Praise for the novels of #1 New York Times bestselling author

SUSAN WIGGS

“Wiggs is one of our best observers of stories of the heart… She knows how to capture emotion on virtually every page of every book.”

—Salem Statesman-Journal

“Bestselling author Wiggs’s talent is reflected in her thoroughly believable characters as well as the way she recognizes the importance of family by blood or other ties.”

—Library Journal

“Susan Wiggs writes with bright assurance, humor and compassion.”

—Luanne Rice

FIRESIDE

#1 NewYork Times Bestseller

“Worth a look for the often-hilarious dialogue alone, the latest installment of her beloved Lakeshore Chronicles showcases Wiggs’s justly renowned gifts for storytelling and characterization. A keeper.”

—RT Book Reviews

SNOWFALL AT WILLOW LAKE

A Best Book of 2008—Amazon.com

Reviewer’s Choice finalist—RT Book Reviews

RITA® Award finalist

“Wiggs is at the top of her game here, combining a charming setting with subtly shaded characters and more than a touch of humor.

This is the kind of book a reader doesn’t want to see end but can’t help devouring as quickly as possible.”

—RT Book Reviews

“Wiggs jovially juggles the lives of numerous colliding characters and adds some winter-favorite recipes for a festive touch.”

—Publishers Weekly

DOCKSIDE

“Rich with life lessons, nod-along moments and characters with whom readers can easily relate…

Delightful and wise, Wiggs’s latest shines.”

—Publishers Weekly

“A wonderfully written, beautiful love story with a few sharp edges and a bunch of marvelously imperfect characters, this is one of Wiggs’s finest efforts to date. It’s sure to leave an indelible impression on even the most jaded reader.”

—RT Book Reviews

THE WINTER LODGE

The Best Romance of 2007—Amazon.com

A Best Book of 2007—Publishers Weekly

Reviewer’s Choice finalist—RT Book Reviews

“With the ease of a master, Wiggs introduces complicated, flesh-and-blood characters…[and] sets in motion a refreshingly honest romance.”

—Publishers Weekly [starred review]

“Empathetic protagonists, interesting secondary characters, well-written flashbacks and delicious recipes add depth to this touching, complex romance.”

—Library Journal

“Emotionally intense.”

—Booklist

SUMMER AT WILLOW LAKE

A Best Book of 2006—Amazon.com

“Wiggs’s storytelling is heartwarming…clutter free…[and] should appeal to romance and women’s fiction readers of any age.”

—Publishers Weekly

“How good is perennially popular Wiggs in her new romance? Superb. Wonderfully evoked characters, a spellbinding story line and insights into the human condition will appeal to every reader.”

—Booklist

The Summer Hideaway
The Lakeshore Chronicles
Susan Wiggs

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Acknowledgments

Deepest gratitude to my friends and fellow writers—Anjali Banerjee, Carol Cassella, Sheila Roberts, Suzanne Selfors, Elsa Watson.

Special thanks to the team of experts—Dr. Carol Wiley, Bob Mayer, Robert Dugoni and Andy Watson—for help with researching and brainstorming such disparate topics as helicopters in combat, airborne medical evacuation, brain tumors and legal matters. Any inaccuracies found herein are my own. To my friend Carol Kovac—just talking to you frees the mind.

Thanks to Sherrie Holmes, Joelle Klist, Bree Ogden and Lindsey LeBret for keeping all my ducks in a row. And a very special thank-you to the Jacobi family for their support of P.A.W.S. and for providing inspiration for the fictional pets in this book.

Thanks to Margaret O’Neill Marbury and Adam Wilson of MIRA Books, Meg Ruley and Annelise Robey of the Jane Rotrosen Agency, for invaluable support, advice and input.

Thanks and love to my family—the reason for everything.

Also by SUSAN WIGGS

Contemporary Romances

HOME BEFORE DARK

THE OCEAN BETWEEN US

SUMMER BY THE SEA

TABLE FOR FIVE

LAKESIDE COTTAGE

JUST BREATHE

The Lakeshore Chronicles

SUMMER AT WILLOW LAKE

THE WINTER LODGE

DOCKSIDE

SNOWFALL AT WILLOW LAKE

FIRESIDE

LAKESHORE CHRISTMAS

THE SUMMER HIDEAWAY

Historical Romances

THE LIGHTKEEPER THE DRIFTER

The Tudor Rose Trilogy

AT THE KING’S COMMAND

THE MAIDEN’S HAND

AT THE QUEEN’S SUMMONS

Chicago Fire Trilogy

THE HOSTAGE

THE MISTRESS

THE FIREBRAND

Calhoun Chronicles

THE CHARM SCHOOL

THE HORSEMASTER’S DAUGHTER

HALFWAY TO HEAVEN

ENCHANTED AFTERNOON

A SUMMER AFFAIR

Seeking: Private Duty Nurse (Upstate New York)

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Reply to godfrey@georgebellamy.com

Senior accomplished gentleman seeks end-of-life nursing care, full-time, days and nights.

Qualifications:

 age twenty-five to thirty-five

 female (not negotiable)

 must have a positive attitude and a sense of adventure

 must love children of all ages

 must be open to relocation

 no emotional baggage

 nursing skills and valid state certification a plus

Benefits:

 medical, dental, vision, 401(k)

 weekly paychecks with direct deposit

Rustic accommodations provided on Willow Lake in the Catskills Wilderness.

Prologue

Korengal Valley, Kunar province, Afghanistan

His breakfast consisted of shoestring potatoes that actually did look and taste like shoestrings, along with reconstituted eggs, staring up at him from a compartmentalized tray in the noisy chow hall. His cup was full of a coffee-like substance, lightened by a whitish powder.

At the end of a two-year tour of duty, Ross Bellamy had a hard time looking at morning chow. He’d reached his limit. Fortunately for him, this was his last day of deployment. It seemed like any other day—tedious, yet tense with the constant and ominous hum of imminent threat. Radio static crackled along with the sound of clacking utensils, so familiar to him by now that he barely heard it. At a comm station, an ops guy for the Dustoff unit was on alert, awaiting the next call for a medical evacuation.

There was always a next call. An air medic crew like Ross’s faced them daily, even hourly.

When the walkie-talkie clipped to his pocket went off, he put aside the mess without a second glance. The call was a signal for the on-duty crew to drop everything—a fork poised to carry a morsel of mystery meat to a mouth. A game of Spades, even if you were winning. A letter to a sweetheart, chopped off in the middle of a sentence that might never be finished. A dream of home in the head of someone dead asleep. A guy in the middle of saying a prayer, or one with only half his face shaved.

The medevac units prided themselves on their reaction time—five or six minutes from call to launch. Men and women burst into action, still chewing food or drying off from the shower as they fell into roles as hard and familiar as their steel-toed boots.

Ross gritted his teeth, wondering what the day had in store for him, and hoping he’d make it through without getting himself killed. He needed this discharge, and he needed it now. Back home, his grandfather was sick—had been sick for a while, and Ross suspected it was a lot more serious than the family let on. It was hard to imagine his grandfather sick. Granddad had always been larger-than-life, from his passion for travel to his trademark belly laugh, the one that could make a whole roomful of people smile. He was more than a grandparent to Ross. Circumstances in his youth had drawn the two of them close in a bond that defined their relationship even now.

On impulse, he grabbed his grandfather’s most recent letter and stuck it into the breast pocket of his flight jacket, next to his heart. The fact that he’d even felt the urge to do so made him feel a gut-twist of worry.

“Let’s go, Leroy,” said Nemo, the unit’s crew chief. Then, as he always did, he sang the first few lines of “Get Up Offa That Thang.”

In the convoluted way of the army, Ross had been given the nickname Leroy. It had started when some of the platoon had learned a little—way too little—about his silver-spoon-in-mouth background. The fancy schools, the Ivy League education, the socially prominent family, had all made him fodder for teasing. Nemo had dubbed him Little Lord Fauntleroy. That had been shortened to Leroy, and the name had stuck.

“I’m on it,” Ross said, striding toward the helipad. He and Ranger would be piloting the bird today.

“Good luck with the FNG.”

FNG stood for Fucking New Guy, meaning Ross would have a mission virgin on board. He vowed to be nice. After all, if it weren’t for new guys, Ross would be here forever. According to the order packet he’d received, his forever was about to end. In a matter of days, he’d be stateside again, assuming he didn’t get himself greased today.

The FNG turned out to be a girl, a flight medic named Florence Kennedy, from Newark, New Jersey. She had that baby-faced determination common to newbies, worn as a thin mask over abject, bowel-melting fear.

“What the fuck are you waiting for?” demanded Nemo, striding past her. “Get your ass over to the LZ.”

She seemed frozen, her face pale with resentment. She made no move to follow Nemo.

Ross nailed her with a glare. “Well? What the hell is it?”

“Sir, I…Not fond of the f-word, sir.”

Ross let out a short blast of laughter. “You’re about to fly into a battle zone and you’re worried about that? Soldiers swear. Get used to it. Nobody on earth swears as much as a soldier—and nobody prays as hard. And I don’t know about you, but I see no conflict there. Pretty soon, you won’t, either.”

She looked as though she might cry. He tried to think of something to say to reassure her, but could come up with nothing. When had he stopped knowing how to speak kindly?

When he’d grown too numb to feel anything.

“Let’s go,” he said simply, and strode away without looking back.

The ground crew chief barked out a checklist. Everyone climbed aboard. Armor and helmets would be donned on the chopper to shave off run time.

Ross received the details through his ear piece while he consulted his lap charts. The call was the type they feared most—victims both military and civilian, enemy still in the area. Apache gunships would escort the medical birds because the red crosses on the nose, underbelly and each cargo door of the ship meant nothing to the enemy. The crew couldn’t let that matter; they had to roll fast. When a soldier on the ground was wounded, he needed to hear one key phrase: Dustoff is inbound. For some guy bleeding out in the field, the flying ambulance was his only hope of survival.

Within minutes, they were beating it northward over the evergreen-covered mountains of Kunar province. Flying at full speed across the landscape of craggy peaks, majestic forests and silvery rivers, Ross felt tense and jittery, on edge. The constant din of flight ops, along with strict regulations, kept conversation confined to essential matters only over the headsets. The rush into unknown danger was an everyday ordeal, yet he never got used to it. Last mission, he told himself. This is your last mission. Don’t blow it.

The Korengal Valley was one of the most beautiful places on earth. Also one of the most treacherous. Sometimes the helos encountered surface-to-air missiles, cannonade or tripwires strung between mountain peaks to snag the aircraft. At the moment, the gorgeous landscape erupted with lightning bolts of gunfire and ominous plumes of smoke. Each represented a deadly weapon aimed at the birds.

Ross’s heart had memorized the interval of delay between spotting the flash and taking the hit—one, two, three beats of the heart and something could be taken out.

The gunships broke off to fire on the areas blooming with muzzle flashes. The diversion created a lull so the medical choppers could circle down.

Ross and Ranger, the other pilot, focused on closing the distance between the bird and the other end of the radio call. Despite the information given, they never knew what might be waiting for them. Half of their flights were for evacuating Afghan civilians and security personnel. The country had lousy medical infrastructure, so sometimes a pickup was for patient transport, combat injuries, accidents, even dog bites. Ross’s unit had seen everyone’s horrors and ill luck. But judging by the destination, this was not going to be a simple patient transport to Bagram Air Base. This region was the deadliest of Taliban havens, patrolled on foot and referred to as the Valley of Death.

The chopper neared the pickup point and descended. The tops of the majestic pine trees swayed back and forth, beaten by the wind under the main rotors, offering fleeting glimpses of the terrain. Wedged between the walls of the valley lay a cluster of huts with rooftops of baked earth. He saw scurrying civilians and troops, some fanning out in search of the enemy, others guarding their wounded as they waited for help to arrive.

Muzzle flashes lit the hillsides on both ends of the valley. Ross knew immediately that there was too much small-arms fire below. The gunships were spread too thin.

The risk of drawing enemy fire was huge, and as pilot, he had to make the call. Bail now and protect the crew, or go in for the rescue and save the lives below. As always, it was an agonizing choice, but one made swiftly and followed by steel resolve. No time for a debate.

He took the bird in, hovering as close to the mark as he dared, but couldn’t land. The other pilot shook his head vigorously. The terrain was too rough. They’d have to lower a litter.

The crew chief hung out the cargo bay door, letting the penetrator cable slide through his gloved hand. A Stokes litter was lowered and the first soldier—the one most seriously wounded, was placed in the basket. Ross lifted off, hearing “Breaking ground, sir,” over his headset as the winch began its fast rewind.

The basket was nearly in the bird when Ross spotted a fresh plume of smoke—a rocket launcher. At an altitude of only fifty feet, he had no time to take evasive action. The miniature SAM slammed into the aircraft.

A flash of white lightning whipped through the ship. Everything showered down—shrapnel, gear, chips of paint, and an eerie flurry of dried blood from past sorties, flaking off the cargo area and blowing around. Then a burst of fire raked the chopper, slugs stitching holes in the bird. It bucked and vibrated, throwing off webbing, random bits of aluminum, broken equipment, including a couple of radios, right in the middle of Ross’s first Mayday call to the ops guys at base who were managing the mission. A ruptured fuel line hosed the flight deck.

He felt slugs smacking into his armored chair, the plates in front of his face, the overhead bubble window. Something thumped him in the back, knocking the wind out of him. Don’t die, he told himself. Don’t you fucking die. He stayed alive because if he got himself killed, he ‘d take down everybody with him. It was as good a reason as he knew to keep going.

He had landed a pranged chopper before, but not in these conditions. There was no water to hit. He hoped like hell he could set it down with everybody intact. He couldn’t tell if the crew had reeled the basket in. Couldn’t let himself think about that—a wounded soldier twisting and dangling from the bird.

Ranger tried another radio. The red trail of a smoke grenade bloomed, and then the wind swept it away. Ross spotted a patch of ground just as another hail of fire hit. Decking flew up, pieces glancing off his shoulder, his helmet. The ship whirled as though thrown into a giant blender, completely out of his control. There was no lift, nothing at all. The whistles and whines of the dying ship filled his head.

As the earth raced up to meet them, he found himself focusing on random sights on the ground—a tattered billboard for baby milk, a mangled soccer goal. The chopper roared as it hit, throwing up more steel decking. The jolt slammed through every bone of his body. His back teeth crunched together. A stray rotor slung free, mowing down everything in sight. Ross was in motion even before the thing settled. The reek of JP4 fuel choked him. He flung out a hand, grabbing Ranger’s shoulder, thanking God the other pilot was looking lively.

Nemo was struggling with his monkey strap, the rig used to hold him in the chopper during ops. The straps had tangled, and he was still tethered to a tie-down clamp attached to the ripped-up deck. Ranger went to help him, and the two of them dragged away the wounded guy in the litter, which, thankfully, had been hoisted into the cargo bay before the crash.

