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Chapter 1

When Daisy Keegan heard the high-pitched squealing sound coming from the engine of her mother’s pickup truck that morning, she did what her mother had taught her to do in situations like this: she turned up the radio. There. Problem solved. If she couldn’t hear the noise, the engine wasn’t making it. It was that simple.

Except that it wasn’t. Because damned if the noise didn’t get louder. She turned the radio up all the way, but she could still hear it. “This is not happening,” Daisy muttered. Not today. She glanced at the dashboard clock. She had exactly thirty minutes to get home, unload the truck (it was full of the restaurant supplies she’d bought that morning at the wholesale warehouse in Ely), and change into something halfway presentable to wear to lunch with her parents.

Lunch with her parents, she thought, working hard to ignore the engine noise that was getting harder to ignore. What a strange concept; not for everyone, of course, but for her anyway. The fact was, to the best of Daisy’s knowledge, she’d never once, in her twenty-one years of life, had lunch with both her parents at the same time. And maybe, her subconscious told her now, there was a perfectly good reason for that.

But an alarming new development interrupted her thoughts. The truck was losing power. Fast. She pumped the accelerator, but nothing happened. She checked the rearview mirror. It was blessedly empty. There wasn’t a lot of traffic on the county road she’d taken as a shortcut back from Ely. Still, she couldn’t stay on it—not if the truck was about to stall out.

Think, Daisy. Think. There was a service station about a mile from here, right outside the town of Winton. With a little luck— and God knows she deserved a little luck—she could coax the truck all the way there. Then, maybe, with a little more luck, she could persuade someone to repair the engine while she waited, or, if there wasn’t time to repair it, rig something up that would last long enough to get her home. She probably wouldn’t have enough time then to unload the truck, or change her clothes, but she might have enough time to pull into a parking space on Main Street, dash into Pearl’s café, slide into a seat at the lunch table with her parents, smile sweetly, and say something like, “You know, we really should do this more often.”

No, she wouldn’t say that, she decided, turning off the county road onto a local street and passing a winton, unincorporated sign. Sarcasm wasn’t her style. Instead, she’d say something like, “We should have done this sooner.” Or “I know we’ve never done this before, but maybe now we can do it more often. Start a new tradition . . .”

Daisy was still rehearsing possible conversational openings when she pulled into the service station. The truck was practi­cally crawling by now, and the engine’s squeal was so loud that a guy came out of the office to investigate. Daisy turned down the radio and rolled down the window, wincing at the blast of hot air that immediately overtook the truck’s admittedly feeble air-conditioning system.

“That doesn’t sound good,” he said with a friendly smile, coming over to the driver’s-side window. He was young and blond, and he was wearing a baseball cap.

“It’s not good,” Daisy agreed. “I’m losing power, too. Do you think you could take a look at it?” Please, please say yes.

“No,” he said. “I’m not a mechanic.” Then he added, “But Will is,” pointing with his chin in the direction of the service bay. “Are you in a hurry?”

Daisy nodded her head emphatically. “A huge hurry.”

“Well, let’s go then,” he said with another smile, motioning her out of the truck. “Leave it running. I’ll take it from here. You can wait in the office, if you want. Out of the heat.”

“Thanks,” Daisy said gratefully, opening the door and sliding out.

“Daisy, right?” he asked, taking her place in the truck.

“Right,” Daisy said, realizing that he looked vaguely familiar, but unsure of why. “High school,” he said, answering her un­asked question as he pulled the door closed behind him. “I was a couple of years ahead of you.”

“Oh, right,” Daisy said, placing him now, but still mentally searching for his name.

“Jason,” he said, “Jason Weber.” He smiled again, then drove the truck, which was still squealing, into the service bay.

Jason,she thought, walking across a pavement so blisteringly hot she could feel it through the soles of her rubber sneakers. That’s right; she did remember him. Daisy’s hometown of But­ternut, Minnesota, five miles from here, was too small to have a high school of its own, so instead it merged with four other towns in the area, Winton being one of them. She tried to picture what Jason had been like in high school, but she could only conjure up the faintest image of him. Their social lives hadn’t overlapped. Then again, between maintaining a perfect grade point average and playing varsity volleyball, Daisy hadn’t had much of a social life anyway.

