”

“Oh, no, my dear,” Chessie called from below. “I hope I’ve honored the spirit of the day.”

“Well, I’m not watching any stupid fireworks now.” Her younger daughter’s grousing wafted down the stairwell, followed by an indistinguishable response from Nick.

Second thoughts stabbed her as she rummaged in the living room for her John Philip Sousa CD. Had she ruined a holiday with unreasonable demands? Had she mistaken wants for needs?

No, dammit.

She hadn’t behaved selfishly today. She’d merely issued a wake-up call for Nick and the girls’ own good, as well as her own. Growing up, she’d observed her workaholic father drive himself to an early grave. As an adult, she’d watched as too many of her friends had spoiled their children to the obnoxious stage. She’d seen husbands and wives grow to be strangers. If she lay down and became a doormat, what kind of a match was she for Nick? What kind of a role model for Izzy and Gabby?

Having found the desired CD, she headed for the furnace room where she tripped over the cat litter box, out of place and full to overflowing. Normally, she would stop what she was doing to clean it for the sake of the cats her daughters had begged to bring home from the shelter. (“We’ll take care of them. Promise.” Right.)

The new Chessie found a scrap of paper, a marker and a broken tomato stick. Skewering the paper with the stick, she wrote, “Yo! This ain’t no toxic waste dump. Clean it up! The Cats.” She jammed the stick in the corner of the litter and left the box in the middle of the floor.

Highly satisfied with no-holds-barred Chessie, she hunted up sparklers, the beach boombox and bug repellent, then forged ahead to the darkening terrace where she immediately began slathering on lotion. Despite the fact that the mosquito seemed to be the Maine state bird, she wondered if her family—should they choose to join her—would think to lather up without a motherly nag.

Ah, but she’d washed her hands of nagging, negotiating, coercing, reminding. She’d now moved into the fluid rinse cycle of mature communication. In the future, she would treat her family as individuals—as she wished them to treat her. She only hoped she hadn’t hung herself out to dry.

Content that she’d protected every exposed inch of skin, she flipped on the Sousa CD. Perhaps if she seemed happy, her family would be lured to join her. She hadn’t meant to drive them away. On the contrary, she was searching for a way to draw them closer. In a more equitable fashion.

She struck a match to a sparkler. The slender wand sprang to life, adding its cheery glow to that of the myriad fireflies dancing in the dusky gardens. Chessie raised her little torch to the heavens.

“Huzzah,” she said softly, not sure whether she felt the proper revolutionary or one rather isolated wife and mother. An exile by her own design.

Footsteps crunched against the stones on the terrace. She turned to see Nick standing behind her.

“Truce?” he asked, his voice weary.

At the sight of him, her heart beat faster. “Care to join me in the hammock?”

“Sure.” He smacked the side of his neck with the flat of his hand, a clear sign he hadn’t put on bug lotion. Oh, well, he was a big boy.

As Chessie sat in the hammock, Isabel called from the kitchen window. “Mom, what did you do with my Zinc Noze Boyz CD? It was in my portable player.”

The sharp pain in Chessie’s backside told her exactly what someone had done with the player and headphones. “Isabel, you left it in the hammock. I hope it wasn’t here overnight when it rained.”

“Criminies!” The teenager’s footsteps echoed through the house.

“Zinc Noze Boyz.” Carefully sitting next to her in the hammock, Nick chuckled. “Now there’s a recording I wouldn’t want ruined.”

Isabel burst onto the terrace, her arms outstretched. “Thanks,” she mumbled, grasping the player and jamming the headphones over her ears. Leaning against the house, she quickly became lost in the music, with only occasional swats to various body parts. No bug lotion. Like father, like daughter.

Nick draped his arm over Chessie’s shoulder, then lay back in the hammock, pulling her with him. “Nice perfume,” he murmured.

Perfume? She never wore perfume. Oh, yeah, the bug lotion. If this was all the romance today’s demonstration had gotten her, she needed to up the ante. Might even have to implement Plan B…

“This is nice,” he added. His muffled words told her he’d be asleep before the fireworks started.

Plan B it was.

“Yes, this is nice,” she agreed. “Emerging starlight. The scent of flowers. A cricket serenade. The closeness of two bodies.” She stroked his thigh. “It’s quite romantic.”

“Couldn’t agree more.” He was fading fast.

“We need more romance in our marriage.”

“Anything…you…say.” He held to consciousness by a tenuous thread.

“And I have a plan.” She walked her fingers up his chest. “I read in your Sports Illustrated that athletes try to imprint positive behavior. Good golf swing. Great slap shot. Terrific slam dunk.”

“Soun’s great.”

“They try to memorize how the positive feels and then block out the negative or the extraneous, both mentally and physically.” She stroked the stubble along his jaw.

“Mmmm…”

“So I thought, since we both agree this romantic feeling is nice, we could work on replicating it. Kind of like the athletes. We’d be in training, so to speak, in our relationship.” She laid her cheek on his shoulder with her mouth close to his ear. “More romance. It could become our mantra.”

His deep intake of breath sounded suspiciously like a snore.

“We need to recognize the difference between real romance and a convenient physical release.” She ran her tongue along the rim of his ear. “Nick, while we’re concentrating on the romance, I think we’re going to have to can the sex.”