“Kennedy!” Ross dropped to his knees beside her. She lay eerily still, on her side. “Hey, Kennedy,” he said, “Move your ass. Move your fucking ass! We need to get out.”

Don’t be dead, he thought. Please don’t be dead. Damn, he hated this. Too many times, he’d turned a soldier over to find him—or her—too far gone, floating in root reflexes.

“Ken—”

“Fuck.” The FNG threw off his hand, hauling herself to her feet while uttering a stream of profanities. Then, just for a second, she focused on Ross. The soft-cheeked newness was already gone from her face, replaced by flinty-eyed determination. “Quit wasting time, Chief,” she said. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

The four of them crouched low against the curve of the chopper’s battered hull. Bullet holes riddled the starkly painted red cross and pockmarked the tail boom. The floor was covered with loose AK-47 rounds.

The Apache gunships had broken off and gone into hunter-killer mode, searching out the enemy on the ground, firing at the muzzle flashes on the mountainsides and producing a much-prayed-for lull. The other chopper had escaped and was no doubt sending out distress calls on the unit’s behalf. Pillars of black smoke from mortar rounds rose up everywhere.

With no means of evacuation, the crew had to take cover wherever they could. Heads down, in a hail of debris, they carried the litter toward the nearest house. Through a cloud of dust and smoke, Ross spotted an enemy soldier, hunched and watchful, armed with an AK47, approaching the same house from the opposite direction.

“I got this,” he signaled to Nemo, nudging him.

Unarmed against a hot weapon, Ross knew he had only seconds to act or he’d lose the element of surprise. That was where the army’s training kicked in. Approaching from behind, he stooped low, grabbed the guy by both ankles and yanked back, causing the gunman to fall flat on his face. Even as the air rushed from the surprised victim’s chest, Ross dispatched him quickly—eyes, neck, groin—in that order. The guy never knew what hit him. Within seconds, Ross had bound his wrists with zip ties, confiscated the weapon and dragged the enemy soldier into the house.

There, they found a host of beleaguered U.S. and Afghan soldiers. “Dustoff 91,” Ranger said by way of introduction. “And unfortunately, you’re going to have to wait for another ride.”

The captured soldier groaned and shuddered on the floor.

“Jesus, where’d you learn that move?” one of the U.S. soldiers demanded.

“Unarmed combat—a medevac’s specialty,” said Nemo, giving Ross a hand.

A babble of Pashto and English erupted. “We’re toast,” said a dazed and exhausted soldier. Like his comrades, he looked as if he hadn’t bathed in weeks, and he wore a dog’s flea collar around his middle; life at the outposts was crude as hell. The guy—still round-cheeked with youth, but with haunted eyes—related the action in dull shell-shocked tones. A part of this kid wasn’t even there anymore. When Ross met a soldier in such a state, he often found himself wondering if the missing part would ever be restored.

“Let’s have a look at the wounded,” Kennedy suggested. She seemed desperate to do something, anything. The soldier took her to a row of supine people on the floor—an Afghan teenager holding an iPhone and keening what sounded like a prayer, a guy moaning and clutching his shredded leg, several lying unconscious. Kennedy checked their vitals and looked around, lost. “I need something to write on.”

Ross grabbed a Sharpie marker from her kit. “Right there,” he said, indicating the teenager’s bare chest.

She hesitated, then started to write on the boy’s skin. More gunfire slapped the ground outside. After what seemed like an eternity, but was probably only twenty minutes, another Dustoff unit arrived, lowered a medic on a winch line and then beat away in search of a place to land. Inside the hut, the triage continued, with everyone aiding the medics.

Ross moved past a pair of soldiers who were obviously dead. He felt nothing. He wouldn’t let himself. The nightmares would come later.

“See if you can stop that bleeding,” the new medic said, indicating another victim. “Just hold something on it.”

Ross ripped off a sleeve to staunch a bleeding wound. Only after he’d pressed the fabric into an arm did he see that it was attached to an old guy who was being held by a boy singing softly into the man’s ear. It seemed to calm the wounded guy, Ross observed.

He needed to find the part of him that could still feel. He needed what he saw in the way the boy’s hand caressed the old man’s cheek. Family. It gave life its meaning. When everything was stripped away, family was the only thing that mattered, the only thing that kept a person tethered to the ground. Other than his grandfather, Ross was lacking in that department. He hated feeling so hollow and numb.

Fire from the insurgents subsided. Two more chopper crews arrived with litters, racing across open ground to reach the others. Everyone burst into action, taking advantage of the lull. The wounded were loaded on litters, pulled along on ponchos, carried in straining arms. Those who were ambulatory piled in, creating chaos. The first bird took off, chugging with its burden, then swung like a carnival ride.

Ross was in the second one, the last to board, grasping a cleat for a handhold. The firing started up again, pinging off the skids. The flight passed in a blur of noise and dust and smoke, but finally—thank God, finally—he could see an ops guy mouth the magic words everyone had been waiting—hoping, praying—for: Dustoff is inbound.

They reached the LZ with the last of their fuel, and the ground personnel took over. Ross found somebody in medical to give him some betadine and a couple of bandages. Then he walked out into the compound, the sun beating down on his bare arm where he’d ripped his sleeve off. He was light-headed with the feeling that he’d been to hell and back.

It was barely noon.

Renowned for its swiftness and efficiency, his Dustoff unit had saved a lot of lives. Twenty-five minutes from battlefield to trauma ward was the norm. It was something he’d look back at with pride, but it was time to move on. He was so damn ready to move on.

Guys were milling around the mess tent. Two more air crews were preparing to head out again.

“Hey, Leroy, Christmas came early for you this year,” said Nemo, wolfing down a folded-over piece of pizza from the Pizza Hut tent. “I hear your discharge orders came through.”

Ross nodded. A wave of something—not quite relief—surged through him. It was really happening. At last, he was going home.

“What’re you going to do with yourself once you’re Stateside?” Nemo asked.

Start over, thought Ross. Get it right this time around. “I got big plans,” he said.

“Right,” Nemo said with a chuckle, heading for the showers. “Don’t we all.”

When you were in the middle of something like this, Ross thought, you didn’t plan anything except how not to die in the next few minutes. It was a total mind trip to realize he’d have to think past that now.

He spotted Florence Kennedy hunkered down in the shade, sipping from a canteen and quietly crying.

“Hey, sorry about the way I screamed at you out there,” he said.

She gazed up at him, red eyes swimming. “You saved my ass today.”

“It’s a pretty nice ass.”

“Careful how you talk to me, Chief. That mouth of yours could get you in a world of shit.” She grinned through her tears. “I owe you.”

“Just doing my job, ma’am.”

“Sounds like you’re heading home.”

“Yep.”

She dug in her pocket, took out a card and scribbled an e-mail address on it. “Maybe we’ll keep in touch.”

“Maybe.” It didn’t work that way, but she was too new to know.

He turned the card over to the printed side. “Tyrone Kennedy. The state prosecutor’s office of New Jersey,” he said. “Does this mean I’m in trouble?”

“No. But if you ever get your ass in trouble in New Jersey, try calling my dad. He’s got connections.”

“And yet here you are.” He gestured around the dusty compound. Maybe she was like he’d been—aimless, needing to do something that mattered.

She gave a shrug. “I’m just saying, sir. Anywhere, anytime you need something from me, it’s yours.” She put the cap back on her canteen and headed into the mess, clearly a different person from the newbie he’d met just a few hours before.

He was surprised to see his hand shaking as he tucked the card into his pocket. Other than a few nicks and bruises, he wasn’t wounded, yet everything hurt. His nerve endings had nerve endings. After twenty-three months of numbing himself to all kinds of pain, he was starting to feel everything again.

Chapter One

Ulster County, New York

For a dying man, George Bellamy struck Claire as a fairly cheerful old guy. The dumbest show she’d ever heard was playing on the car radio, a chat hour called “Hootenanny,” and George found it hilarious. He had a distinctive, infectious laugh that seemed to emanate from an invisible center and radiate outward. It started as a soft vibration, then crescendoed to a sound of pure happiness. And it wasn’t just the radio show. George had recently received word that his grandson was coming home from the war in Afghanistan, and that added to his cheerfulness. He anticipated a reunion any day now.

Very soon, she hoped, for both their sakes.

“I can’t wait to see Ross,” said George. “He’s my grandson. He’s just been discharged from the army, and he’s supposed to be on his way back.”

“I’m sure he’ll come to see you straightaway,” she assured him, pretending he had not just told her this an hour ago.

The springtime foliage blurred past in a smear of color—the pale green of leaves unfurling, the yellow trumpets of daffodils, the lavish purples and pinks of roadside wildflowers.

She wondered if he was thinking about the fact that this would be his last springtime. Sometimes her patients’ sadness over such things, the finality of it all, was unbearable. For now, George’s expression was free of pain or stress. Although they’d only just met, she sensed he was going to be one of her more pleasant patients.

In his stylish pressed slacks and golf shirt, he looked like any well-heeled gentleman heading away from the city for a few weeks. Now that he’d ceased all treatment, his hair was coming back in a glossy snow-white. At the moment, his coloring was very good.

As a private-duty nurse specializing in palliative care for the terminally ill, she met all kinds of people—and their families. Though her focus was the patient, he always came with a whole host of relatives. She hadn’t met any of George’s family yet; his sons and their families lived far away. For the time being, it was just her and George.

He seemed very focused and determined at the moment. And thus far, he reported that he was pain free.

She indicated the notebook he held in his lap, its pages covered with old-fashioned spidery handwriting. “You’ve been busy.”

“I’ve been making a list of things to do. Is that a good idea?” he asked her.

“I think it’s a great idea, George. Everybody keeps a list of things they need to do, but most of us just keep it up here.” She tapped her temple.

“I don’t trust my own head these days,” he admitted, an oblique reference to his condition—glioblastoma multiforme, a heartlessly fatal cancer. “So I’ve taken to writing everything down.” He flipped through the pages of the book. “It’s a long list,” he said, almost apologetically. “We might not get to everything.”

“All we can do is the best we can. I’ll help you,” she said. “That’s what I’m here for.” She scanned the road ahead, unused to rural highways. To a girl from the exhausted midurban places of Jersey and the sooty bustle of Manhattan, the forest-clad hills and rocky ridges of the Ulster County highlands resembled an alien landscape. “It’s not such a bad idea to have too many things to do,” she added. “That way, you’ll never get bored.”

He chuckled. “In that case, we’re in for a busy summer.”

“We’re in for whatever summer you want.”

He sighed, flipping the pages. “I wish I’d thought about these things before I knew I was dying.”

“We’re all dying,” she reminded him.

“And how the devil did I luck into a home health care worker with such a sunny disposition?”

“I bet a sunny disposition would drive you crazy.” Although she and George were new to each other, she had a gift for reading people quickly. For her, it was a key survival skill. Misreading a person had once forced Claire to change every aspect of her life.

George Bellamy struck her as circumspect and wellread. Yet he had an air of loneliness, and he was seeking…something. She hadn’t discovered precisely what it was. She didn’t know a lot about him yet. He was a retired international news correspondent of some renown. He’d spent most of his adult years living in Paris and traveling the globe. Yet now at the end of his life, he wanted to journey to a place far different from the world’s capitals.

Lives came to an end with as much variety as they were lived—some quietly, some with drama and fanfare, some with a sense of closure, and far too many with regrets. They were the slow poison that killed the things that brought a person joy. It was amazing to her to observe the way a generally happy, successful life could be taken apart by a few regrets. She hoped George’s searching journey would be to a place of acceptance.

Those who were uninitiated in her area of care seemed to think that the dying knew the answers to the big questions, that they were wiser or more spiritual or somehow deeper than the living. This, Claire had learned, was a myth. Terminally ill patients came in all stripes—wise, foolish, filled with happiness or despair, logical, loony, fearful…in fact, the dying were very much like the living. They just had a shorter expiration date. And more physical challenges.

The countryside turned even prettier and more bucolic as they wended their way Northwest toward the Catskills Wilderness, a vast preserve of river-fed hills and forests. After a time, they approached their target destination, marked by a rustic sign that read, Welcome To Avalon. A Small Town With A Big Heart.

Her grip tightened almost imperceptibly on the steering wheel. She’d never lived in a small town before. The idea of joining an intimate, close-knit community—even temporarily—made Claire feel exposed and vulnerable. Not that she was paranoid, or—wait, she was. But she had her reasons.

There was no place that ever felt truly safe to her. The early days with her mother, even before all the trouble started, had been fraught with unpredictability and insecurity. Her mother had been a teenage runaway. She wasn’t a bad person, but a bad addict, shot during a drug deal gone wrong on Newark’s South Orange Avenue and leaving behind a quiet ten-year-old daughter.

Her life was transformed by the foster care system. Not many would say that, but in this instance, it was entirely true. Her caseworker, Sherri Burke, made sure she was placed with the best foster families in the system. Experiencing family life for the first time, she inhaled the lessons of life from people who cared. She learned what it was like to be a part of something larger and deeper than herself.

To appreciate the blessings of a family, all she had to do was watch. It was everywhere—in the look in a woman’s eyes when her husband walked through the door. In the touch of a mother’s hand on a child’s feverish brow. In the laughter of sisters, sharing a joke, or the protective stance of a brother, watching out for his siblings. A family was a safety net, cushioning a fall. An invisible shield, softening a blow.

She dared to dream of a better life—a love of her own, a family. Kids. A life filled with all the things that made people smile and feel a cushion of comfort when they were sad or hurting or afraid.

This can be yours was the promise of the system, when it was working as it should.

Then, at the age of seventeen, everything changed. She had witnessed a crime that forced her into hiding—from someone she had once trusted with her life. If that wasn’t a rationale for paranoia, she didn’t know what was.

A small town like this could be a dangerous place, especially for a person with something to hide. Anyone who read Stephen King novels knew that.

If worse came to worst, then she would simply disappear again. She was good at that.

She’d learned long ago that the witness protection programs depicted in the movies were pure fiction. A simple murder was not a federal case, so the federal witness protection program—WITSEC—was not an option for her. This was unfortunate, because the federal program, expertly administered and well-funded by the U.S. marshals, had a track record of effectively protecting witnesses without incident.

State and local programs were a different story. They were invariably underfunded. Taxpayers didn’t relish spending their money on these programs. The majority of informants and witnesses were criminals themselves, trading information for immunity from prosecution. The total innocents, such as Claire had been, were a rarity. Often, witness protection consisted of a one-way bus ticket and a few weeks in a motor court. After that, the witness was on her own. And for a witness like Claire, whose situation was so dangerous she couldn’t even trust the police, sometimes the only ally was luck.

Now the families she had been a part of so briefly seemed like a dream, or a life that had happened to someone else. She used to believe she’d have a family of her own one day, but now that was out of her reach. Yes, she could fall in love, have a relationship, kids, even. But why would she do that? Why would she create something in her life to love, only to expose it to the threat of being found out? So here she was, trapped into an existence on the fringes of other people’s families. She tried so hard to make it work for her, and sometimes it did. Other times, she felt as though she was drifting away, like a leaf on the wind.