She tugged now at the glass door to the office and entered its air-conditioned coolness. Then she sat down on a metal fold­ing chair, crossed her legs, and tried to simulate calmness. She quickly gave up, though, and started pacing up and down the small room instead, stopping only when a calendar hanging on the wall caught her attention. It was a calendar for an engine parts company, but the blond, bikini-clad model on display for the month of June didn’t look like someone who knew the dif­ference between an alternator and a carburetor. Daisy leaned closer, frowning at the photograph, and wondering if the model’s glistening body owed its bronze color to a spray tan or to a good, old-fashioned, carcinogenic suntan. The former, she decided, thinking of her own almost preternaturally pale skin. It wasn’t humanly possible to get that tan naturally. And, judging from the photo, her tan wasn’t the only thing that model hadn’t come by naturally. Honestly, Daisy thought, leaning closer, this calendar would be more appropriate hanging in a plastic surgeon’s wait­ing room than in a service station office. But her disapproval was mixed with curiosity, and she was flipping the calendar to July when Jason came back into the office.

“Oh, hi,” she said, dropping the page on the calendar and taking a little jump back. Jason, though, didn’t seem to notice what she’d been doing.

“Jeez, do you think it could get any hotter?” he asked, yanking the door closed behind him. “And it’s only the beginning of June.”

“It’s hot all right,” Daisy agreed.

“So Will’s looking at your engine,” Jason said, crossing the room and sitting on the edge of a gunmetal gray desk piled high with papers.

“Did he say how long it would take to fix it?”

He shook his head. “No. But he’ll know as soon as he figures out what’s wrong with it.”

“But it could be really quick, right?” she asked, glancing at her watch and fighting down a new wave of panic. She had fifteen minutes to get to her lunch.

“Could be quick,” Jason said. “It depends on what the problem is. And whether it needs a new part, and whether or not we have the part in stock.”

“Could I . . . could I go see for myself?”

“Sure,” he said, shrugging. “Will won’t mind. Do you remem­ber Will Hughes? He went to high school with us.”

She thought for a moment. “Not really,” she said. “But his name sounds familiar.” She was leaving the office when Jason asked, “Hey, your mom owns that coffee shop in Butternut, doesn’t she? Pearl’s?”

Daisy turned back and nodded, her politeness overriding her impatience. “That’s right.”

“Best blueberry pancakes I’ve ever had,” Jason said, a little wistfully.

“I know. It’s famous for them,” Daisy said. And it’s where I should be right now, staking out a table in the middle of the lunch rush.

She gave Jason a quick smile and walked out of the office and into the blinding sunlight. Then she skirted around the station to the service bay and ducked inside, blinking as her eyes adjusted to its relative dimness. It was surprisingly cool in there, and it smelled pleasantly of motor oil and rubber and damp concrete.

When her eyes had had a moment to adjust, she saw a young man—Will, presumably—standing in front of her truck. He had the hood up and was poking around in the engine with some kind of wrench.

“Will?” she said, coming closer.

He glanced up and nodded, and Daisy felt a little jolt of recognition. As it turned out, she did remember Will. Almost better than she liked to admit. In high school, he’d been what Daisy and her friends had thought of as a bad boy. (Not that a boy had had to be very bad to get that designation from them. From their perspective on the student council, anyone who cut the occasional class or got the occasional detention qualified as bad.) Still, in her innocence, Daisy had found Will just different enough, just dangerous enough, to be appealing—from a safe distance, anyway. And, looking at him now, she saw an image of him as he’d been then, sitting in the bleachers at the athletic field with his friends, smoking cigarettes.

“Hey,” she said, feeling suddenly shy. “Jason told me it’d be okay if I came back here.”

Will looked over at her again. If he recognized her, it didn’t register in his expression. Daisy came a little closer. He looked different, she thought. His dark hair had been on the longer side in high school, long enough to brush against his neck, but now it was cut short, very short, and its shortness called attention to his wide, gold-brown eyes. She watched while he wiped his sun­tanned forehead with the back of his suntanned wrist.

“Do you know what’s wrong with the engine yet?” she asked, coming to a stop. She was careful to leave a few feet of space between them.

“As a matter of fact, I do,” he said, reaching for a greasy rag to wipe his hands on. He wasn’t wearing one of those coveralls that mechanics usually wore. Instead, he had on a T-shirt and a pair of blue jeans, and as he reached to put the rag down, the movement stretched the fabric of his T-shirt against the outline of his shoulders. They were nice shoulders, Daisy thought. She shook her head, trying to dislodge the thought; she needed to stay focused.

“Your fan belt’s broken,” Will said. “It needs to be replaced.”

“Can you do it now?”

“Uh-huh.”

“How long will it take?”

“Five or ten minutes.”

“That long?” Daisy asked, panic-stricken.

“That’s pretty fast,” he said, pulling on a pair of gloves. “In my world, anyway.”