On the verge of sleep or not, he sat bolt upright in the hammock. “No sex?” With the wild look of someone with one foot in dreams and the other in reality, he spotted his daughter lost in her music and lowered his voice. “Are you out of your mind?”

She seemed to have his attention now.

“Just till we’re back on track as a couple, hon.” She massaged the tense muscles of his back. “Sex can cloud the issue.”

“Dammit, we’re married.”

“I’m well aware of that. But I’d like to feel as if we were courting. And I, for one, am embracing celibacy until that hearts-and-flowers feeling returns.”

“What are you trying to do to me, Chess?”

“Us, Nick. Us. And I’m trying to make us better.”

Angry, he stood up. “Well, it sure feels as if it’s all about me. And none of it feels good.” He stormed off the terrace, past Isabel, who appeared oblivious to her father’s distress.

Chessie slumped back in the hammock as the first of the fireworks exploded overhead with a tremendous boom and a dizzying display of color.

CHAPTER THREE

TEN HOURS LATER Nick still fumed.

Last night, afraid he might say something he’d regret in the morning, he’d left Chessie on the terrace without discussing her ridiculous challenge. He’d been too frustrated to debate what he didn’t understand. Besides, pure physical exhaustion had caught up with him. He’d headed to bed.

He hadn’t slept, however, and his wife hadn’t joined him in their bedroom.

Morning had dawned with confusion dogging his sleep-deprived brain. Even now, after all the words exchanged yesterday, he didn’t see why she’d become dissatisfied with their marriage. And celibacy after eighteen years together? What a crock. He felt manipulated and hoped the old sofa in her studio, where she’d more than likely spent the night, had been lumpy.

He’d looked forward to reading the morning paper to see if he was still in the same universe he’d been in before the Fourth, but the new paper carrier had tossed it in the birdbath.

Aggravated before the work day had begun, he pounded the steering wheel of his old and cranky Volvo as he prepared to head to school. He empathized with cranky, wincing at the grinding sound the car’s transmission made when he pulled out of the driveway. Not unlike the discordant, grating gears of his once well-oiled life.

He’d stop at Tindall’s Service Center on the way to school and leave the car to be checked. John would give him a ride to work.

His thoughts crowded, Nick scratched the back of his neck in irritation. The mosquitoes had feasted on him last night, and now the nonstop itching was driving him nuts. At least something had been hungry for his body, he thought sourly.

Using extreme caution, he drove the short distance to the service center. As he pulled into the lot, he experienced a pang of envy for the automotive work of John Tindall, his former classmate. With machines, when something went wrong, the problem was real, physical and, for the most part, observable.

Unlike relationships.

As he stepped out of the car, Nick wished he could raise Chessie on a lift, hook her up to a diagnostic machine.

“Nick.” John hailed him from the gas pumps where he was putting out pails of water and windshield cleaning squeegees. “How’s it going?”

Nick shook his head. John didn’t really want to know. “If I leave my car here, could you look at my transmission sometime today? I don’t like what I’m hearing.”

“What I’m hearing,” John replied with a grin, “is that Chessie’s set to reform you.”

Just what Nick needed as he went about the delicate business of hiring new teachers, some new to the area. What if this gossip filtered through his staff to the recruits? How would it affect his image as a professional and a leader?

He spied Abigail, John’s wife and bookkeeper, peeking out from behind curtains in the office window, an unmistakable smile on her pretty face. Nick sighed heavily. “You know Chessie, John. Just some Fourth-of-July hijinks.”

“If you say so.” The mechanic wiped his hands on a rag.

“Oh, hell!” Nick ran his fingers through his hair. “Do you know what women really want?”

John snorted. “Abigail says all she wants is a little bit more than she’s ever going to get.”

“But what exactly is that little bit more?”

“In Abigail’s case, money.”

Nick shook his head. That wasn’t the case with Chessie. Or was it? She’d said she wanted to be romanced. Did that mean expensive jewelry and exotic bouquets? Those things hadn’t mattered to her in the past. But, as far as he’d been concerned, Chessie had seemed content, and look at how wrong he’d been on that score.

“What about romance?” he asked.

“Frankly, Abigail seems to get her kicks from a ledger in the black. But what do I know?”

“You’re saying you haven’t a clue.”

“Not a one.” John raised his hat, repositioned it, then set it back on his head in the age-old male gesture that begged to change the subject. “So, you want a ride to work?”

“Yeah. I hope you’re better at figuring out transmissions than you are at figuring out women.”

At the high school, Hattie St. Regis, his administrative assistant, met him with a fresh pot of coffee and a double-parked agenda. “Restful holiday?” she asked, her eyes betraying no sign of gossip-induced interest.

“Yes,” he lied, trying to focus on the day planner on his desk, obscured with new paperwork.

“Good. We have quite a schedule today.” She poured them each a cup of coffee. “I’m thinking of getting an espresso machine in this place. Regular coffee just doesn’t spark my plugs any more.”

What did spark women’s plugs these days? He didn’t dare ask Hattie’s advice. For the past year the two of them had maintained a strictly professional relationship.