“Almost there,” she said to George, noting the distance tracker on the GPS.

“Excellent. The journey is so much shorter than it seemed to me when I was a boy. Back then, everyone took the train.”

George had not explained to her exactly why he had decided to spend his final time in this particular place, nor had he told her why he was making the trip alone. She knew he would reveal it in due course.

People’s end-of-life experiences often involved a journey, and it was usually to a place they were intimately connected with. Sometimes it was where their story began, or where a turning point in life occurred. It might be a search for comfort and safety. Other times it was just the opposite; a place where there was unfinished business to be dealt with. What this sleepy town by Willow Lake was to George Bellamy remained to be seen.

The road followed the contours of a burbling treeshaded stream marked the Schuyler River, its old Dutch spelling as quaint as the covered bridge she could see in the distance. “I can’t believe there’s a covered bridge. I’ve never seen one before, except in pictures.”

“It’s been there for as long as I can remember,” George said, leaning slightly forward.

Claire studied the structure, simple and nostalgic as an old song, with its barn-red paint and wood-shingled roof. She accelerated, curious about the town that seemed to mean so much to her client. This might turn out to be a good assignment for her. It might even be a place that actually felt safe for once.

No sooner had the thought occurred to her than a blue-white flash of light battered the van’s rear-view mirror. A split second later came the warning blip of a siren.

Claire felt a sudden frost come over her. The tips of her fingernails chilled and all the color drained from her face; she could feel the old terror coming on with sudden swiftness. She battled a mad impulse to floor the accelerator and race away in the cumbersome van.

George must have read her mind—or her body language. “A car chase is not on my list,” he said.

“What?” Flushed and sweating, she eased her foot off the accelerator.

“A car chase,” he said, enunciating clearly. “Not on my list. I can die happy without the car chase.”

“I’m totally pulling over,” she said. “Do you see me pulling over?” She hoped he couldn’t detect the tremor in her voice.

“There’s a tremor in your voice,” he said.

“Getting pulled over makes me nervous,” she said. Understatement. Her throat and chest felt tight; her heart was racing. She knew the clinical term for her condition, but it was the layman’s expression she offered George. “Kind of freaks me out.” She stopped on the gravel verge and put the van in Park.

“I can see that.” George calmly drew a monogrammed gold money clip from his pocket. It was filled with neatly folded bills.

“What are you doing?” she demanded, momentarily forgetting her anxiety.

“I suspect he’ll be looking for a bribe. Common practice in third world countries.”

“We’re not in a third world country. I know it might not seem like it, but we’re still in New York.”

The patrol car, black and shiny as a jelly bean, kept its lights running, signaling to all passers-by that a criminal was being apprehended.

“Put that away,” she ordered George.

He did so with a shrug. “I could call my lawyer,” he suggested.

“I’d say that’s premature.” She studied the police car through the van’s side mirror. “What is taking so long?”

“He—or she—is looking up the vehicle records to see if there’s been an alert on it.”

“And why would there be an alert?” she asked. The van had been leased in George’s name with Claire listed as an authorized driver.

Yet something about his expression put her on edge. She glanced from the mirror to her passenger. “George,” she said in a warning voice.

“Let’s just hear the officer out,” he said. “Then you can yell at me.”

The approaching cop, even viewed through the side mirror, stirred a peculiar dread in Claire. The crisp uniform and silvered sunglass lenses, the clean-shaven square jaw and polished boots all made her want to cringe.

“License and registration,” he said. It was not a barked order but a calm imperative.

Her fingers felt bloodless as she handed over her driver’s license. Although it was entirely legitimate, even down to the reflective watermark and the organ donor information on the back, she held her breath as the cop scrutinized it. He wore a badge identifying him as Rayburn Tolley, Avalon PD. George passed her the folder containing the van’s rental documents, and she handed that over, too.

Claire bit the inside of her lip and wished she hadn’t come here. This was a mistake.

“What’s the trouble?” she asked Officer Tolley, dismayed by the nervousness in her voice. No matter how much time had passed, no matter how often she exposed herself to cops, she could never get past her fear of them. Sometimes even a school crossing guard struck terror in her.

He scowled pointedly at her hand, which was trembling. “You tell me.”

“I’m nervous,” she admitted. She had learned over the years to tell the truth whenever possible. It made the lies easier. “Call me crazy, but it makes me nervous when I get pulled over.”

“Ma’am, you were speeding.”

“Was I? Sorry, Officer. I didn’t notice.”

“Where are you headed?” he demanded.

“To a place called Camp Kioga, on Willow Lake,” said George, “and if she was speeding, the fault is mine. I’m impatient, not to mention a distraction.”

Officer Tolley bent slightly and peered across the front seat to the passenger side. “And you are…?”

“Beginning to feel harassed by you.” George sounded righteously indignant.

“You wouldn’t happen to be George Bellamy, would you?” asked Tolley.

“Indeed I am,” George said, “but how did you—”

“In that case, ma’am,” the cop said, returning his attention to Claire, “I need to ask you to step out of the vehicle. Keep your hands where I can see them.”

Her heart seized up. It was a moment she had dreaded since the day she’d realized she was a hunted woman. The beginning of the end. Her mind raced, although she moved like a mechanical wooden doll. Should she submit to him? Make a break for it?

“See here now,” George said. “I would like to know why you’re so preoccupied with us.”

“George, the man’s doing his job,” said Claire, hoping that would mollify the cop. She motioned for him to sit tight and did as she was told, stepping down awkwardly, using the door handle to steady herself.

Tolley didn’t seem put off by George’s question. “There was a call to the station about you and Miss…” He consulted the license, which was still clipped to his board. “Turner. The call was from a family member.” He glanced at a printout the size of a cash register receipt on the clipboard. “Alice Bellamy,” he said.

Claire looked over her shoulder at George, a question in her eyes.

“One of my daughters-in-law,” he said, a note of apology in his voice.

“Sir, your family is extremely worried about you,” said the cop. He stared at Claire. She couldn’t discern his eyes behind the lenses, but could see her own reflection clearly, in twin, convex detail. Medium-length dark hair. Large dark eyes. A plain, she hoped, ordinary, nondescript face. That was always the goal. To blend in. To be forgettable. Forgotten.

She forced herself to keep her chin up, to pretend everything was fine. “Is that a crime around here?” she asked. “To have a worried family?”

“It’s more than worry.” Officer Tolley rested his right hand atop the holster carrying his service revolver. She could see that he’d released the safety strap. “Mr. Bellamy’s family has some serious concerns about you.”

She swallowed hard. The Bellamys were made of money. Maybe the daughter-in-law had ordered a deep and thorough background check. Maybe that check had uncovered some irregularity, something about Claire’s past that didn’t quite add up.

“What kind of concerns?” she asked, dry-mouthed, consumed by terror now.

“Oh, let me guess,” George suggested with a blast of laughter. “My family thinks I’ve been kidnapped.”

Chapter Two

KAIA (Kabul Afghanistan International Airport)

“She did what?” Ross practically shouted into the borrowed mobile phone.

“Sorry, we have a terrible connection,” said his cousin Ivy, speaking to him from her home in Santa Barbara, where it was eleven and a half hours earlier. “She kidnapped Granddad.”

Ross rotated his shoulders, which felt curiously light. For the past two years, he’d been burdened by twenty pounds of individual body armor plates, a Kevlar helmet and vest. Now that he was headed home, the weight was gone. He’d turned in the IBA plates, shedding them like a molting beetle.

Yet according to his cousin, the civilian life had its own kind of perils.

“Kidnapped? ” The loaded word snagged the attention of the others in the waiting room. He waved his hand, a non-verbal signal that all was well, and turned away from the prying eyes.

“You heard me,” Ivy said. “According to my mother, he hired some sketchy home health care worker off of Craigslist, and she kidnapped him and took him to some remote mountain hideaway up in Ulster County.”

“That’s nuts,” he said. “That’s completely nuts.” Or was it? In this part of the world, kidnappings were common. And they rarely had a good outcome.

“What can I say?” Ivy sounded almost apologetic. “It’s my mom at her most dramatic.”

Growing up, first cousins Ross and Ivy had bonded over their drama-queen mothers. A few years younger than Ross, Ivy lived in Santa Barbara, where she created avant garde sculpture and wrote long, angsty e-mails to her cousin overseas.

“And you’re certain Aunt Alice’s overreacting? There’s no chance she might be on to something?”

“There’s always a chance. That’s how my mom operates—within the realm of possibility. She thinks Granddad is losing it. Everybody knows brain tumors make people do crazy things. When can you get to New York?” asked Ivy. “We really need you, Ross. Granddad needs you. You’re the only one he listens to. Where the hell are you, anyway?”

Ross looked around the foreign airport, jammed with soldiers in desert fatigues, trading stories of firefights, suicide bombers, roadside ambushes. Transport here had been his last movement on the ground. He remembered thinking, please don’t let anything happen now. He didn’t want to be one of those depressing items you read about in hometown newspapers—On his last day of deployment, he died in a convoy attack…

He pictured Ivy in her bohemian guest house on the bluffs above Hendry’s Beach. He could hear a Cream album playing in the background. She was probably making coffee in her French press and watching the surfers paddle to the beach-break for an early morning ride.

“I’m on my way,” he said. The homeward-bound soldiers had all been sitting at KAIA for hours. Time dragged at the pace of a glacier. Originally their flight was supposed to leave at 1400, but that had been delayed to 2145. They’d been ordered back to the departure tent and subjected to mandatory lockdown, which meant sitting in an airless tent with nothing to do until it was time to board: 2145 had come and gone, the delay surprising no one.

“Ross?” His cousin’s voice prodded him. “How much longer before you’re home?”

“Working on it,” he said to her. At the moment, he might as well be on a different planet; he felt that far away. “What’s going on with Granddad?”

“Here’s what I know. He’s been in treatment at the Mayo Clinic. I guess they told him then…” She paused, and a sob pulsed through the phone. “They told him it was the worst possible news.”

“Ivy—”

“It’s inoperable. I don’t think even my mother would exaggerate that. He’s going to die, Ross.”

Ross felt sucker-punched by the words. For a few seconds, he couldn’t breathe or see straight. There had to be some mistake. A month ago, Ross had received the usual communiqué from his grandfather. George Bellamy had a curiously old-fashioned style of writing, even with e-mail, starting each message with a proper heading and salutation. He had mentioned the Mayo Clinic—"nothing to worry about.” Ross had failed to read between the lines. He hadn’t let himself go there, even though he knew damn well a guy didn’t go to the Mayo Clinic for a hangnail. He hadn’t let himself think about…sweet Jesus…a terminal prognosis.

Granddad’s sign-off was always the same: Keep Calm and Carry On.

And that, in essence, was the way George Bellamy lived. Apparently it was the way he was going to die.

“He finally told my dad,” Ivy was saying. There was still a catch in her voice. “He said he wasn’t going to pursue further treatment.”

“Is he scared?” Ross asked. “Is he in pain?”

“He’s just…Granddad. He claimed he had to go to some little town in the Catskills to see his brother. That was the first I’d heard of any brother. Did you know anything about that?”

“Wait a minute, what? Granddad has a brother?”

The connection crackled ominously, and he missed the first part of her reply. “…anyway, when my mother heard what he was planning, she went, like, totally ballistic.”

Fighting the poor connection and the ambient din of the airport, Ross listened as his cousin filled him in further. Their grandfather had called each of his three sons—Trevor, Gerard and Louis—and he’d calmly informed them of the diagnosis. Then, like a follow-up punch, George had announced his intention to leave his Manhattan penthouse and head for a backwater town upstate to see his brother, some guy named Charles Bellamy. Like Ivy and Ross, most people in the family didn’t even know he had a long-lost brother. How could he have a brother nobody knew about? Was he some guy hidden away in an asylum somewhere, like in the movie Rain Man? Or was he a figment of Granddad’s increasingly unreliable imagination?

“So you are telling me he’s headed upstate with some sketchy woman who is…who, again?” he asked.

“Her name is Claire Turner. Claims to be some kind of nurse or home health worker. My mom—and yours, too, I’m sure—thinks she’s after his money.”

That would always be the first concern of Aunt Alice and of his mother, Ross reflected. Though Bellamys only by marriage, they claimed to love George like a father. And maybe they did, but Ross suspected Alice’s tantrum was less about losing her father-in-law than it was about splitting her inheritance. He also had no doubt his mother felt the same way. But that was a whole other conversation.

“And they called the police to stop her,” Ivy added.

“The police?” Ross shoved a hand through his close-cropped hair. He realized he’d raised his voice again and turned away. “They called the police?” Holy crap. Apparently his mother and aunt had managed to persuade the local authorities that George was with a stranger who meant him harm.

“They didn’t know what else to do,” said Ivy. “Listen, Ross. I’m so worried about Granddad. I’m scared. I don’t want him to suffer. I don’t want him to die. Please come home, Ross. Please—”

“I requested an expedited discharge,” he assured her. So far, the promised out-processing hadn’t given him much of a head start.

His cousin acted as though his homecoming was going to bring about a miraculous cure for their grandfather. Ross already knew miracles weren’t reliable. “When are you flying to New York?” he asked, but by then he was speaking to empty air; the connection had been lost. He shut the mobile phone and brought it over to Manny Shiraz, a fellow chief warrant officer who had lent it to him when Ross’s phone had failed.

“Trouble at home?” Manny asked. It was the kind of question that came up for guys on deployment, again and again.

Ross nodded. “God forbid I should go home and find everything is fine.”

“Welcome to the club, Chief.”

The idyllic homefront was usually a myth, yet everybody in the waiting area was amped up about going back. There were men and women who hadn’t seen their families in a year, some even longer than that. Babies had been born, toddlers had taken their first steps, marriages had crumbled, holidays had passed, loved ones had died, birthdays had been celebrated. Everyone was eager to get back to their lives.

Ross was eager, too—but he didn’t have much of a life. No wife and kids counting the hours to his return. Just his mother, Winifred, a flighty and self-absorbed woman…and Granddad.

George Bellamy had been the touchstone of Ross’s life since the moment a Casualty Assistance Calls Officer had knocked at the door, arriving in person to tell Winifred Bellamy and her son that Pierce Bellamy had been killed during Operation Desert Storm in 1994.

Granddad had flown to New York from Paris on the Concorde, which was still operating in those days. He had traveled faster than the speed of sound to be with Ross. He’d pulled his grandson into his arms, and the two of them had cried together, and Granddad had made a promise that day: I will always be here for you.

They had clung to each other like survivors of a tsunami. Ross’s mother all but disappeared into a whirlwind of panicked grief that culminated in a feverish round of dating. Winifred recovered from her loss quickly and decisively, sealing the deal by remarrying and adopting two stepkids, Donnie and Denise. Ross had been shipped off to school in Switzerland because he had difficulty “accepting” his stepfather and his charming stepbrother and stepsister. The American School in Switzerland offered a comprehensive residential educational program. His mother convinced herself that the venerable institution would do a better job raising her son than she herself ever could.