Daisy looked at her watch. There was no way she was going to get there on time now, which left her with only one option: cancel the lunch. She walked a short distance away from Will and the truck, slid her cell phone out of her pocket, and turned it on. Nothing happened. She tried again. Still nothing. She stared at it in disbelief. Was it possible she’d forgotten to charge the bat­tery? Yes, it was entirely possible, especially given the way this day was already going. In a wave of uncharacteristic fury, she slammed the phone down, loudly, on a nearby worktable. Will stopped what he was doing to her engine and looked over at her.

“The battery’s dead,” she mumbled, gesturing to her phone on the table.

“That’s probably not going to help it, though,” he said, mildly, and Daisy felt her face flush hotly. She was behaving badly, and she knew it.

She walked back over to Will, feeling contrite. “I know that’s not going to help it.”

“Jason’ll let you use the phone in the office,” he said, not look­ing up from the engine.

She considered the offer, then decided against it. Her father’s cell-phone number, which she didn’t yet know by heart, was trapped inside her cell-phone’s directory. That left calling her mother. And if Daisy did that, what exactly would she say to her? Her mother didn’t even know yet that Daisy had planned this lunch. And now, Daisy didn’t know if she was brave enough to tell her.

She sighed and shook her head. “No, that’s okay. I don’t need to use the phone in the office. And thank you for replacing the fan belt. I’m sure you’re doing it as fast as you can.” Coming closer to him, she added, “It’s just . . . it’s just I’m running late for this lunch. It’s very important that I be there on time.”

“Yeah?” Will said, looking over at her again. “What is it, some kind of high-powered, corporate lunch?” he asked, and his eyes, amused and skeptical, traveled from her faded, Minnesota Twins T-shirt, to her cut-off blue jean shorts, to her slightly battered Converse sneakers, one of which happened to be untied.

“No, nothing like that,” Daisy said, her cheeks flushing again. “But it’s still important. It’s sort of a . . . a family reunion.” Is that what it is? she wondered, anxiously. And then, for reasons she didn’t entirely understand, she decided to tell Will more about it, even though his attention had shifted back to the truck’s engine.

“I mean, it’s not exactly a family reunion,” she qualified, brush­ing a strand of strawberry-blond hair off her face, “It’s more of a homecoming, I guess. For my dad, anyway.”

He glanced at her, quickly, just long enough to let her know he was listening to what she was saying.

“My dad left my mom and me eighteen years ago,” she con­tinued. “And then, a year ago, he got in touch with me again. He came down to Minneapolis—I go to the university there—and we had coffee. I hadn’t seen him since I was three, but when I met him again, I liked him. He seemed like a nice guy. He is a nice guy, actually.”

Will looked at her. She had his full attention now. “A nice guy who left?” he asked. “And didn’t come back?” Now he wasn’t amused and skeptical, he was just skeptical.

“Yeah, I know,” Daisy said. “And believe me, I had trouble with that. I really did. I was so angry at him at first.” She shook her head at the memory of their first meeting. “In some ways, I’m still angry at him. But you know what? I was curious about him too. I mean, who wouldn’t be, right?”

But Will only shrugged, as if to say, I wouldn’t be. He didn’t say that, though. He went back to work on her engine instead.

“Anyway,” Daisy continued, “I got to know him over the last year, and I realized he’s changed—for the better. He’s not the same man now he was when he left. And when he told me he was moving back here, back to Butternut, I suggested that the three of us, my mom and my dad and me, have lunch together today. The thing is, though, my mom doesn’t know about it yet. I mean, she knows she’s meeting me for lunch. But she doesn’t know he’s going to be there.” Slightly breathless, she finished, “Which is why it’s so important I be there on time.” She glanced at her watch again. Ten minutes to go.

“So let me get this straight,” Will said, looking back at her. “You’ve seen your dad since he left. But your mom hasn’t?”

Daisy shook her head.

“And she hasn’t talked to him since he left, either?”

She shook her head again.

“And she doesn’t know she’s going to be having lunch with him today?”

“No,” Daisy said. “It’s going to be a surprise.”

“A surprise, or an ambush?” Will clarified.

“An ambush?” Daisy repeated, frowning. She didn’t like the sound of that word. “Why do you say that?”

He hesitated. “Well, I’m just guessing here. But from what you’ve said, it sounds like your mom probably wouldn’t have agreed to this lunch if she’d known your dad was going to be there.”

“That’s probably true,” Daisy said. Probably true? Definitely true.

“But you still think it’s a good idea?”