Shuffling papers, he spotted a petition from a large section of last year’s female student body, requesting the addition of an elective course on women’s studies.

“Hattie.” He held up the petition. “I think we’ve been vigilant in updating our curriculum. We’ve tried to include important contributions, events, philosophies from all groups regardless of ethnicity or gender.”

“Yes?”

“So why would we need a separate women’s studies class?” He noted her sharply raised eyebrows. “I mean, if we’re sincerely trying to appreciate the accomplishments of women in the curriculum at large, why would women want to segregate the issue? What do women want or need that’s so different from what men want or need?”

She eyed him sharply without speaking, and he wondered if she didn’t see clear through to his real question.

“Do you want a professional opinion or a personal one?”

He swallowed hard and took the plunge. “Personal.”

“Women of any age want to be taken seriously. Need to be noticed for the whole of who and what we are.” A hint of mischief warmed her eyes. “Sometimes we have to get demonstrative. With, say…petitions.”

She picked up her coffee mug and turned to leave his office. Over her shoulder she added, “If I were you, I’d okay the women’s studies course…and I’d pick up a big box of Chessie’s favorite chocolates on your way home tonight. It’s not a solution, but it’s a start.”

Nick rubbed his eyes. Everyone wanted to be taken seriously. To be noticed for their skills and accomplishments. Women couldn’t claim that need as their own. But Chessie felt strongly enough about it that she was afraid of turning forty and faded.

How could his own red, white and blue trumpeter feel faded? She was Technicolor, for crying out loud. Neon. Hadn’t he told her as much time and time again?

Hadn’t he?

Hattie was right. He’d pick up chocolates on his way home from work. And he’d find out all about that pottery project the museum trustee had shown interest in—a fifteen hundred dollar interest, no less. Maybe then Chessie would forget about her ridiculous no-sex challenge.

And if she didn’t? Well, Nick might just have to admit he had a problem. But wasn’t solving problems his stock-in-trade?

CHESSIE SUPPRESSED A SCREAM and the urge to hose down her heel-dragging daughter, who didn’t seem to care that her mother couldn’t wait to hook up with the art class that would begin in fifteen minutes. Couldn’t wait to be in the company of artists like herself. Self-motivated adults. As compared to her girls, who’d fought her at every turn today.

“Isabel,” she said, trying desperately not to nag. “I’ll be back in two hours. Your dad should be home from work by then. We can eat any time after that.” With dismay she viewed the mountain of dirty Fourth-of-July dishes. Obviously, she needed to provide some impetus. Not nagging, but nudging. “You can’t prepare supper, and we can’t eat without clean recruits from the dish department.”

“This is so unfair,” the teenager complained.

“Unfair or not, dishes happen.”

“But I have a headache.” With a pained expression, Isabel sank against the counter.

Chessie felt no sympathy. Her elder daughter was prone to hypochondria and a sort of Victorian lethargy. “A lovely hand-soak in dishwater should cure it.”

“We have to be the only house in Maine without a dishwasher. It’s absolutely prehistoric.”

“Nevertheless.” Chessie heard Gabriella thumping down the stairs. “Ah, reinforcements. I’m sure you and your sister—” She gasped in shock.

Gabriella, whose wavy strawberry-blond hair had been her crowning glory, now sported a buzz cut with only a fringe of bangs, which she had dyed a startling lime-green.

“Gabriella!” Chessie squeaked. “What have you done?”

“Don’t go ballistic.” Her younger daughter shrugged. “You’re not the only one in this family entitled to a little recognition.”

“But your hair…” Even Isabel seemed stunned by her sister’s daring.

Gabriella slouched against the door frame. “It’s not as if I pierced anything.”

“Oh, gawd! Just wait till Dad sees,” Isabel drawled dramatically. “You do remember Dad. The principal of your school for the next four years. You might as well learn early he’s a dictator when it comes to the dress code.”

“It’ll grow back by September.”

The new Chessie bit her tongue. Let Gabby deal with her ’do and any consequences. Chessie was headed for professional development.

“Dishes and dinner, girls.”

“We’ve got it covered,” Gabriella replied, reaching into the Mason jar that held money for emergencies. “On our way back from the mall we’ll stop at Boston Market and pick up supper.”

More tongue biting on Chessie’s part. She’d told Nick she didn’t care if takeout was on the menu. “Okay,” she conceded, “but feed the cats, please.”

She had to leave quickly before she reverted to form.

Once outside and hustling toward the town square, she spied the Art Guild members coming out of the Atlantic Hall where the class was to convene in the huge community room above the library. “What’s happening?” she called to Betsy O’Meara, a watercolorist.

“Our model canceled. She broke a leg, hiking.”

Chessie’s spirits fell. She had so looked forward to this, two hours of escape from worrying about her uncooperative daughters and the silent treatment Nick had given her since her declaration last night. She needed to test her fragile wings, to feel a part of a supportive like-minded community, if only temporarily. And, at this point, she didn’t care how she engineered it.

“I’ll take the model’s place,” she volunteered, jogging up to Betsy.

“You will?” The bushy white eyebrows of eighty-year-old sculptor Sandy Weston shot skyward.