Ross’s grief had been so raw and painful he couldn’t see straight. Sometimes he wanted to ask her, “In what world is it okay to look at a kid who’d just lost his father and say to him, ‘Boarding school! It’s just the thing for you!’?”

Then again, maybe her instincts had been right. There were students at TASIS who thrived on the experience—a residential school as magical in its way as Hogwarts itself. He hadn’t known it back then, but maybe the long separations and periods of isolation had helped prepare him for deployment.

Being sent an ocean away after losing his dad could have pushed him over the edge, but there was one saving grace in his situation—Granddad. He’d been living and working in Paris and he visited Ross at school in Lugano nearly every single weekend, a lifeline of compassion. Granddad probably didn’t realize it, but he’d saved Ross from drowning. He shut his eyes, picturing his grandfather—impressively tall, with abundant white hair. He’d never seemed old to Ross, though.

On the eve of his deployment, Ross had made a promise to his grandfather. “I’m coming back.”

Granddad had not had the expected reaction. He’d turned his eyes away and said, “That’s what your father told me.” It was a negative thing to say, especially for Granddad. Ross knew the words came from fear that he’d never make it home.

He paced, feeling constrained by the interminable waiting. Waiting was a way of life in the army; he’d known that going in but he’d never grown used to it. When he’d announced his intention to serve his country, Ross had known the news would hit his grandfather hard, bringing back the hammer-blows of shock and relentless grief of losing Pierce. But it was something Ross had to do. He’d tried to talk himself out of it. Ultimately he felt compelled to go, as though to complete his father’s journey.

Ross had started adulthood as a spoiled, self-indulgent, overgrown kid with no strong sense of direction. Things came easily to him—grades, women, friends—perhaps too easily. After college, he’d drifted, unable to find his place. He’d attained a pilot’s license. Seduced too many women. Finally realized he’d better find a vocation that actually meant something. At the age of twenty-eight, he walked into a recruitment office. His age raised eyebrows but they’d given him no trouble; he was licensed to fly several types of aircraft and spoke three languages. The army had given him more of a life than he’d found on his own. Flying a helo was the hardest thing in the world, and for that reason, he loved it. But he couldn’t honestly say it had brought him any closer to his father.

Eventually the first wave of soldiers was taken to the plane. Another hour passed before the bus came back for the rest. Walking onto the transport plane, Ross felt no jubilation; pallets laden with black boxes and duffel bags were still sitting on the tarmac, not yet loaded. This ate up another hour.

A navy LCDR boarded, settling in across from Ross. She flashed him a smile, then pulled out a glossy fashion magazine stuffed with articles about make-up. Ross tried to focus on his copy of Rolling Stone, but his mind kept straying.

About an hour into the flight, the LCDR leaned forward to look out the window, cupping her hands around her eyes. “We’re not in Afghanistan anymore.”

It was too dark to see the ground, but the portal framed a perfect view of the Big Dipper. Ross’s grandfather had taught him about the stars. When Ross was about six or seven, Granddad had taken him boating in Long Island Sound. It had been just the two of them in a sleek catboat. Ross had just earned his Arrow of Light badge in Cub Scouts, and Granddad wanted to celebrate. They had dined on lobster rolls, hot French fries in paper cones and root beer floats from a busy concession stand. Then they’d sailed all evening, until it was nearly dark. “Is that where heaven is?” Ross had asked him, pointing to the sparkling swath of the Milky Way.

And Granddad had reached over, squeezed his hand and said, “Heaven’s right here, my boy. With you.”

There was a stopover in Manas Air Base in Kyrgyzstan, where the air was cool and smelled of grass. During the three-hour wait for bags, he tried calling his grandfather, then Ivy, then his mother, with no luck, so he headed to the chow hall to get something to eat. Although it was the middle of the night, the place was bustling. Ross studied the army’s morale, welfare and recreation posters advertising sightseeing tours, golf excursions and spa services, which sounded as exotic as a glass of French brandy. Before he’d enlisted, everyday luxuries had been commonplace in his life, thanks to his grandfather. Ross was returning hardened by the things he’d seen and done. But at least he was keeping the promise he’d made to his grandfather.

Please be okay, Granddad, he thought. Please be like a wounded soldier who gets patched up and sent back out into battle. At the next layover in Baku, Georgia, he had the urge to bolt and travel like a civilian, but he quelled the impulse and bided his time, waiting for the flight to Shannon Airport, in Ireland. He couldn’t allow himself to veer off track, not now.

Because now, it seemed his grandfather was acting crazy, giving up on treatment and haring off after a brother he hadn’t bothered to mention before.

During his deployment, Ross had learned a lot about saving lives—but from shrapnel wounds and traumatic amputations, not brain tumors. There was an image stuck in his head, from that last sortie. He kept thinking about the boy and the wounded old man, trapped in that house, clinging to each other. Everything had been stripped away from those two, yet they’d radiated calm. He’d never found out what became of the two villagers; follow-ups were rare.

He wished he’d checked on them, though.

Chapter Three

“Well, now,” said George, buckling his seat belt. “That was exciting.”

Claire pulled back onto the road, trying to compose herself. “I can do without that kind of excitement.” She drove slowly, with extra caution, as though a thousand eyes were watching her.

George seemed unperturbed by the encounter with the cop. He had politely pointed out that it was a free country, and just because certain family members were worried didn’t mean any laws had been broken.

Officer Tolley had asked a number of questions, but to Claire’s relief, most of them were directed at George. The old man’s no-nonsense replies had won the day. “Young man,” he’d said. “Much as I would enjoy being held captive by an attractive woman, it’s not the case.”

Claire had produced her state license and nursing certificate, trying to appear bland and pleasant, an ordinary woman. She’d had plenty of practice.

The effort must have succeeded because ultimately, the cop could find no reason to detain them. He sent them on their way with a “Have a nice day, folks.”

“Still all right?” she asked George, spying a service station up ahead. “Want to stop here?”

“No, thank you,” he said. “We’re nearly there, eh?”

She indicated the gizmo on the console between them. “According to the GPS, another eleven-point-seven miles.”

“When I was a boy,” said George, “we would take the train from Grand Central to Avalon. From there, we’d board an old rattletrap bus waiting at the station to take us up to Camp Kioga.” He paused. “Sorry about that.”

“About what?”

“Starting a story with ‘when I was a boy.’ I’m afraid you’re going to be hearing that from me a lot.”

“Don’t apologize,” she said. “Everybody’s story starts somewhere.”

“Good point. But to the world at large, my own story is not that interesting.”

“Everyone’s life is interesting,” she pointed out, “in its own way.”

“Kind of you to say,” he agreed. “I’m sure you are no exception. I’m looking forward to getting to know you.”

Claire said nothing. She kept her eyes on the road—a meandering, little-traveled country road leading to the small lakeside hamlet of Avalon.

Which Claire would she show him, this kindly, doomed old man? The star nursing student? The single woman who kept no possessions, who lived her life from job to job? She wondered if he would see through her, recognizing the rootless individual hiding behind the thin veneer of a made-up life. Occasionally one of her patients discerned something just a bit “off” with her.

Which was one reason she worked only with the terminally ill. A grim rationale, but at least she didn’t fool herself about it.

“Trust me,” she said to George, “I’m not that interesting.”

“You most certainly are,” he said. “Your career, for example. I find it a fascinating choice for a young woman. How did you get into this line of work, anyway?”

She had a ready answer. “I’ve always liked taking care of people.”

“But the dying, Claire? That’s got to get you down sometimes, eh?”

“Maybe that’s why my clients are rich old bastards,” she said, keeping her expression deadpan.

“Ha. I deserved that. Still, I’m curious. You’re a lovely, bright young woman. Makes me wonder…”

She didn’t want him to wonder about her. She was a very private person, not as a matter of choice, but as a matter of life and death. She lived a life made up of lies that had no substance, and secrets she could never share. The things that were true about her were the shallow details, cocktail party fare, not that she got invited to cocktail parties. The person she was deep inside stayed hidden, and that was probably for the best. Who would want to know about the endless nights, when her loneliness was so deep and sharp she felt as though she’d been hollowed out? Who would want to know she was so starved for a human touch that sometimes her skin felt as if it were on fire? Who could understand the way she wished to crawl out of her skin and walk away?

Back when she’d gone underground, she had saved her own life. But it wasn’t until much later that she’d realized the cost. It had been simple and exorbitant; she’d given up everything, even her identity.

“Tell you what,” she said, “let’s keep the focus on you.”

“I’ve never been able to resist a woman of mystery,” he declared. “I’ll find out if it kills me. It might just kill me.” His amusement wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Humor had its uses, even in this situation.

“You have better things to do with your time than pry into my life, George. I’d rather hear about you, anyway. This summer is all about you.”

“And you don’t find that depressing? Hanging around an old man, waiting for him to die?”

“All kidding aside,” she said, “things will go a lot better if you decide to make this summer about your life, not about your death.”

“My family thinks you’re not right for me.”

“I guessed that when they called the police on us. Maybe I’m not right. We’ll see.”

“So far, we’re getting along famously.” He paused. “Aren’t we?”

“You just hired me. We’ve only been together for three days.”

“Yes, but it’s been an intense three days,” he pointed out. “Including this long drive from the city. You can tell a lot about a person on a car trip. You and I are getting along fine.” Another pause. “You’re silent. You don’t agree?”

Claire had a policy of trying to be truthful whenever possible. There were so many lies in other areas of her life, this need not be one of them. “Well,” she said almost apologetically, “there was the singing, back in Poughkeepsie.”

“Everybody sings on car trips,” he said. “It’s the American way.”

“All right. Forget I said anything.”

“Was I really that bad?”

“You were pretty bad, George.”

“Damn.” He flipped through a few pages of his notebook.

“Just keeping it real,” she said.

“Oh, I don’t mind that you hated my singing,” he said. “But you’re making me rethink something on my list. Ah, here it is. I wanted to perform a song for my family.”

“You could still do that.”

“What, so they won’t be sad to see me go?”

“You just need a little backup music for accompaniment, and you’ll be fine.”

“Are you up for it?” he asked.

“No way. I can’t sing. I’ll find someone to help you.”

“I’m going to hold you to that.”

Simple, she thought. All she needed to do was find a karaoke place. And get his family to show up. Okay, maybe not so simple.

“Judging by our encounter with Officer Friendly, your relatives are pretty unhappy with me,” she said. She didn’t much care. As her client, George was her sole concern. Still, it always went better if the family was supportive of the arrangement, because families had a way of complicating things. Sometimes she told herself that the lack of a family was a blessing in disguise. Certainly it was a complication she never had to deal with.

She often imagined about what it was like to have a family, the way a severe diabetic might think about eating a cake with burnt-sugar icing. It was never going to happen, but a girl could fantasize. Sometimes she covertly attended family gatherings—graduation ceremonies, outdoor weddings, even the occasional funeral—just to see what it was like to have a family. She had a fascination with the obituary page of the paper, her attention always drawn to lengthy lists of family members left behind. Which, when she thought about it, was kind of pathetic, but it seemed harmless enough.

“They’re too quick to judge,” he said. “They haven’t even met you yet.”

“Well, you did make all these arrangements rather quickly.”

“If I hadn’t, they would have tried to stop me. They’d say we’re incompatible, that you and I are far too different,” he pointed out.

“Nonsense,” said Claire. “You’re a blueblood, and I’m blue collar—it’s just a color.”

“Exactly,” he said.

“We’re all in the same race,” she added.

“I’m closer to the finish line.”

“I thought we were going to try to keep a positive attitude.”

“Sorry.”

“This is going to go well,” she promised him.

“It’s going to end badly for one of us.”

“Then let’s not focus on the ending.”

There were known psychological and clinical end-of-life stages people went through when facing a devastating diagnosis—shock, rage, denial and so forth. Everyone in her field of work had memorized them. In practice, patients expressed their stages in ways that were as different and individual as people themselves.

Some held despair at bay with denial, or by displaying a smart-alecky attitude about death. George seemed quite happy to be in that phase. His wry sense of humor appealed to her. Of course, he was using humor and sarcasm to keep the darker things at bay—dread and uncertainty, abject fear, regret, despair. In time, those might or might not materialize. It was her job to be there through everything.

All her previous patients had been in the city, where it was possible to be an anonymous face in the crowd. This was the first time she had ventured somewhere like this—small and old-fashioned, more like an illustration in a storybook than a real place. It was like coming to a theme park, overrun by trees and beautiful wilderness areas and dotted with picturesque farms and painted houses.

“Avalon,” she said as they passed another welcome sign, this one marked with a contrived-looking heraldic shield. “I wonder if it’s named after a place from Arthurian legend.” She’d gone through a teenage obsession with the topic, using books as a refuge from a frightening and uncertain life. One of her foster mothers, an English professor, had taught her how to live deeply in a story, drawing inspiration from its lessons.

“I imagine that’s what the founders had in mind. Avalon is where Arthur went to die,” George said.

“Not exactly. It’s the island where Excalibur was forged, and where Arthur was taken to recover from his wounds after his last battle.”

“Ah, but did he ever recover?”

She glanced over at him. “Not yet.”

The first thing she did when arriving at a new place was reconnoiter the area. It had become second nature to plan her escape route. The world had been a dangerous place for her since she was a teenager. Avalon was no exception. To most people, a town like this represented an American ideal, with its scrubbed façades and tranquil natural setting. Tree-lined avenues led to the charming center of town, where people strolled along the swept sidewalks, browsing in shop windows.

To Claire, the pretty village looked as forbidding as the edge of a cliff. One false step could be her last. She was already sensing that it was going to be harder to hide here, especially now that she’d been welcomed by the law.

She took note of the train station and main square filled with inviting shops and restaurants, their windows shaded by striped and scalloped awnings. There was a handsome stone building in the middle of a large park—the Avalon Free Library. In the distance was the lake itself, as calm and pristine as a picture on a postcard.

It was late afternoon and the slant of the sun’s rays lengthened the shadows, lending the scene a deep, golden tinge of nostalgia. Old brick buildings, some of them with façades of figured stonework, bore the dates of their founding—1890, 1909, 1913. A community bulletin board announced the opening game of a baseball team called the Hornets, to be celebrated with a pre-game barbecue.

“Are you a baseball fan?” she asked.

“Devotedly. Some of my fondest memories involve going to the Yankee stadium with my father and brother. Saw the Yankees win the World Series over the Phillies there in 1950. Yogi Berra hit an unforgettable homer in that game.” His eyes were glazed by wistful sentiment. “We saw Harry Truman throw out the first pitch of the season one year. He did one with each hand, as I recall. I’ve often fantasized about throwing out the game ball. Never had the chance, though.”

“Put it on your list, George,” she suggested. “You never know.”