“Well . . .” Daisy started. But then she stopped. She stopped because she hadn’t thought to ask herself that question yet. Well, no, that wasn’t true. She had thought to ask herself that question, but then she hadn’t let herself answer it. And she hadn’t let her­self because she’d already known the answer: the lunch wasn’t a good idea. It was probably, in fact, a very bad idea.

“Hey,” Will said. And when she looked over at him, his gold-brown eyes were resting on her. “Don’t worry about it. It’ll be all right.”

“You think so?”

“Sure. I mean, it’s not going to be like one of those daytime talk shows where family members have to be held apart by secu­rity guards, is it? Your parents aren’t violent people, are they?”

“Violent?” Daisy repeated. “No, not as far as I know.” Her father didn’t seem violent to her, and of all the charges her mother had leveled against him over the years, his being vio­lent had never been one of them. She’d never known her mother to be violent either. But then again, the woman had her limits, and now Daisy wondered if this lunch might actually push her beyond them. “I don’t think they’ll have to be held apart,” she murmured, more to herself than to Will.

“That’s good,” Will said. “And do you know what else is good?”

“What?”

“I’m almost done with your truck.”

“Really?” she said, feeling a rush of gratitude.

He nodded.

“You know, I remember you from high school,” she said sud­denly, edging closer. Because there was something about this place—the coolness, the dimness, the quietness—that made her feel almost brave. “You used to sit with your friends on the bleachers at the football field and smoke cigarettes.”

“Yeah, that was me then.”

“Is that you now?” she asked.

“Uh, no,” he said, not looking up. “I haven’t been back to the bleachers since I graduated. And I quit smoking a few years ago.”

“Why’d you quit?” she asked, unabashedly curious.

“Smoking’s an expensive habit,” he said, with a shrug. “Work­ing here,” he added, looking around, “I can’t afford it.”

“Well, that’s good,” Daisy said. “I mean, good that you gave it up,” she added, quickly. “Not good that you couldn’t afford to keep doing it.” She blushed then, afraid that she’d offended him. But he didn’t look offended. In fact, she thought she saw one corner of his mouth lift in amusement.

She watched him work for a little while longer, strangely com­fortable with the silence between them. She noticed a smudge of grease on his neck, and she thought, idly, about reaching over and trying to wipe it away with her fingertips. But she came to her senses almost immediately, wondering why she would even consider doing something like that. It was the heat, she decided, and she took a little cautionary step away from him.

“I remember you, too,” he said, glancing over at her. “You were a cheerleader, weren’t you?”

“A cheerleader? No,” Daisy said, faintly appalled. “I was on the volleyball team.” I was the captain, she wanted to say, but didn’t.

He shrugged. “Well, same thing, right?”

“Wrong,” Daisy said, crossing her arms across her chest. “Very different thing.”

“Huh,” he said, stopping his work long enough to pull his gloves off. And Daisy saw then that his eyes were amused again. Amused enough to make her think he knew damn well that being a cheerleader and a volleyball player was not the same thing. Amused enough to make her think he was teasing her, and, what was more, that he was enjoying teasing her.

“That’s it,” he said, stepping back and slamming the engine’s hood. “Normally, I’d take it for a test drive, but you probably don’t want to stick around for that.”

“You’re right, I don’t,” Daisy said. “But thank you.”

“Anytime,” he said, with a smile. His smiles, she saw, were harder to come by than his coworker Jason’s were. But they were worth waiting for. Nice eyes, nice smile, nice shoulders, she thought, taking a mental inventory of Will.

But when she realized that he was looking at her, quizzically, she blushed. He was probably wondering why she was standing there, staring at him, when she was supposed to be in such a hurry, when she was in such a hurry.

“Well, I’d better get going,” she said, backing away from him.

He nodded. “You can pay Jason in the office. I’ll pull your truck out. And, uh, good luck with the lunch.”

“Thanks,” she said, turning to go. But as she walked out of the service bay she looked at her watch. The lunch was starting right now. She felt her earlier panic ebb away, only to be replaced, almost immediately, by an ominous foreboding. Because they were going to have to have this lunch without her.

Jack Keegan sat in his pickup truck, which he’d parked on Butternut’s Main Street across the street from Pearl’s, and considered the possibility that he was crazy. And not just sort of crazy, either, but completely and totally crazy—insane asylum, straitjacket, padded-cell crazy. How else to explain his actions today? He was back in a town he’d sworn he would never return to. He was following the advice of a daughter who, until a year ago, had been a stranger to him. And he was waiting to have lunch with an ex-wife who, he was pretty sure, still hated his guts.