“Not nude,” Chessie clarified. “My college days are over. Draped will have to do. Is there anything I can use to wrap myself in?”

“Perhaps.” Betsy looked dubious as she led the way up the stairs to the multipurpose room. “We share this space with so many other groups that we don’t like to leave much behind. Things tend to disappear.” She headed for the easels and stools pushed into the corner. “There’s this backdrop fabric.”

“Eew!” Glancing with dismay at the ratty piece of cloth, Chessie shivered at the thought of it against her skin. “I have an old white sheet that should make me look quite Greco-Roman. It won’t take a minute to get it.”

A chorus of thank-yous met her offer as she hastened downstairs and back across the square. It was the sheet she’d thrown over the studio sofa last night. Hopefully she could be in and out with it before anyone even knew she’d been back. So she didn’t have to explain…. Suddenly she felt angry at herself for feeling furtive. She’d suggested posing draped, for pity’s sake. Not nude. A big difference. She wasn’t certain, however, that Nick would, should he hear of it, see the distinction. Well, he didn’t have to hear of it.

The sheet fetched and bundled under her arm, she fairly flew back to the hall. It was so exciting to be part of an art class again.

“Chessie!” Thomas Crane, the UPS driver, called out to her from his truck parked in front of the hardware store. “Chasing Nick with leftover laundry?”

Exhilarated by the divergence from routine, she laughed. “No! I’m posing at the Art Guild,” she replied over her shoulder as she gained the Atlantic Hall doorway, immediately regretting her words. Thomas was an awful gossip.

Maybe he hadn’t heard her. Hope sprang eternal.

Hurrying up the stairs, she burst into the class as the members finished pushing the easels and stools into place.

Betsy came forward. “You’re a love! This isn’t much of a first day for you, but the rest of us appreciate it.”

“No problem.” Chessie ducked behind a screen set up for the model, slipped her arms out of her tank top so that it became a tube top, shed her capris and sandals, then began to drape, tuck and knot the sheet. “I’m just glad to be here. It beats making tuna casserole.”

She might not be sitting behind an easel today as planned, but in front of one, she certainly wasn’t invisible.

Satisfied with her impromptu toga, she emerged from behind the screen to perch on the model’s stool in the center of the circle of artists. A peace descended on her as she shifted positions until the guild members chose one in particular.

The past two days hadn’t gone smoothly, but she felt certain that with strength of purpose it was only a matter of time before her family realized her need for space and recognition. After that hurdle had been cleared, returning Nick to romance would be a snap.

SITTING BESIDE Felicity Kincaid in the town’s one taxi, Nick pressed his foot to the floor as if he could increase the vehicle’s speed from the passenger’s seat. “Can’t you go any faster?”

“I could,” the cabbie replied, “but it would probably mean losing my license. What’s the hurry anyway?”

Chessie.

Yesterday his wife had bared her soul publicly on a sandwich board. Today, according to Thomas Crane, she was planning to bare her body as well. Posing for the Art Guild.

Everyone knew that figure drawing classes used nudes. But not his nude, his wife. Call him a chauvinist, but Chessie’s body was for his eyes only.

“It’s a family emergency,” he muttered.

“It wouldn’t have to do with your wife throwing your laundry out the window, would it?”

“No.” Nick bit back an oath. The laundry seemed tame compared to today’s antics.

“Uh-huh.” The normally loquacious cab driver seemed to suppress a grin. “We’ll get you to your destination safe and sound. The Atlantic Hall, you said?”

“Right.” He looked out the window as if he found the passing New England scenery fascinating, hoping Felicity would think conversation an intrusion.

Truth be told, he couldn’t think straight. Chessie, with her unlikely behavior, had yanked out his emotional underpinnings, sending his senses and his thoughts reeling. He could only await her next salvo. He’d always thought of himself as a proactive kind of guy. He hated feeling reactive.

Because Pritchard’s Neck was a small community, it didn’t take long before Felicity pulled up in front of the hall. Reaching in his pocket and withdrawing a twenty, Nick dropped it on the front seat, then vaulted from the taxi without waiting for change. The moment’s urgency overrode any sense of frugality.

He had to get to Chessie before she took her clothes off. Or if she’d stripped already, he had to bundle her up and hustle her home, back to routine and sanity. He was prepared to bodily carry her away if necessary. Pressing through the hall’s outer door, he charged up the stairs, up to the meeting room where his wife might even now be lounging in the altogether.

Chessie had posed, briefly, as a single college student. Back then, he’d thought her daring sexy. Now, the thought made him seethe. What in blazes did the woman think this stunt was going to do to two impressionable teenage daughters?

“Chessie!” His voice echoed on the upper landing as he thrust the door to the meeting room open and caught the gaze of the lovely model in the circle of easels. Chessie. His Chessie.

She reclined against a stool, her arms, shoulders and feet bare, one slender leg emerging from the folds of a white sheet draped about her as if she was a Greek goddess. She’d swept her Titian hair up on top of her head, exposing her long, smooth neck. Surprisingly, she showed more flesh when she bicycled about town in tank top and gym shorts, but somehow the toga was more sultry, more suggestive. His wife was, in fact, unmistakably, breathtakingly beautiful.