They passed a bank and the Church of Christ. There were a couple of clothing boutiques, a sporting goods store and a bookstore called Camelot Books. There was a shop called Zuzu’s Petals, and a grand opening banner hung across the entrance of a new-looking establishment—Yolanda’s Bridal Shoppe. Some of the upper floors of the buildings housed offices—a pediatrician, a dentist, a lawyer, a funeral director.

One-stop shopping, she thought. A person could live and die here without ever leaving.

The idea of spending one’s entire life in a single place was almost completely unfathomable to Claire.

She stopped at a pedestrian crossing and watched a dark-haired boy cross while tossing a baseball from hand to hand. On the corner, a blonde pregnant woman came out of a doctor’s office. The residents of the town resembled people everywhere—young, old, alone, together, all shapes and sizes. It reminded her that folks tended to be the same no matter where she went. They lived their lives, loved each other, fought and laughed and cried, the years adding up to a life. The residents of Avalon were no different. They just did it all in a prettier place.

“Well, George?” she asked. “What do you think? How does it look to you?”

“The town has changed remarkably little since I was last here,” George said. “I wasn’t sure I’d recognize anything.” His hands tightened around the notebook he held in his lap. “I think I want to die in Avalon. Yes, I believe this is where I want it to happen.”

“When was the last time you visited?” she asked, deliberately ignoring his statement for the time being.

“It was August twenty-fourth, 1955,” he said without hesitation. “I left on the 4:40 train. I never dreamed another fifty-five years would pass.”

That long, thought Claire. What would bring him back to a place after so much time?

“Would you mind pulling in here?” George asked. “I need to make a stop at this bakery. It was here when I last visited.”

She berthed the van in a big parking spot marked with a disabled symbol. On good days, George could walk fairly well, and today seemed to be a good day. However, they were in a new place and she didn’t want to push their luck.

The Sky River Bakery and Café had a hand-painted sign proclaiming its establishment in 1952. It was a beautiful spring day, and tables with umbrellas sprouted along the sidewalk in front of the place, shading groups of customers as they enjoyed icy drinks and decadent-looking sweets.

She went around to the passenger side of the van to help him. The key to helping a patient, she’d learned from experience, was to take her cues from him. Respect and dignity were her watchwords.

Though she had a wheelchair available, he opted for his cane, an unpretentious one with a rubber-tipped end. She helped him down and they stood together for a moment, looking around. His somewhat cocky persona slipped a little to reveal a face gone soft with uncertainty.

“George?” she asked.

“Do I look…all right?”

She didn’t smile, but her heart melted a little. Everyone had their insecurities. “I was just thinking you look exceptionally good. In fact, it’s kind of nice to tell you the truth instead of having to pretend.”

“You’d do that? You’d pretend I looked well, even if I didn’t?”

“It’s all a matter of perspective. I’ve told people they look like a million bucks when in fact they look like death on a cracker.”

“And they don’t see through that?”

“People see what they want to see. In your case, there’s no need to lie. You’re quite handsome. The driving cap is a nice touch. Where did you learn to dress like this?”

“My father, Parkhurst Bellamy. He was always quite clear on the way a gentleman should dress, for any occasion—even a bakery visit. He took my brother and me all the way to London for our first bespoke suits at Henry Poole, on Savile Row. I still get my clothing there.”

“Bespoke?”

“Made-to-measure and hand tailored.” He glanced at himself in a shop window. “Do me a favor. If I ever get to the stage where I look like death on a cracker, go ahead and lie to me.”

“It’s a deal.” She hesitated. “So do you expect to see someone you know in the bakery?”

He offered a rueful smile. “After all this time? Not likely. On the other hand, it never hurts to be prepared for the unlikely.” He squared his shoulders and gripped the head of the cane. “Shall we?” He gallantly held the shop door for her.

The bakery smelled so good she practically swooned from the aroma of fresh baked bread, buttery pastries, cookies and fruit pies, and a specialty of the house known as the kolache, which appeared to be a rich, pillowy roll embedded with fruit jam or sweet cheese.

A song by the Indigo Girls drifted from two small speakers. The shop had a funky eclectic decor, with black-and-white checkerboard floors and walls painted a sunny yellow. There was a cat clock with rolling eyes and a pendulum tail, and a hand-lettered menu board. Behind the counter on the wall was a framed dollar bill and various permits and licenses. A side wall featured a number of matted art photographs and articles, including a yellowed newspaper clipping about the bakery’s grand opening nearly sixty years ago.

George seemed like a different person here: gentle and pensive, shedding the impatience he’d shown occasionally on the drive from the city. A small line of patrons were clustered at the main counter. George waited his turn, then ordered indulgently—a cappuccino, a kolache and an iced maple bar. He also ordered a box of bialys and a strawberry pie to go.

She ordered a glass of iced tea sweetened with Stevia.

They took a seat at a side table decorated with a large travel poster depicting a scene at the lake. A guy in a flour-dusted apron and a name tag identifying him as Zach brought their order. He was an unusual-looking young man, his hair so blond it appeared white—naturally, not bleached. Claire had changed her own hair color enough times to know the difference.

“Enjoy,” he said, serving them.

“You didn’t order anything.” George aimed a pointed look at her glass of tea. “How can you come to a place like this and not want to sample at least one thing?”

“Believe me, I want to sample everything,“ she admitted. “I can’t, though. I, um, used to have a pretty bad weight problem. I really have to watch every single thing I put in my mouth.”

“You’re showing remarkable self-denial.”

So much of her life boiled down to that, to self-denial. What she couldn’t tell him was that her diet was not a matter of vanity alone. It was a matter of survival. As a teenager, she had used food as a comfort and a crutch, turning herself into the dateless fat girl. She was the nightmare everyone remembered from high school—overweight, reviled and given over to foster care.

When everything fell apart, her survival had depended on altering the way she looked as much as possible. In addition to changing the cut and color of her hair, the way she dressed, acted and talked, losing weight had been a key element of disguising her former self. Thanks to her young age at the time, and the stress of being on the run, the pounds had come off swiftly. Keeping the weight off was a daily battle. It was dangerously easy to pack on the pounds. It started with a simple, innocent-looking pastry like the one George was holding out to her.

But she had the ultimate motivation—staying alive. “Thanks, you go ahead and enjoy that.”

“And what the devil are you going to enjoy?”

“Watching you eat a kolache,“ she said.

He shrugged. “My funeral. Whoops, I’m not supposed to be saying things like that, am I?”

“You can say anything you want, George. You can do anything you want. That’s what this summer is going to be about.”

“I like the way you think. Should’ve lived my whole life that way.” He took an indulgent bite of his pastry and chewed slowly, his face turning soft with quiet ecstasy. He opened his eyes and saw her watching him. “Well,” he said, “there’s good news and there’s bad news. The bad news is, I’m not going to heaven. The good news is, I’m already there.”

“According to the GPS, the resort is only ten miles from here, so I’ll make sure you get a steady supply of those pastries,” said Claire.

“Honestly, it’s that good. Are you certain you can’t be tempted with one?”

“I’m certain. And it’s nice to know there are kolaches on the menu every day in heaven. Do me a favor and take a bite for me.” Sipping her tea, she checked out the other patrons. Another paranoid habit of hers was checking to see if she was attracting attention, and scoping out escape options—the swinging door behind the counter, and the main entrance to the street. Seeing no tell-tale signs of trouble, she studied the framed art poster on the wall. “That’s a beautiful shot of Willow Lake.”

“It is,” George agreed.

The image captured the placid mood and quality of light that pervaded the forest-fringed lake. She noticed a scrawled signature where the photographer had signed and numbered the print. ‘"Daisy Bellamy,’” she read. “George? Any relation to you?”

“Possibly.” A tiny smile tightened his mouth, and she could see him forcibly shifting gears. “It’s a singular sensation,” he said, alternating bites of the pastry with sips of his full-cream cappuccino. “After decades of having to watch my cholesterol, I’m not going to die of a heart ailment after all.” He sampled the maple bar. “I wish I’d known.”

She decided against pointing out his circular logic. One reason he’d enjoyed good health as long as he had was probably because he watched his diet.

“I could even take up smoking,” he said, blotting his mouth with a napkin. “Cigars and cigarettes won’t kill me. I could pursue it, guilt-free.”

“Whatever makes you happy.”

“I’m working on it,” he said.

“On what?”

“On making myself happy. All my life, I told myself I’d be happy someday.”

“And now that day has arrived,” she said.

“It’s hard,” he said quietly.

“To be happy? Tell me about it.” She took his arm and moved toward the door before he could question her. “Come on, George. Let’s go buy you some cigars."

They left town and headed northward along the lakeshore road. In the last part of the afternoon, the golden light deepened to amber, orange and fiery pink. Claire was silent, undone by the splendor of it. She wasn’t accustomed to being surrounded by so much riotous beauty, and it pierced her deeply, causing an unexpected welling of emotion.

Here I am, she thought. Here I am.

“This forest has grown so lush,” George remarked. “The area used to be all logged out. It’s good they replanted it. This is as it should be.”

She could feel his excitement spiraling upward as they approached Camp Kioga. It was their ultimate destination—the camp where he’d spent the summers of his boyhood. He eagerly pointed out landmarks as they passed them—mountains and rock formations and lookout points, a waterfall with a bridge suspended high above it.

The final approach took them deeper into the forest, where the foliage was so dense that for the first time Claire relaxed into a feeling of safety, false though it might have been. The resort came into view, its lodge and outbuildings nestled in the splendid wilderness at the northern end of the lake.

According to her hastily read brochure, the resort had recently been renovated and was run by a young couple, Olivia and Connor Davis. Yet the place retained its historic character in its timber and stone buildings, handmade signs, wild gardens, wooden docks where catboats and canoes bobbed at their moorage. The resort’s Web site, which she’d browsed the night before, explained that Camp Kioga had reached its pinnacle during the era of the Great Camps in the mid-twentieth century, when families from the city would take refuge from the summer heat.

The deep history and beauty of the place made her yearn for things she couldn’t have, like people who knew who she really was. What a gift it would be if she could stop running.

Gravel crunched under the tires of the van as they trolled along the circular driveway leading to the main lodge. Three flags flew over the landscaped garden in the center of the driveway—the U. S. flag and the flag of New York, and lower down, another one she didn’t recognize.

“It’s the Camp Kioga flag,” said George. “Nice to see they didn’t change it.” It depicted a kitschy-looking teepee by the lake, against a background of blue hills.

She pulled up next to the timbered entryway and went to help George. There was no one around. It was early in the season and a weekday afternoon, and the place was virtually deserted.

After a few minutes, a young teenager in coveralls, who had been working in the garden, came over, peeling off his canvas work gloves.

“Welcome to Camp Kioga,” he said as she opened George’s door. “My name’s Max. Can I give you a hand?”

“Thank you, young man,” George said. “Perhaps after we check in you can help with the bags.”

“Will do,” said Max. He appeared to do a double take, studying George for a moment. Then he held the door open for them.

Claire could feel tension in George as they stepped into a magnificent Adirondack-style lodge, constructed of tree-trunk timbers and river rock. It smelled faintly of wood smoke, thanks to a fireplace that was large enough to walk into.

The reception area, which was decorated with rustic furniture and primitive art, felt like another place in time, a place Claire had never been except in her imagination. The decor was subtle, with muted colors and light filtered through mica-shaded windowpanes and colored lampshades. A side room housed what appeared to be a well-stocked library, and there were stairs leading down to a game room.

Beyond the reception area lay an elegant dining room and a darkened bar. The dining room was being readied for dinner service, with white linen tablecloths and napkins. One wall was completely filled with wine bottles. French doors lined the far side of the room, offering access to a vast deck overlooking the lake.

She saw George’s fist tighten on the head of his cane. “Are you all right?”

“Very much so.”

A pleasantly efficient woman named Renée checked them in and gave them a quick orientation to the hundred acre resort. Each accommodation on the property had its own character and name—the Winter Lodge, the Springhouse, Saratoga Bunk, the Longhouse, and so forth. Claire and George would be sharing a well-appointed two-bedroom cottage named the Summer Hideaway, according to the illustrated property map. When she’d made the booking, Claire had requested a wheelchair-accessible accommodation, and this one turned out to be the most elaborate on the property. It had its own private dock and boathouse, and, according to the literature, was “the perfect place to escape and dream.”

The daily rate took Claire’s breath away, but George didn’t blink as he handed over his bank card.

Renée ran the card, then paused before handing it back. “Bellamy,” she said. “The resort’s owners are the Bellamys. Any relation?”

“Possibly,” said George, though he offered no further explanation.

“You might qualify for the friends and family discount, then,” she said.

“That won’t be necessary. Excuse me.” George made his way across the empty dining room and out to the deck.

Claire joined him there a few minutes later. She didn’t say anything. He stood there, bathed in the last of the sunlight, his hands braced on the railing as he gazed out at the lake. The water was placid, showing only the faintest of ripples in the wake of a pair of water birds paddling along. The light struck a bright ribbon of color across the water. In the distance lay a small island with a dock and gazebo, inked in black against the darkening sky.

As she watched George, she realized he wasn’t seeing the incredible scenery. He was looking out, but she sensed he was gazing inward, toward a lifetime of memories.

After a while, he let out a sigh. “Am I a foolish old man to come here, in search of my lost youth?” he asked.

“Probably.” She offered her arm. “But don’t let that stop you from enjoying it. George, it’s so beautiful. It’s a privilege to be here.” She had never seen a place like this before. She’d read about this sort of thing in books, maybe seen a glimpse in the movies. “This place is a dream,” she added.

“I suppose if I get to choose where I say goodbye to it all, I might as well choose this.”

She frowned. “Don’t you go all On Golden Pond on me. Come on, let’s go settle in."

The boy named Max escorted them with their bags to the Summer Hideaway, driving a gas-powered golf cart with obvious enjoyment. As they passed the various areas of the camp, George turned animated again, pointing out familiar sights. “There used to be an archery range here. And see that waterfall? We’d sit around the campfire, telling ghost stories about a couple who committed suicide off the hanging bridge above it. Never figured out whether or not there was any truth to the story. Oh, and there…I learned to play tennis right there on those courts,” he declared. “And I’m proud to say, I could hold my own against everyone. My first year here, anyway. When my brother and I teamed up for boys’ doubles, we were virtually unbeatable.”

Max parked in front of the lakeside residence and helped them with their luggage. George thanked him with a tip big enough to make the boy protest.

“Sir, it’s not necessary.”

“A tip never is,” George said. “We appreciate your help.”

Claire caught the boy’s eye and offered a shrug.

The cottage was a dream, far larger than most houses Claire had lived in. The furnishings were deceptively simple but supremely comfortable. The place had a rustic elegance that didn’t seem manufactured or contrived. It was bright and airy, and George’s room featured a picture window with a window seat.

“Do you need to rest?” Claire asked.

“I do far too much of that,” he said.