And, having burst, like a Viking marauder on drugs, into the room full of fellow Pritchard’s Neck residents, he felt the fool. Yet he still couldn’t bring himself to let go of the unaccountable anger he felt.

Chessie beamed at him, then turned to the stunned little group. “It’s about time to take a break, yes?”

The artists agreed with alacrity as if Nick might begin the pillage at any moment.

Swishing lightly toward him, Chessie seemed a different woman. Neither of this time or place. Certainly not the mother of two teenage girls.

For a minute Nick had thoughts of how her costume might play out in their bedroom. Abruptly, he reined in those thoughts. If he could be turned on by this getup, what about Sandy Weston over there, pretending to put the finishing touches on his sketch, or Patrick Goodall who seemed to pay a great deal of attention to the sharpening of his pencil?

Nick had always consigned jealousy to the knuckle-draggers, but now Chessie’s exposure cut deep to a possessiveness he didn’t know he had.

She drew him out on the landing, then closed the door behind them. “I’m assuming UPS delivered more than the usual school supplies.”

“You assume right.” Trying and failing to find a neutral tone of voice, he lifted the corner of her toga. “This isn’t what I had in mind when you said you were joining a professional group.”

“It’s just for today. The model canceled. Next week I’ll be on the other side of the easel. Fully clothed.”

After today, with his all-too-public reaction to her participation, he didn’t want her on either side of the easel with this group. He wondered if she even had anything on under that outfit.

She touched his cheek with her fingertips. Her eyes flashed mischief. “Were you about to carry me off, Nick?”

“If you were nude, yes.” He felt like one of his students caught doing something rash and adolescent. And totally uncool.

“How politically incorrect,” she sighed. “How impulsive. How almost romantic. Against my better judgment, I’m flattered.”

She thought his actions romantic? She was flattered?

Comprehension dawned.

“So this is how you’d have me spice up our marriage?” he demanded. “Cut out of work early? Spend my last twenty on a cab? Barge like a fool into a group of residents, three of them with kids in my school?” Prickly heat rose up the back of his neck.

“You spent your last twenty on a cab?” she asked as if she hadn’t heard anything else. “That’s something my boyfriend Nick would do.”

“Well, boyfriend Nick didn’t have three mouths to feed.” He gestured toward the closed door. “That seems beside the point now. What are those people thinking?”

“Oh, for goodness’ sake. They only know you’re upset. We have two teenage daughters. It could be anything.”

“But it was you.”

“Yes.” A dreamy look crept into her eyes. “You came for me—in a cab that wasn’t in the budget, no less—because you were, what, intrigued? Jealous? Hot to get behind one of those easels yourself and take up a new career?”

“I was—am—ticked.”

“That’s better than preoccupied.”

Suddenly weary, he turned away. “Don’t expect me to play the town fool again to inject some fizz in a marriage that you, for some reason, seem to think has gone flat. I’m going home.”

Chessie reached for him. “Just when we’ve begun to get to the heart of the matter?”

“Is that what you call it?” Eluding her touch, he started downstairs. “I thought we’d reached an impasse.”

“You can’t walk away, Nick!” She opened the door to the meeting room and called, “Sorry, folks. Family emergency. See you next week,” then followed her husband down the stairs and out the door into the town square.

Nick winced. Although he didn’t pause to look over his shoulder, he could imagine how she looked, barefoot and determined, with that…that…toga flapping.

It was just his luck that Eban Hoffman, one of the local lobstermen, stood at the hardware store gas pumps, filling his pickup, watching with taciturn interest every movement on the square. Six hounds in the truck bed stood at attention as they spotted Chessie, who padded up alongside Nick.

“Would you slow down?” she asked, breathless, clutching fabric to her chest. “My sheet’s unraveling.”

Sure enough, great swaths of the makeshift robe flapped like pennants in the brisk coastal breeze. She was in danger of exposing more than shoulders and arms.

What did she have on under that thing?

Eban’s dogs, excited by the movement, began to bark and pace the truck bed, eager to get out and join the fun. Their owner, more interested in the drama playing out before him than in controlling his dogs, stood staring and scratching his head.

Nick refused to prolong this public entertainment. With authority, he swept Chessie into his arms and began marching for the privacy of home, the sheet billowing out behind them.

“Oh, my,” Chessie said as if this was just the afternoon’s activity she’d had in mind.

Not about to waste breath explaining to her that his actions did not in any way constitute romance or a harbinger of marital changes to come, he picked up his pace. He simply wanted to get her off the square before disaster struck.

Too late.

“Come back he-ah this instant!” Eban shouted.

Nick heard the playful canine whines, heard the scrabble of claws on asphalt, heard the jingle of rabies tags before the dogs surrounded them. Yapping, jumping, snapping and intent on seizing whatever loose fabric they could reach in a frenzied game of tug o’ war, they probably hadn’t had this much fun since that crate of spider crabs got loose at the pier.

Chessie shrieked as two dogs, their toothy grip firm in a corner of trailing sheet, their eight combined feet planted in the roadside grass, threatened by sheer dog-headedness to unwrap her.

Nick broke into a jog.

Just as Eban and Hamilton Quick, owner of the hardware store, caught up with them, one of the dogs, leaped up and snapped. Instead of coming away with a prized hunk of fabric, he sank his teeth into Nick’s left buttock.