“How about you have a seat and I’ll help you unpack,” Claire suggested. She herself hadn’t brought much along. She was prepared to disappear at a moment’s notice. She always had an escape plan—a bag packed with a few basics—hair coloring and scissors, a wallet with ID, cash and credit cards, a new background and personal history. If something happened, she simply had to retrieve the bag from its hiding place and she would be gone.

At the moment, the bag was hidden under an electrical box near the parking lot of the resort. She hoped she would never have to use it, because she already knew she was going to love it here. She checked her phone and saw a missed call from “number unavailable,” another name for Mel Reno. She made a mental note to phone him later.

George had packed with neat efficiency, things from pricey clothiers like Brooks Brothers, Ted Lapidus, Henry Poole, Paul & Shark. There was a briefcase filled with papers and documents, and a box of books and photographs.

“Family pictures and old journals, that sort of thing,” George explained. “We can go through them later. I’ll want to enjoy my mementos in the living room, I imagine.”

Claire resisted an urge to ask him if he preferred pictures of his family over the real thing—or if they hadn’t given him a choice. She reminded herself to reserve judgment.

“When we checked in,” she said, “the woman asked you if you were any relation to the Bellamys. Is there anything more you want to tell me about that?”

He lowered himself to an overstuffed chair that was angled to take advantage of the view. “I have plenty to say about that. In due time.”

“It’s up to you.” She went to the desk and picked up a leather-bound volume embossed with the words Resort Guide. “It says here there are no phones in the unit.”

“I have a mobile phone,” he pointed out. “I’m not fond of using it, but it’ll do in a pinch.”

Claire steered clear of cell phones herself. Of necessity, she had one, a no-contract phone for which she’d paid cash. She bought the minutes card with cash, too. She had schooled herself to leave as light a footprint as possible wherever she went.

“No Internet, either,” she told George, “except in the main lodge.”

“I rarely use the confounded thing,” he said.

Claire used the Internet for its conveniences, when necessary. “Same here,” she said. “There are better ways to spend time than looking at things on the Internet. Like taking in a view like this.” She gestured at the sunset out the window. “Would you like to go sit on the porch for a bit?”

“A lovely idea.”

The cottage featured a railed porch furnished with white wicker chairs, a swing and an intriguing cot suspended from chains. She helped him to the swing, and he leaned back, surveying the calm water. Then he took out the cigars they’d bought and lit one up. Almost instantly, he erupted with a coughing fit, waving his hand in front of his face.

“George!” She took the burning cigar from him and stubbed it out. “Are you all right?”

“I am now. There’s one regret I don’t have.” He shook his head, sipped some water. “Smoking used to be so fashionable, back when.”

“I’m glad you weren’t a slave to fashion.”

George picked up his journal and paged through it. “My list is long. Is that unrealistic?” he asked.

“There aren’t any rules.”

He nodded. “We’ve accomplished one already.”

“You have?”

He drew a firm line through item number seventeen and handed it to her with a flourish.

She studied the entry for a few moments. “Visit the place where I first fell in love,” it read. She handed back the journal. “You did this?”

“Today.”

“The resort lodge, you mean?”

He looked a bit bashful. “Before that.”

She mentally retraced their journey. “I don’t under—Wait. George, do you mean…?”

He nodded again. “The Sky River Bakery.” He sighed, stared down at the item for a few more moments with a distant light in his eyes.

“Are you hungry, George? Would you like to go to dinner at the lodge?”

“I’m a bit tired, actually. I’m happy just resting here awhile.”

“Of course. I’ll get your meds.” Steroids and other palliative meds were keeping the symptoms at bay, but the effects were only temporary. The upside was, he stood a chance of enjoying a decent quality of life as opposed to endless days of chasing painful, time-consuming treatments that ultimately would fail.

When she came across the Viagra, she tried not to react, but something must’ve shown on her face. George didn’t seem sheepish at all, just matter-of-fact. “In case I get lucky. Is that a foolish hope?”

“As soon as you stop hoping to get lucky, it’s all over,” she said with a grin.

He gifted her with a burst of laughter. “Something tells me we’re going to get along just fine.”

She brought him a Hudson’s Bay blanket of brightly dyed wool, and a few pillows. Propped against the pillows, he scowled at a page in his journal. Across the top, he’d written Charles.

“Your brother, right?” said Claire.

George nodded. “He’s the main reason I’ve come here.”

“I bet he’s going to be incredibly happy to see you, George.”

“Of that, I’m not so certain.”

“What do you mean, not certain?”

“Charles and I haven’t spoken in fifty-five years.”

Chapter Four

Claire woke up to silence. She wondered if she’d ever get used to the absence of honking horns and gnashing air brakes, the shouts and whistles of vendors and workmen. The void was filled with birdsong, the hum of insects and breezes ruffling the leaves and rippling across the water. The smells drifting in through the screened window—flowers and grass and the fresh scent of the lake—were utterly intoxicating.

She went to the window of her small loft bedroom and felt the irresistible pull of the outside. She had an urge to be a part of it—and it was the perfect time for a morning run. Hastily dressed in nylon shorts and an athletic bra and T-shirt, ankle socks and her favorite runners, she tiptoed downstairs. She tucked her monitor receiver into a pocket and drank a big glass of water. Then she stepped outside and headed for the trail, choosing the five-mile route marked Lakeside Loop.

In the city, she would be plugged into an iPod to cover up the babble of urban life. Here in the wilderness, she welcomed the sounds of nature and the feel of the fresh air on her skin, and she started her morning jog with a smile on her face. And of course, she had the requisite shot of pepper spray clipped to her waistband, but that was more out of habit than any real fear she’d encounter trouble on the lakeside trail.

The beauty of her surroundings seemed almost unreal, as though she had stepped into a dream.

This morning, she tried to clear her mind. It was exhausting, always trying to think ahead, plan the next move, anticipate disaster. She pushed aside the constant tension and sank into her enjoyment of the woodland trails of the resort. One couple jogged past, nodding at her, and there was a single person in a kayak out on the lake, out for a morning paddle.

Birds flickered in the trees, and she spotted the occasional deer or rabbit. Sunlight glimmered on the lake, and the willow trees at the shore gracefully dipped their fronds in the water. Such a beautiful world. Too beautiful, she thought with a familiar twinge of yearning. She wished she had someone to share this moment with. Yet the fact was, she had no one to bear witness to her life. Sometimes that realization was overwhelming.

Over time, she had taught herself to tolerate the self isolation. There really wasn’t any other choice.

The rhythm of her feet on the pavement alternated with the cadence of her breathing. She tried to imagine absorbing the beauty of the day through her pores, somehow keeping it with her. Maybe that was the magic of this place—that even after you left, you could take it with you. Maybe that was why George still thought about it even after half a century had passed.

We haven’t spoken in fifty-five years.

A lifetime, she thought. George and his brother had let a lifetime slip by. Last night, she’d suggested they call Charles Bellamy—he was listed in the local phone book. George had balked and looked tired. “When Ross comes,” he’d said.

Ross. The favored grandson. She hoped like hell the guy was on his way. For that matter, where was the rest of George’s family? According to George, his sons and daughters-in-law expected him to return to the city in a matter of days.

This morning, George had been out of sorts. He’d stayed close to the house, only venturing to the porch or dock to catch the sun’s early rays. There was no further talk of Charles Bellamy, and Claire didn’t bring it up. For the time being, George was in no shape to face the emotional turmoil of a reunion with his long-lost brother.

Her plan for the day was to let each hour unfold at a pace that seemed to suit her patient. In the resort’s eclectic library, she had read up on Camp Kioga, trying to fill in the blanks for herself. There was a multivolume scrapbook filled with photos of people and events connected to the resort. It had started out as a big agricultural parcel at the north end of the lake, deeded to the Gordon family to settle a debt. The camp itself had been founded by Angus Gordon in the 1920s. Kioga was, as far as anyone knew, a fake Mohawk word which Angus claimed meant tranquility.

The campground was later run by Angus’s son and then inherited by his granddaughter and her husband. The current owners’ names had leaped off the page at her: Jane and Charles Bellamy.

Exploring the woodland trails that wound through the area, Claire imagined the past here, and wondered if she would ever learn the reason for the brothers’ estrangement. A brother shared a person’s history and background the way no one else ever could. Yet something had torn George and Charles apart. Something had made George walk away and stay away for fifty-five years.

She was so lost in thought that she didn’t notice someone approaching from an oblique angle behind her. At the last second, she spied a shadow—large male, baseball cap, arm outstretched—and reacted instantly, with all the force and decisiveness she’d learned in her self-defense training. In a fluid movement she turned, right leg kicking out at groin level, the heel of her left hand crunching upward into the assailant’s face. In less than a second, he was down, doubled over, and she was running for her life, her every nerve lit by adrenaline, the pepper spray in hand.

Claire gauged that she was about five minutes from the spot where her bag was hidden, going at top speed. As for George Bellamy, he would have no idea what became of her.

She felt bad about that. She hoped he’d find his brother, and she hoped the Bellamy family wouldn’t drag the old guy back to the city and force him to submit to brutal treatment.

The concern wasn’t enough to stop her.

A shout from her assailant, however, definitely was. “Tancredi,” he said, his voice a rasp of pain.

The single word—a name almost never uttered—froze her. It brought back everything she had left behind, including the person she’d been before she’d disappeared.

She allowed herself a quick look back.

Her assailant was on all fours, struggling to rise. Good. On all fours, he wouldn’t be drawing a weapon.

The baseball cap had fallen off him, revealing a mane of salt-and-pepper hair.

Oh, God. Mel. It was Melvin Reno, the only person Claire trusted with her secrets.

She instantly switched direction and ran to him, dropping to her knees by his side. “Are you insane?” she asked. “You huge idiot, you shouldn’t have sneaked up on me. I could have done you permanent damage.”

“Maybe you did.” He glowered at her through tears of pain.

“Sit,” she said, noting the shocky gray cast to his face. “Pull up your knees at a forty-five-degree angle and put your head between them.”

With a groan, he complied.

“Breathe in through your nose,” she instructed. “Out through your mouth.”

“I think you broke my face.”

“Is your breathing okay?”

“Just peachy.”

“Then it’s probably not broken.”

“I guess that’s the advantage of being a nurse,” he said, his voice muffled. “You can kick a guy’s ass and then put it back together again.”

“I was doing exactly what I was trained to do. By you, I might add. Fight, run, ask questions later but don’t believe the answers, isn’t that what you always say?”

He nodded without raising his head.

“How bad is the pain?” she asked. “Subsiding any?”

“Depends,” he muttered. “What if I say no?”

“Then you might need to be checked out. An ultrasound can determine whether or not there’s a testicular fracture.”

“A fracture? A fracture?”

“If there is, you’ll need surgery. Mel, I’m so sorry.”

“In that case, the pain’s going away.”

She winced, watching him try to catch his breath. He was the one person who could connect the dots between the quiet, studious Clarissa Tancredi of the past and the present-day Claire Turner.

And she had just kicked him in the balls.

“Sorry about kicking you in the balls,” she said again.

“I’m not looking for sympathy,” he said. “If the target had been anyone but me, I would say I’m proud of you for knowing the moves.” He lifted his head and she studied his face—blunt features, kind eyes, a roughhewn handsomeness that had probably been more refined in his youth. It was a good face, approachable and trustworthy. There were few blessings in the life Claire had been given. But Mel Reno was one of them.

He slowly climbed to his feet and limped to the side of the trail at the water’s edge, taking a seat on the ground. “So anyway,” he said, “thanks for the warm welcome.”

“What were you thinking?” she said, annoyed. “What are you doing here? Is everything all right?”

“Give me a minute.” He looped his arms around his drawn-up knees.

She studied him, relieved to note his coloring and respiration already seemed to be easing back to normal.

He took a deep breath and relaxed a little. “I called you yesterday. Why didn’t you call me back?”

“I got busy, Mel. I’m sorry.”

He frowned. “That’s not like you.”

“Well, you didn’t have to come tearing upstate after me.” She always kept him informed as to her whereabouts. Otherwise, he worried.

“I kind of wanted to see this place. Damn, it’s nice here.”

“I woke up this morning thinking I landed in the middle of a…” She paused. He’d think she’d lost it if she mentioned the enchanted world. “Special place.” Far in the distance, a floatplane landed, skimming like a dragonfly across the surface of the lake.

“Coming from where I do,” he said, “I tend to forget there are places like this in the world.”

A retired federal marshal with a troubled past, he lived alone in a tattered but quiet neighborhood of Newark. He was on disability and had dedicated his life to looking after people like Claire—witnesses who were hiding or running from something too big to cope with on their own. He had been an expert in identity reassignment and redocumentation, and when she’d gone to him in desperation, he’d given her a comprehensive security suite. This included a name borrowed from a deceased person, a new personal history and legitimate documentation. All new paper on her was official—birth certificate, driver’s license, social security card. Thanks to Mel, she had been reborn and given a chance at a new life.

Although she’d known him for years, she didn’t really know him. He was absolutely committed to helping people caught in the shadow world of anonymity. It was probably what made him tick. She had once asked him why he bothered with people like her. He said he’d been in charge of protecting a family of witnesses, and they’d all been killed.

Claire had stopped asking after that. She didn’t want to know more. If she got too close to him, he’d be in danger from the same monster who had sent her into hiding.

“Are you staying at the resort?” she asked.

“Right. Do you know what this place charges per night?” He shook his head. “I got a day use pass.”

“So where are you staying?”

“There’s a conservation department campground not far from here. It’s called Woodland Valley.”

She frowned. “You’re camping?”

“I’m camping.”

“Like, in a tent, with a sleeping bag?”

“Yeah, like that.”

She tried to picture him in the tent staked out in the wilderness. “So, um, how is that working out for you?”

“I didn’t come all this way to get laughed at.”

She caught a note of apprehension in his tone. “What?”

“I got a bit of news. You’re not going to like it.”

She braced herself. “Just tell me.”

“The Jordans applied to be foster parents once again.”

Despite the heat of the day, she felt a curdled chill that took her breath away. Her throat went dry; she had to swallow several times before she could bring herself to speak. “For God’s sake, two murders and a third kid missing, all of which happened on their watch—that doesn’t stand in their way?” she demanded. “No way will Social Services approve them.”

Mel was quiet. Too quiet, for too long.

“Right?” she demanded.

He stared out at the water. “I talked to about a half dozen people at Social Services.”

“And?”

“Apparently they dismissed me as a crackpot.”

“That was risky,” she said, “you pointing the finger at Vance Jordan. I’m the one who needs to blow the whistle on him, not you.” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she realized the decision was already made. It had been percolating for a long time, the need to end her selfexile. Coming to a place like this had only firmed her resolve. “It’s time, Mel. Past time. I can’t do this anymore. I’m done waiting.”

“Claire—Clarissa. He’s got too many friends all along the chain of command, and the ones who aren’t his friends are scared of him. Exposing yourself now won’t accomplish anything.”