CHAPTER FOUR

WERE HER PARENTS TRYING to screw up her life totally?

It sure seemed that way.

Having escaped to Keri’s room, Gabriella wanted to disappear from the face of the earth. Pushing herself back into the mound of stuffed animals on her friend’s bed, she tried to erase the awful memory of them in the square just now. Tried to focus on the perfectly normal trip to the mall beforehand. Focus on her new flavored lip gloss. On running into Danny Aiken, Keri’s boyfriend. On Danny saying how phat Gabriella’s haircut was…

Not on the ride home when—excruciating minutes ago— Mrs. Weiss had driven into the square and there they were: Dad carrying Mom. Mom wearing a sheet. That dog taking a bite of Dad’s butt. Everybody running out of the hardware store. Yelling. Pointing.

At her parents.

They looked like they were trying out for some lame reality show.

Now, as she heard Mrs. Weiss’s SUV pull out of the driveway below, taking Mom and Dad to the emergency room, she tried to think how she could make sure her parents’ behavior didn’t cross her new friends’ radar.

Her new cool friends, thanks to Keri.

“Parents can be so…gross.” Keri wasn’t helping matters. If she thought Mom and Dad were gross, what would Danny think? Or Baylee Warner? Or Margot Hensley? Or anyone else in Danny’s group. And now Keri’s group by association.

Gabriella wanted this new crowd to be hers, as well. No such luck with her parents acting whack.

“Do you hear what I’m saying?” Keri was right in her face. “You have got to, like, prove you’re not just as weird.”

“As who?”

“As your parents.” Keri made a face. “Wake up. You need damage control here.”

As if she needed to be told.

“This is our freshman year coming up, Gabs. Do you want to be in, or do you want to be out?”

She’d been so close to being out for the past year since moving to Pritchard’s Neck. Keri had been her only real friend. Now Keri had moved into the winner’s circle as Danny’s girlfriend, and Gabriella knew Keri was trying not to leave her behind.

What scared Gabriella more than anything in the world was the thought of being left behind.

“Well?” Keri poked her in the ribs.

“Do I even have to answer that?”

“You’d better come up with some answers before we both find ourselves on the outside looking in.” There was something like fear in Keri’s eyes.

Gabriella knew Keri was on probation. Danny could only bring her so far into his circle. The group had to cast its approval, too. And if the group wanted to test Keri’s loyalty by having her dump a former friend—a friend with even the whiff of geek or weirdo about her—well… The thought made Gabriella queasy.

“What can I do?”

“Make sure you’re a whole lot cooler than your family.”

Gabriella tried to bury herself in the stuffed animals again, but Keri yanked her upright. “The hair’s a start,” she said. “Brilliant even. Danny said so.”

“The hair will be history by the time school starts. Remember the dress code?”

“Yeah. Your dad’s dress code. Could it get any worse than your father as principal?”

“My mom, Fourth-of-July nutcase.”

“Your dad, dog food.”

Her dad on the way to the emergency room in Mrs. Weiss’s SUV because his Volvo was AWOL and Mom’s Mini Cooper was too tiny for him to lie on his stomach.

“Hey, Danny wasn’t in the square, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Gabriella pointed out in weak defense.

“No, but Kurt Ryan’s dad was coming out of the hardware. And Baylee’s mom works in the E.R. How soon do you figure before everyone knows?”

Gabriella pulled the comforter over her head. “I wish I was dead.”

“There’s no time for that.” Keri pulled the cover aside. “You gotta think how to keep far away from all this before you get blackballed.”

“How are we going to do that?”

Keri raised one eyebrow, and Gabriella realized there didn’t have to be a we. This was her problem. Keri could wash her hands of it.

But Keri softened. Maybe it was because they were such good friends, or maybe Keri needed someone lower on the totem pole than her. “For the summer the hair’s a good start. But we gotta keep people thinking you’re out there.”

Gabriella didn’t feel out there. Not even with her new haircut. She felt miserable. Saddled with a lame family. And in over her head.

Keri jumped off the bed and began examining her face in her dresser mirror. “A boyfriend would be huge.”

Gabriella didn’t feel ready for a boyfriend. That Keri had met Danny two weeks ago at the beach and had chased him till he’d given her the time of day made Gabriella’s jaw drop. She didn’t want to think what Keri might’ve done to make Danny so loyal so quick. No, the idea of a boyfriend made Gabriella nervous.

“Boyfriends take time,” she replied. “I need something quick.”

“You gotta be fearless. You gotta act as if you don’t care what your parents think.”

Easy for Keri to say. She was an only child. Her mom treated her more like a girlfriend than a daughter, and her dad treated her like a princess.

“You suggesting I start smoking and hanging around street corners?” Gabriella asked sarcastically.

“No,” Keri replied, serious. “Everybody smokes and hangs around street corners. You need to be awesome. A standout. Plus, you don’t need to waste attitude on just anybody. Save it for when you’re hanging around Baylee or Margot or Kurt.”

“As in?”

“As in when we’re at the mall together, you might lift a lip gloss rather than pay for it.”