There was a good chance he was right, but the thought of Jordan with another foster child made her stomach churn. “I’ll figure out something,” she said. “On my own.”

“You want to talk about risk—”

“That’s why I want you to stay out of it. Look, I’m doing this for myself, okay? I have to stop running.” There might have been a time when she’d accepted her life underground, but that time was over. She simply couldn’t keep it up. Instead of getting easier, being in hiding was getting harder. She was dying inside, unraveling with need. Her mother had been alone in the world, and sometimes Claire was convinced that was what had made her live so recklessly and die so young.

Claire sometimes heard of protected witnesses who came out of hiding and got themselves killed. People thought they were foolish, but she understood why they couldn’t stay anonymous forever.

“I won’t let you,” he snapped. “Just wait, okay?” he said. “I’ll figure out the next step.”

She merely nodded, pretending to agree with him. Then they parted ways in secret, like illicit lovers. That was the way all their meetings went. It was best not to be spotted together. She knew he was furious with her for insisting on risking herself in the Jordan case, but he must have known she wouldn’t sit still and watch Vance Jordan become someone’s foster father again. There was a ninety-day period before approval was granted or revoked. Ninety days to figure out how to come forward with what she knew—and to make someone believe her.

The prospect excited Claire as much as it frightened her. Mel had always insisted the chances of success were slim and the risk of exposure too great. But she kept thinking about how her life could change if Vance Jordan were arrested.

In her job helping people at the end of their lives, she had learned much about the importance of the way a person spent her time on earth. Running and hiding was not a life; it was just getting through the day.

George Bellamy was adrift. These spells came upon him in the gauzy numbness between waking and sleeping, courtesy of his disease. He was sometimes treated to an unprompted magic carpet ride through time and space, and at the end, he was amazed to find himself in the here and now. Here—in this paradise of a place, so beautiful it almost hurt to look at it. And now—at the last part of his life, which had not always been beautiful. It had never been boring, though.

Once he was gone, he imagined people would say he’d fought a brave battle with cancer or some such nonsense. In fact, he was not brave in the least; he was scared shitless. Who the devil wouldn’t be? No one knew for certain what awaited him in the vast infinite, no matter what one’s teachings were.

But still. Death was one of the Great Inevitables. George was working hard on accepting his fate, but a few things were holding him back, like the last uncut anchor ropes that kept a hot air balloon from soaring. If he wanted to fly free with boundless energy, he was going to have to find a way to untether himself.

Hence the visit to Avalon, to excavate a past that had always haunted him. Yet now that he was here, he felt himself balking. When Ross comes, he’d told Claire. Then he’d pay a visit to his brother.

George was grateful for Claire. He’d gone to a great deal of trouble to find precisely the right person—not just for him, but for Ross. Because Ross was one of those uncut tether ropes.

George wondered what Claire thought of this place, and of the glimpse into the past he’d given her. She was easy to talk to, this quiet young woman. Perhaps it was her gift, or perhaps it was something people in her profession were trained to do. Once she learned the rest of the story, she wouldn’t judge him or show disapproval. And honestly, in the place where he was in his life—what was left of it—he didn’t much care.

How much was the truth worth to a dying man? He’d been wondering about that lately. Perhaps he would discuss it with Claire. She was easy to talk to, this quiet young woman… He frowned, frustrated to find his thoughts looping back on themselves.

Claire Turner. Turner. George wondered what made her so guarded, so hard to know. He hoped she would open up for Ross. The two of them…George had a good feeling. They could really be something together, if they’d allow themselves that possibility.

He worried about Ross, of course, coming back from the war. George had no doubt his grandson had seen horrors beyond imagining. Ross would need to learn again that the world was a good place to be. Maybe Claire would be a part of that process. George certainly hoped so.

By the time he got himself up, he was feeling rather better. He shaved and dressed himself in chinos and a fresh golf shirt, and put on his favorite hat, the sporty one that covered his too-short hair. Then he went outside to see what the day was like. Moving slowly, with cane in hand, he went down a path that ran along the lakeshore. The air was so sweet it nearly took his breath away, and a searing grief streamed through him. How was it possible to leave all this?

“Hello,” someone said behind him.

Startled, he turned to see a woman seated on a bench by the path. She had white hair and wore a violet dress and sneakers with no socks. Just the sight of her made him smile. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t see you there. Too busy admiring the lake.”

“I don’t blame you. Would you like to have a seat?”

“Thanks. Nice morning,” he said. “Are you here on vacation?”

“My married grand-niece and her husband persuaded me to come. I happened to mention I’d spent summers at Camp Kioga as a girl and young woman, so they insisted that I should visit once again. It turns out the resort, in its new incarnation, offers a fifty percent discount to anyone who used to attend Camp Kioga.” She offered a charming smile. “I love discounts. It’s my favorite thing about being a senior citizen.”

George chuckled, liking her more by the minute. “You don’t say. We have something in common, then. I used to come here, too. It was a long time ago.” Now he was thoroughly curious about this woman, who had nice brown eyes and a somewhat impish expression. He checked her hand. No wedding band.

He must not have been very discreet, because she smiled straight at him. “I’ve never been married. I suppose that makes me a professional spinster.”

“I’m a widower,” he said. “And I’ve never much cared for the term spinster. There’s something lonely and unattractive about it, and you hardly appear to be either.”

“Thank you. And for the record, I have never spun a single thing in my life, so the label is inaccurate, as well.”

“I’d best find out your name, then.”

“It’s Millie. Millicent Darrow,” she said.

Recognition—remembrance—nudged at George. “Millie Darrow. I should have recognized you from our college days. You and your sister Beatrice went to Vassar.”

“Why, yes. I graduated in 1956.” She leaned forward and peered at him, hard. “George? George Bellamy.”

“It’s good to see you, Millie.”

She took off her sun hat and fanned herself. “This is extraordinary. What a surprise. What an incredible gift.”

She had no idea. She was the first person he’d seen in months who didn’t know George was sick. He liked that. He was glad for the hat covering his peach-fuzz hair. “You look wonderful, Millie,” he said.

“So do you. How is your brother Charles?”

It was too complicated to explain the situation, so George said simply, “He’s fine. Thank you for asking.”

“I always thought you were the handsome one.”

“Liar,” he said, laughing.

She replaced her hat. “It’s the truth, George Bellamy.”

“And I thought you were the sweet one,” he said.

“How long are you staying here?” she asked.

“As long as I can,” he said with an unbidden lurch of his heart. “As long as I possibly can.”

Chapter Five

Because Ross Bellamy’s discharge had been expedited by request, he was supposedly moved faster than normal through outprocessing and demobing. Still, the journey home seemed to take forever. After debriefing at Fort Shelby, Alabama, he was finally sent on his way. He felt out of place on the commercial airliner to Newark, unfamiliar with the culture after so many months in the service. There were a number of soldiers aboard, and they chattered madly the whole way, revved up by nerves and excitement as they prepared to reenter civilian life.

Ross found himself seated in an exit row between two other soldiers—a woman who had not yet turned twentyone, and a guy in his thirties who drank and talked the whole way, preoccupied with the taste of beer and a girlfriend named Rhonda.

“I don’t know why I’m so excited,” he confessed. “We did a lot of Skype and e-mail, so it’s not like we’ve been totally incommunicado. I guess it’s just the seeing-in-person thing, huh? There’s no substitute for it.”

“Makes me glad,” said the female soldier. “You don’t want technology to take the place of everything, right?”

Ross paged through an old copy of the New Jersey Star-Ledger. Gang murders, sports reports, community news. A headline about the state prosecutor’s office caught his eye; he scanned a story about corrupt state troopers. One of the prosecutors mentioned was Tyrone Kennedy. Father of Florence, the last friend Ross had made in Afghanistan.

“How about you, Chief?” the other soldier asked Ross. “You got a family waiting for you at home? Wife and kids?”

He shook his head, offered a slight smile. “Not at the moment.”

“Interesting answer,” said the female soldier. “Is this something you’re putting on your agenda?”

Ross chuckled. “Never thought of it in that way, but yeah. Maybe I am. Being in country so long makes you realize…having a family gives a guy something to hold on to.”

“Sometimes the only thing,” said the woman. “Sometimes it’s the thing that saves you.”

Ross knew she was right. The bond of family was a powerful, invisible force, feeding the will to survive. He’d seen wounded soldiers keeping themselves alive by sheer determination alone. Sometimes there was more healing power in the sight of a loved one’s face than in a team of surgeons.

“Yeah, one good thing about deployment is it makes you appreciate the life you have,” said the beer-drinking soldier. “Because nobody’s life sucks as bad as bunking in the desert in winter.”

“Hey, don’t be so sure,” said another soldier, turning around in his seat. “You haven’t met my wife.”

“Okay, now you’re scaring me,” said Ross. He knew he was joking as much as the soldier. In his life so far, he had done everything he was supposed to do as a Bellamy. He’d acquired a fine education and learned a useful profession. He’d served in the military. He just assumed the rest would come to him, that he wouldn’t have to go looking for it.

He liked women. He dated a lot. But he’d never found someone he wanted to wake up next to for the rest of his life, someone he wanted to have kids with, build a life. He hated the way his last relationship had ended just before he enlisted. It had faded away—not with an explosion of emotion but something possibly more devastating—disappointment. He’d been faced with the sinking realization that he’d made a huge mistake, convincing himself he was in love when he really wasn’t.

“It’s been my experience that love happens when you least expect it,” Granddad had said. “Sometimes it’s not convenient. So what you do is you simply stay open to the possibility, all the time.”

Ross tried to do that. Before going overseas, he’d dated a lot. He had good times. Great sex, sometimes so great he felt a flash of emotion and mistook it for love. But nothing ever lasted. He always ended up with a hole in the middle of his life. Without someone to share everything with, the future was just an endless string of days.

He wanted more than that. He needed more. The realization had been so clear to him on that final evac mission. He had vowed then to find a life that meant something, rather than waiting around for life to find him.

They landed in Newark. Civilians whipped out mobile phones and soldiers jumped up, grabbing their gear for the final push to the jetway. Families were gathered just past the TS A security point. There were women with kids clinging to them, spouses holding hand-lettered signs, parents and siblings, faces beaming through bouquets of flowers and balloons. A couple of contraband pets had been smuggled in.

Returning soldiers were enveloped by their loving families, many of them literally surrounded and swallowed up. Tears flowed and laughter erupted. Camera flashes strobed the area. Spontaneous applause erupted from onlookers.

Ross skirted the excited crowd, his duffel bag balanced on one shoulder and held in place with an upraised arm. Just seeing the rush of love that greeted everyone filled him with satisfaction. These soldiers had earned it. They’d fought and bled and wept and despaired, and they had earned the right to be home with their loved ones at last.

He was not naive enough to believe every single one of them was headed for some life of unrelenting familial bliss. Indeed, they would face hardships and disappointment and setbacks, just like anyone else. But not now. Not today.

He left the homecoming lovefest behind and scanned the throng for his mother. He tried not to seem too eager or desperate. But hell, he’d been gone a long time, long enough to start thinking of her fondly and remembering the good times.

There was a group at the back of the crowd, gathered under a sign labeled Any Soldier. It appeared to be some grassroots organization meant to provide a warm welcome home to any service person, particularly those who, for whatever reason, didn’t have anyone to meet them on the ground.

Did they really think some soldier would avail himself of their greeting? They might as well be holding up signs labeled Losers Register Here.

To his surprise, a big-shouldered guy with sergeant stripes approached the group. At first he was tentative, his bashfulness at odds with his massive size. Someone in the group noticed him, and he was immediately enclosed by the friendly mass. After that, a few more soldiers approached, some looking almost furtive, but then pleased to have a hand to shake, a friendly word to exchange.

Ross walked on past the strangers. Any port in a storm, he supposed. Family meant different things to different people.

To others, he thought, spying his own name on a handlettered sign, it meant not a whole hell of a lot.

The sign read R. Bellamy, and it was held by a white-gloved, uniformed stranger in a banded hat. He wore a badge that said Royal Limo Service.

Great, thought Ross. His mother had sent a car service to pick him up from the airport. His stomach sank, and he mentally kicked himself for expecting anything else.

“That’s me,” he said to the limo driver, offering a brief handshake. “Ross Bellamy.”

“Welcome to New York, sir,” the driver said with a vague accent. “My name is Pinto. Can I take your bag?”

“Thanks.” Ross handed over the duffel.

“Baggage claim is this way,” said Pinto. “Did you have a pleasant flight?”

“It was fine.”

“Where you coming from, then?”

“Afghanistan, the eastern part of the country, by way of Mobile, Alabama.”

Pinto gave a low whistle. “You mean you was on deployment.” He set down the duffel and shook Ross’s hand. “Glad you’re back, man.”

“Yeah.” The handshake felt ridiculously good.

The limo was actually a Town Car, which was a relief to Ross. A big stretch limo ran the risk of seeming ostentatious. The plush leather of the car’s upholstery sighed under his weight as he slid in and fastened his seat belt. His mother had clearly ordered the VIP package. There was an array of amenities—ice and drinks, cocktail snacks, mints, a phone for customers’ use.

He picked it up and dialed his mother’s number. “Mrs. Talmadge’s residence,” said her assistant.

“It’s Ross,” he said. “Is my mother available?”

“Hold a moment, please.”

“Ross, darling.” Winifred Talmadge’s voice trilled with delight. “Where are you?”

“On my way from the airport.”

“Is the car all right? I told the service to send their best car.”

“Oh, yeah, it’s great.”

“I can’t tell you what an utter relief it is to know you’re back. I nearly lost my mind worrying.”

It was natural, even normal for a mother to worry. When your son was in a battle zone, it was to be expected. “Thanks,” he said.

“I mean, what can he possibly be thinking?” she rushed on. “I haven’t slept a wink since he announced his intention to go off to the Catskills in search of his long-lost brother.”

“Oh,” said Ross. “Granddad. That’s what you’re worried about.”

“Well, aren’t you?”

“Of course. Listen, traffic doesn’t look bad at all. I should be there soon. Can we talk about it then?”

“Certainly. I’ll have all your favorites for dinner.”

“Great, thanks.”

She paused. “Ross.”

“Yes?”

“Just refresh my memory,” she said. “What are your favorites?”

He burst out laughing then. There was nothing to do but laugh. Here he’d been thinking she might be having a moment. Might be genuinely sentimental about him.

“Hey, anything that’s not served in a metal compartmentalized tray is fine with me,” he said.

He rode the rest of the way into Manhattan in blissful silence, leaning back against the headrest. In a way, he was grateful for the mother he had. Seriously, he was. He learned as much from her bad example as other people did from having good mothers.

Winifred Lamprey Bellamy Talmadge was a creature of her own invention. Lacking what she regarded as the right background, she had invented a whole new persona for herself.