“Shoplift? I don’t need to steal.” Besides, it was wrong. Just wrong. And Keri should know better. Gabriella’s father might be a principal, but Keri’s was a cop.

“Nobody needs to shoplift. It’s just for kicks.” Keri narrowed her eyes. “But you’re right. You don’t need to do it. It’s not original. You need something fresh.”

Something beyond smoking and theft? Gabriella didn’t like the sound of the words fearless or fresh. “Couldn’t I aim for something like best dressed?”

Keri looked at Gabriella’s outfit. “Not when your mom makes your tops and you buy your jeans at a discount store. We’re gonna take care of that, don’t you worry, but first we gotta come up with a rep for you.”

Gabriella’s family hadn’t stayed in one place long enough for her to get a reputation. She was always just the new kid.

“How about smart?”

“In high school?” Keri made as if to slit her throat. “Look at your sister, the brainy poet. Just another word for nerd.”

If Isabel was a nerd, was Gabriella? She thought of her dad. Not making the honor roll had never been an option in their family. “Funny?”

“Funny walks a thin line with stupid. Some people might think what happened in the square this afternoon was funny. Do you want to be known that way?”

Gabriella absolutely did not.

“Don’t worry.” Keri flopped on the bed beside her. “I’m going to make you over this summer. I’m not a hundred percent sure how, but by the time school starts, everyone’s going to be asking who Gabriella McCabe is. Hey, maybe not Gabriella!” Keri jumped to her feet. “Maybe Tiffany. Or Brianna. Or Kayla. Have you thought of changing your name?”

“Why?”

“’Cause Gabriella sounds like an old lady, and Gabby sounds like a cowboy on the retro western channel.”

Change her name? Her parents would freak. “I don’t know—”

“You don’t know?” Her friend’s look turned harsh. “Do you want to consider your options? Like the losers’ lunch table? It’s no different in high school than it was in junior high. Maybe worse.”

That table with the fat kids. The picked-on, misunderstood and unattractive kids. The ones who fit in with no group whatsoever except losers. In a couple schools she’d been one of them.

She wasn’t going back to that table. Not ever. A new name and identity suddenly appealed to her.

“Aside from picking a name, what do I have to do?”

“Nothing yet.” Keri slipped her arm around Gabriella’s shoulders. “Just leave everything to me.”

With her future in Keri’s hands, Gabriella’s thoughts slipped back to her parents. She wondered if her father had made it to the emergency room yet. And hoped that Baylee’s mom wasn’t on duty this afternoon.

“WOULD MUSIC HELP?” Martha asked from the driver’s seat.

“No.” Lying on his stomach in the back of the Weisses’ SUV, Nick spoke between clenched teeth. “Thank you.”

This day had turned out to be—literally—one big pain in the ass.

“We’re almost there, honey,” Chessie reassured him. “I can see the sign for the emergency room.”

“Just drop me off.” He knew the E.R. took cases in order of severity. Dog bite would be way down the priority list. He didn’t need two women—one he was royally ticked at—hovering over him for a couple hours. “I’ll call a cab when I’m done.”

“Nonsense,” Martha countered cheerfully. “You’ll need moral support.”

He thought he heard a suppressed giggle.

Shifting his weight, he groaned at the stab of pain. Cautiously, he felt his backside. The bleeding seemed to have stopped, but his trousers—his new trousers—were ripped badly, and the fabric stuck to his skin with what he could only assume was dried blood. He’d have to walk into the E.R. with an immodest patch of himself hanging out.

“Do you have anything I could tie around my waist?” he asked. “Just so I don’t give the world a free show.”

“Hold on,” Martha replied, pulling to a stop under the hospital portico.

The back doors to the SUV opened, and Chessie handed him the sheet she’d been wearing. He nearly threw his back out, turning to see what she had on. A tank top and a pair of jeans with the store labels still hanging off them.

“Martha let me wear a pair she picked up at the mall,” she explained. “Wrap the sheet around you.”

“I’m not wearing that damned sheet.” He struggled to slide backward out of the SUV. “What else do you have?”

“This,” Martha replied briskly, tying a huge plastic Macy’s bag around his waist. Empty, it flapped behind him like half a loincloth. “Now, lean on your wife. I’m going to park the car and wait in it. I picked up plenty of new magazines today, so don’t think I’m in a rush.”

Chessie threaded her arm under his and across his back, but he pulled away. “I don’t need help.”

“Nick, I’m sorry. No one could’ve anticipated this.”

As he limped ahead of her through the emergency entrance, he winced at the pain dogging his every step. Warm moisture trickling down the back of his thigh told him the wound had reopened.

“May I help you?” the nurse behind the desk asked.

“A dog bit me,” Nick replied. “I think I need stitches.”

The nurse handed him a clipboard with a form attached. “Do you know if the dog had been immunized for rabies?”

“The owner assured me it had.” Call that the only plus in this doggone day.

“Fill out the form, and a doctor will look at you as soon as possible.” The nurse motioned to a row of chairs against the wall. “You can have a seat over there.”

“He can’t.” Chessie pointed to his backside. “Sit, that is.”

“Chessie,” he growled, grabbing the clipboard. He headed for the corner.