Few people knew she had grown up in a seedy section of Flatbush, in a thin-walled apartment above her parents’ pawn shop. Early in life, she’d learned to be ashamed of her humble roots, and had made it her life’s mission—as she’d put it when Ross questioned her—to rise above it. She’d made a study of the upper classes. She practiced speaking in an ultrarefined, boarding school accent, slightly nasal and beautifully articulated. She studied the way the wealthy dressed and ate and comported themselves. She totally hid who she was.

She buried her past, insisted on being called Winifred instead of Wanda. She feasted on novels of the mannered elite. As a high school girl, she set a goal to attend Vassar College—not so much for the education, but for its traditional social affiliation with Yale. She wanted to marry a Yale man, and attending Vassar was the way to do it. With the focus and dedication of a nationally ranked scholar, she applied herself in high school. She knew she had to work twice as hard as the privileged girls of private schools. And she did, even winning lucrative scholarships. Such dedication, her teachers had said. Such discipline. She’ll probably do something extraordinary with her life.

It could be argued that she had, in a way. He had to give her props for that. It was no small feat to pull oneself up by one’s bootstraps, in a single generation going from Flatbush to Fifth Avenue simply by sheer force of will.

Ross knew all this about his mother because his grandfather had told him. Not to gossip or be mean but to try to give a hurting, grieving boy some perspective with regard to his mother, who had all but turned her back on him after the death of his father. Ross would never understand a person who ran from her past and hated who she really was. But he learned to put up with her paranoia and self-absorption, and his grandfather had, in time, made it cease to matter.

Ross gazed out the car window at the landscape passing by en route to the city—first the tenements and creaky wooden row houses of the outskirts, the industrial midurban zone of boxy brick and metal buildings, and finally the tunnel leading to Manhattan, vibrant and congested, smelly and full of energy. His mother’s neighborhood, on the upper west side, was a calm oasis of residences with wrought-iron gates leading to fussy gardens.

Though Winifred had her widow’s benefits from her late husband, she still managed to live beyond her means. Her former father-in-law, George Bellamy, assured her that he was keeping her in the will. Granddad had vowed that as the widow of his first son and the mother of his first grandson, she had earned the privilege.

After being widowed by her first husband and divorced by her second, Winifred didn’t know what else to do, having never made a career for herself. All the promise her teachers had seen in her, all the promise that had won her scholarships and a coveted spot at Vassar, had served one purpose and one purpose only—to marry well.

And indeed she had. The Bellamy family was wealthy and influential with roots that could be traced, not to the mongrel rebels who had arrived on the Mayflower, but to the genteel nobles who stayed in England and conquered the world. To Winifred, marrying Pierce Bellamy had been like grabbing the brass ring on the merry-go-round.

There was a catch, though. Something no one ever told Winifred. Or Pierce, for that matter. And the catch was that certain things couldn’t be gleaned from a book. The finest education in the world could not instruct someone how to marry for the right reasons, or even to know what those reasons were. The best schools in the country could not teach a person to be happy and stay that way, let alone keep someone else happy.

For now, Ross would let himself be glad he was home. He would be grateful for every day that didn’t involve surface-to-air missiles, sucking chest wounds, evacuation under fire or war-shattered lives. And he would do everything in his power to convince his grandfather to fight his illness rather than give up.

He dialed his grandfather’s number, predictably getting a pre-recorded voice mail message. His grandfather had a cell phone, too, and Ross tried that, as well. It went straight to voice mail, meaning the thing was probably turned off or had a dead battery. Granddad had never quite warmed up to having a cell phone.

Tonight, Granddad, Ross thought. I’ll find you tonight. Never mind that his mother was going to serve all his unremembered favorites. He would borrow the roadster and drive up to the wilderness camp where his sick and dying grandfather had gone, in the company of a stranger.

Ross picked up the phone again. He only had a few friends in the city. Educated abroad, then serving in the army, he hadn’t really settled down anywhere. He was ready now, though. More than ready.

He tried calling Natalie Sweet, whom he’d known since ninth grade and who lived here. Thank God for Natalie. Other than his grandfather, she was probably the person closest to Ross. He got her voice mail and left a message. Then he did the same for his cousin Ivy, and was secretly relieved when she didn’t pick up, since she wept each time they spoke of their grandfather.

The car pulled up at a handsome brown brick building. It was nominally the place Ross called home. In actuality, he had been moved around so much after his father was killed that he never quite knew where home was. Had it been the Bellamy family retreat on Long Island? His uncle Trevor’s place in Southern California? His grandfather’s apartment in Paris? He had no emotional ties to this particular patch of upper Manhattan, no true anchor, except wherever his grandfather happened to be.

The doorman, Cappy, greeted him warmly. So did Ross’s mother, to be fair, the moment he walked through the door and Salomé told him Madame was in the living room.

Winifred hugged him close, and her arms felt taut and strong around him. When she pulled back, tears shone brightly in her eyes. “I’ve missed you, son.”

Tall and slender, she maintained her looks with regular visits to salons and spas. Her hair looked polished, her makeup perfect, despite the tears. In her own needy way, she did love him.

“I’m so relieved to have you back, safe and sound,” she added.

“Thanks,” he said, taking a seat by a window that overlooked a manicured park, crisscrossed by pathways. “A little something I brought you,” he said, handing her a flat jar with a colorful label. It was caviar from the Caspian Fish Company Azerbaijan. “Slim pickings in the souvenir department.”

“Thank you, Ross. You know I love caviar.”

“Sure. I want to hear all about Granddad. What’s going on?”

She reiterated the words that had brought him racing across the globe: glioblastoma multiforme. Grade four— which meant rapid progression. Refusing treatment. “He said he wants to make the most of the time he has left,” she explained, her voice tinged with indignation. “And then what does he do? Hires some woman who is obviously after his money, and goes looking for some lost branch of the family. I think it’s complete and utter nonsense.”

Ross wasn’t sure what she was referring to as complete and utter nonsense. George’s diagnosis or his reaction to it? His quest to reconnect with his brother or the fact that there were other Bellamys in the world?

“Did you know anything about Granddad’s brother?” asked Ross. “Did Dad?”

She waved a hand in dismissal. “Pierce knew about the brother. It was no secret. It was simply a fact. George had a brother and the two never saw each other or spoke.”

“And you didn’t think there was anything wrong with that?”

“It’s not my place to judge. Nor is it yours. I always assumed they had gone down separate paths. Your grandfather was an expatriate until he retired a few years ago, and his sons are…Why, I scarcely know where anyone is these days. It’s easy to lose track.”

“Uncle Gerard’s in Cape Town, Uncle Louis in Tokyo and Uncle Trevor’s in L.A. It’s not rocket science, keeping up with family members. Something else must have happened.”

“He’s being a foolish old man,” Winifred pronounced. “That’s what happened. I don’t know if his lack of judgment is caused by the cancer, or if he’s simply old and foolish. I hope he’ll listen to you, Ross. You’re the only one who can reason with him. He’s acting out of panic, going with a strange woman to a strange town when he should be here, with us,” his mother said, her voice taut with insistence.

Ross felt a surge of pity. Yes, she was self-centered. But she and Granddad shared a common bond. Ross and his grandfather were perhaps the only ones in the family who understood that Winifred was terrified of another loss, and it wasn’t all about the money.

Once a year, on the anniversary of Pierce’s death, Winifred would go to the war veterans’ cemetery in Farmingdale on Long Island. There, she would weep as she lay a wreath at the unadorned headstone that was indistinguishable from all the others there, in the endless rows, except for the name chiseled in it. Each year she was joined in this ritual by her father-in-law, who would visit from Paris or wherever he happened to be working.

“He’s a selfish, foolish old man to do this to his family,” she repeated.

“Oh, that’ll bring him rushing back,” Ross pointed out.

“I would never tell him that.”

“Sometimes you can sense someone’s opinion without having it expressed directly.” He paused. Then something made him ask, “Did you ever really know Granddad, Mom? Did you love him, or did you love the way he took care of us after Dad was killed?”

“Don’t be silly. The two are inseparable.” Then she burst into tears. “Of course I loved him. What on earth do you take me for?”

Ross touched her shoulder, knowing this was a rare glimpse at his mother’s closely guarded heart. She patted his hand and moved away from him. The two of them had never been at ease in one another’s company. Ross felt too restless to sit still. “I’m going to drive up and find Granddad. If I leave now, I can beat the rush-hour traffic out of the city.”

“You just got here,” said Winifred.

“Come with me,” he suggested.

“I couldn’t,” she said. “I have too much on my schedule.”

Ross didn’t let himself comment about that. “I can stay for dinner,” he conceded. “Then I need to borrow the car."

“Thank God I caught you,” said Natalie Sweet, exiting the taxicab. “Your mother told me I could catch you if I hurry.”

In the remote parking facility where the car was stored, Ross set aside the car keys and opened his arms. She launched herself at him. They clung together for long moments and he inhaled the bubblegum-sweet scent of her hair. She was his best friend, and one of his oldest. He and Natalie had met at boarding school in Lugano, Switzerland. They had both been scared, skinny kids with mad skills at skiing and families that were far, far away.

Leaning back a little, he lifted her off the ground. “I’m glad you caught me.”

“Welcome home, soldier,” she said, and her voice in his ear was as welcome as an old favorite song on the radio.

“Thanks.” He set her down. “You look fantastic, Nat. The writing life agrees with you.”

She laughed. “Making a living agrees with me. See how fat and sassy I am?” She perched her hands on her hips.

“You look great.”

She had always been pretty—to Ross, anyway. Not a classic beauty; she had typical girl-next-door good looks, with the wholesome appeal of a loaf of freshly baked bread.

“So things are working out at the paper?” he asked.

“I’ll tell you all about it in the car.” She grinned at his expression. “That’s right, soldier. I’m coming with you.”

“I don’t remember inviting you.”

She indicated a slouchy-looking weekender bag on the pavement. “You didn’t. But you’re going to need me and we both know it. We’ve got the Vulcan mind link up and running, right?”

In secondary school, they’d both been closet fans of Star Trek: The Next Generation, a crazy dubbed version that aired on the Italian national station. To this day, he still remembered how to say “Live long and prosper” in Italian.

“Look, it’s really good of you,” he said. “But I’m driving upstate by myself. It’s not a pleasure trip.”

“Haven’t you figured it out by now?” she asked, giving him a slug in the arm. “I’d rather have a rotten time with you than a great time with anyone else. So we’d better get going, or we’ll get stuck in traffic.”

“You’re not coming.”

“Why would you waste valuable time in an argument you’re going to lose?” she asked.

“Damn. You are one huge pain in the ass.”

A few minutes later they were in a thick but moving line of traffic leaving the city behind, block by tattered block.

“Thanks for letting me tag along,” Natalie said. “This car kicks ass.”

He’d never argue about his mother’s taste in cars. The Aston Martin roadster drove like a carnival ride. He could barely remember the last time he’d driven anything that didn’t involve both hands and both feet simultaneously.

“You didn’t give me a choice,” he reminded Natalie.

“I love George. You know I always have, and I want to do what’s best for him under the circumstances.”

“That’s why I need to see him,” Ross said. “To figure out the circumstances. I can’t go by what my mother reported to me. According to her, he’s suffering from dementia. His judgment is impaired. He might be a victim of some predatory nurse.”

She reached across the console, touched his arm. “I’m so glad you’re back, Ross. I want to hear what it was like over there,” she said. “When you’re ready to talk about it.”

“Yeah, I’m not really there yet,” he said, knowing the trauma of his deployment was still too fresh to discuss with anybody—including himself. Eventually he would need to talk about his time overseas, describe the things he’d seen and done.

Just not now. Everything was all too fresh. It was very, very strange to consider that only hours ago, he’d still been in the military. Only days ago, he’d been embroiled in a life-or-death firefight, and still bore the healing scratches of that final battle. He felt as though he’d been plucked from one world and set down in another. Not that he wasn’t grateful, but he hadn’t quite adjusted.

During the long, intermittently scenic drive upstate, he thought about the more immediate issue. His was a messy, screwed-up family—more than he knew, apparently. No wonder Granddad had taken off. Maybe he’d gone in search of a less screwed-up branch of the Bellamy family.

“Well, when you’re ready, so am I,” said Natalie.

“I’d rather hear about you, Nat. So you say work is good?”

“Work is great. The world of sports journalism is my oyster. I had a big break last year—a piece on an up-and-coming baseball pitcher in the New York Times Magazine. My blog has a big following and I’m working on a book. Oh, and here’s something I bet you didn’t know. It’s our twentieth anniversary.” She touched his arm again, giving him a squeeze. It felt…unfamiliar. People in his unit didn’t touch.

“No shit.” He draped his wrist over the arch of the steering wheel. “I’ve never kept count. You mean we met twenty years ago?”

“Yep. And it was hate at first sight, remember? You totally made fun of my braces.”

“You made fun of my haircut.”

“It’s a miracle we lasted five minutes together, let alone twenty years.”

They had been forced to work together on a school project. The two of them came from completely different backgrounds, although that hadn’t been the cause of their mutual dislike. Ross was an adolescent train wreck, grieving the loss of his father. He came from a family that had money—had rather than made. There was a difference.

Natalie, on the other hand, had been a scholarship student. Her parents were missionaries working in an East African principality that tended to erupt with military coups every few months.

The two of them had teased and fought their way into a genuine friendship. Their bond came from their shared pain; they were both kids who had been set aside—Ross by his mother, who could not abide the thought of having to raise him alone, and Natalie by her parents, whose humanitarian ideals left no room for their daughter.

Reverend and Mrs. Sweet believed they were meant for a higher purpose than merely being parents to a gifted but awkward girl.

“That officially makes you my oldest friend,” she declared.

“Same here. So we’re both old. When are you going to marry me?”

“How about never?” she asked. “Does never work for you?”

It was a running joke with them. They had struggled through dating woes in high school and commiserated at Columbia, where they’d both gone to college, she to study journalism, and he, aeronautics. On a single, ill-conceived night, fueled by too many boilermakers, they had lost their virginity to each other. They’d figured out then that they could never be together as lovers. The delicate alchemy of their friendship didn’t transform itself into passion, no matter how hard they tried.

“That’s not enough for me,” she’d said. “Or for you, either. We’re forcing this, and we shouldn’t need to. When it’s right, we won’t have to force it.”

He’d teased her about having a secret wish to be a psychoanalyst. He hadn’t disagreed with her, though.

As for Natalie, she always claimed her boyfriends didn’t work out because Ross had filled her head full of unrealistic expectations. She’d been serious about one guy awhile back; some musician. Like all the others, it hadn’t worked out.

Every time she broke up with a guy, Ross would accuse her of holding out for him.

“You’re killing me here,” he said to her. “How many rejections can one guy take?”

“From me? The sky’s the limit, dude. What’s your hurry, anyway? Most guys I know run the other way when it comes to marriage talk. You sound like you’re in some kind of race to settle down.”

“It’s not like that,” he said. “It is that.” Especially after what he’d seen over there. “I’m tired of being alone, Nat,” he said. “I want to be someone’s husband. Someone’s dad, eventually.”

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