“Mr. McCabe! What you doin’ in here?”

Nick turned slowly to see Chris Filmore, the high school’s star running back, hobbling on crutches out of the examination area. A bright white cast covered his left leg. The sight did not bode well for the upcoming football season.

“What happened, Chris?”

“Broke my leg.” The kid looked sheepish. “Playing Frisbee at the beach. What are you in for?”

“A dog bit me.”

“Where?”

“In the square.”

“No, man. I mean where did he bite you?”

How did a high-school principal refer to that particular part of the anatomy with a student?

As Chris surveyed the plastic shopping bag draped over Nick’s backside, understanding crept into his face. “Oh, the glute.” The corner of his mouth twitched. “And here I was feelin’ embarrassed.”

“Glad I could ease your pain,” Nick muttered and held up the clipboard to signal the end of the conversation.

“See you in September.” Chris headed for the exit, amusement lacing his farewell.

Chessie stood wide-eyed before Nick.

“I suppose you find this all very funny, too,” he said.

“I don’t see humor in someone else’s discomfort…but getting all tense isn’t going to help the situation.”

“Thank you, Doctor.” He wedged himself in the corner of the waiting room and, standing, began to fill out the patient information sheet. It wasn’t her butt all bruised and bleeding under a red, white and blue sale bag.

“I’m going to call the girls.” She backed away. “Can I get you a soda?”

“No.” He kept writing. The fluorescent glare made his head hurt.

When she left, he felt suddenly smaller that he was hanging on to his anger. He felt weary, too. Bone weary. He handed the completed form back to the desk nurse.

An hour and forty-five minutes later, he lay facedown on an examination table as a cheerful young resident stitched up his backside. “So, Mr. McCabe,” she said, “how’d you happen to anger this particular dog?”

“He was rescuing me,” Chessie piped up from her spot at his head. “From a very large pack.”

“Ah, a hero.”

“Just a high-school principal,” Nick replied. He’d given up rising to any bait.

“A high-school principal? How’s your work schedule for next week?”

“I can’t take it off if that’s what you’re asking.”

“No. I was just curious how many meetings you have to attend.”

“Way too many.”

“Well, you’re going to have to attend standing up. I don’t think even a hemorrhoid doughnut would give you any relief.”

Fine. He was going to have to do enough explaining as it was. He didn’t need a shiny red rubber prop to add to the merriment.

“There. Finished.” The resident backed away. “Mrs. McCabe, you’re going to have to make sure this wound is kept—”

“I can handle it.” Nick gingerly found the floor and stood.

“Not unless you have eyes in the back of your head,” the resident countered. “Besides, you have a bigger task.”

“What?”

“Thinking up a list of snappy comebacks.” The woman flashed him a bright smile. “No doubt, you’re going to be the butt of a lot of jokes this week.”

“And you wanted to inaugurate the agony.”

“My pleasure.”

He pushed aside the curtain that separated him from his fellow E.R. sufferers and moved stiffly toward the exit. His left cheek felt numb. He no longer cared that the protective Macy’s bag lay at the bottom of a hazardous waste can. He just wanted to get home. What he really wanted was a return to the day before the Fourth of July.

“Isabel said they saved us some of the dinner they picked up at Boston Market,” Chessie informed him as she followed him to the parking lot.

“I’m not hungry.”

“How long are you going to stay angry at me?”

“If you don’t mind, I don’t feel up for a long drawn-out discussion.”

“What’s really going on here, Nick?”

He stopped short of the SUV where Martha sat reading a magazine. Damn, he’d forgotten the neighbors were involved. He turned to his wife. “What’s going on here? Frankly, I don’t know. You seem to be the one with all the answers. Trouble is, I don’t understand them.”

He opened the double doors at the back of the SUV, and crawled in.

Feeling shut out, Chessie climbed in the passenger side.

“How’d it go?” Martha asked.

“He’ll live.”

“But will Eban’s dog?”

“No jokes, Martha,” Nick said from the back. He sounded like a principal presiding at a rowdy assembly. “I’ve reached my quota.”

When Martha shot Chessie a questioning look, Chessie mouthed, “Later.”

They rode home in silence. Nick didn’t forget to thank Martha, but he didn’t stick around for Chessie to follow him into the house.

“Call me if you need anything,” Martha said before backing across the street into her own driveway.

It was eight-forty and starting to get dark, but there wasn’t a light in the house. Chessie entered the kitchen to stare at a sink full of Fourth-of-July dishes and a table littered with paper plates and containers of half-consumed takeout. The girls were nowhere in sight.

She made her way upstairs. All three bedroom doors were closed. She knocked on the closest. Gabriella’s.

“Go away!”

“Gabby, what’s wrong?”

“As if you didn’t know.”

Chessie did know. Having witnessed the debacle on the square, her younger daughter would be mortified. She tried the knob only to find the door locked.

“I said go away.”

Perhaps they all needed a little breathing room. A little perspective. But she couldn’t resist the urge to reassure herself her family was at least minimally okay.

Isabel’s door was cracked a hair and gave when Chessie knocked. Her older daughter, sprawled on her bed with the ubiquitous headphones stuck over her ears, sat up and turned off her CD player when her mother poked her head in the room.

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