But it got worse. Much worse. Because Jack, who’d given up gambling two years ago, was taking the biggest gamble of his life. He’d decided to move back here, into a cabin an old friend of his—an old drinking buddy of his, really—had left Jack in his will. Jack had quit his job at an oil refinery in South Dakota, given up his apartment, sold all his furniture, and given away anything he couldn’t fit in the back of his pickup truck. And then he’d gotten into that pickup truck and driven five hundred twenty-five miles to this lunch date.

But there was no turning back now, he reminded himself, run­ning his fingers through his hair. Besides, there was no life for him to turn back to anyway. So depending on what happened next, he’d either risked it all for everything. Or nothing.

And that was assuming, of course, that this lunch actually took place. He and Daisy had agreed to meet at twelve thirty in front of Pearl’s, and it was already twelve thirty-five. Under ordinary circumstances, five minutes barely qualified as late. But these weren’t ordinary circumstances. Besides, Daisy had suggested this lunch a month ago, when they’d last met in person, then e-mailed him a reminder last week, and then confirmed by cell phone last night. Now for her to be late? Or to not show up at all? It didn’t make sense. What was more, it seemed completely out of character for her.

Here, though, he had an uncomfortable thought: What if he didn’t know Daisy well enough to know whether this was out of character for her or not? Maybe being late, or not showing up at all, was in character for her. As soon as he had that thought, though, he rejected it. Because whatever else could be said about Jack Keegan—and a lot of things had been said about him over the years—he was a good judge of character. He’d never have won so many poker games if he hadn’t been. And he knew, when it came to Daisy, that she was as good as her word. As good as gold, really; if she said she would be here, she would be here. That was all there was to it.

He reached for his cell phone on the seat beside him and punched in her number again. But it went straight to voice mail. He didn’t leave a message, since he’d already left one when he’d parked here an hour ago. He pressed end on his cell phone and tossed it back onto the seat. Then he blew out a breath, ran his fingers through his hair again, and tried to think about some­thing, anything, really, other than this lunch.

So, instead, he thought about Butternut, Minnesota, popula­tion 1,200. He’d hated this town when he’d left it, hated every­thing about it: its hypocrisy; its small-mindedness; its gossipy mean-spiritedness. It hadn’t helped, of course, that so much of that gossip had been about him. Still, when he’d seen Butternut receding in his rearview mirror that morning eighteen years ago, he’d felt a grim satisfaction. There. Take that, stupid little town.

I’ll be damned if I’ll live here anymore, and damned if I’ll ever come back again either.

But the joke was on him, apparently. Because judging from Main Street’s tidy storefronts and well-swept sidewalks, Butter­nut had done just fine without him. Better than fine. So much for the supposed disintegration of small-town life in America, Jack thought, looking up and down the block at businesses and shops with cheerful striped awnings on them and brightly painted wooden benches sitting in front of them. And there were old-fashioned streetlights, too, every half block, with big baskets of flowers hanging from them. Very pretty, Jack thought. Very But­ternut.

But unlike some towns in summer communities, which seemed to be staged simply for the benefit of tourists, Butternut had more to offer than fudge shops and ice cream parlors. It still had Johnson’s Hardware, for instance, which had been owned by the same family for over a hundred years. And there was Butter­nut Drugs, where generations of teenage girls had spent count­less hours poring over lipsticks and glossy magazines. And there, too, was the Butternut Variety Store, whose original five-and­ten-cent sign had been amended to also include “$1 and up.”

There were some changes, of course. Even Butternut, whose northern Minnesota location was several hours by car from the nearest city, couldn’t escape change forever. Where a ladies’ dress shop had once been, there was now a place called the Pine Cone Gallery, a chic-looking little shop that wouldn’t have been out of place in the Twin Cities.

For the most part, though, the businesses on Main Street had stayed the same. And none of those businesses, Jack knew, was more important to the social fabric of Butternut than Pearl’s. He studied it now from across the street, marveling that from the outside, anyway, it looked exactly the same: same red-and-white­striped awning snapping in the breeze, same hand-lettered best pie in townsign hanging in the window, same little bells jingling on the door as customers came in and out. He couldn’t really see inside; the glare from the afternoon sun was too bright on the windows. But he didn’t need to see inside to know what the rest of it looked like. He already knew, by heart, every scuff on the linoleum floor and every scratch on the Formica countertop. Not that Pearl’s wasn’t well-maintained; it was. His ex-wife, Caroline, was a stickler for that kind of thing. The whole place, he knew, was scrubbed and buffed and polished to within an inch of its life. Still, it would be showing its age a little, showing it in a way that only added to its charm and its warmth.

He closed his eyes now and imagined himself walking through the front door at Pearl’s, past the red leather booths that lined the front window, past the smaller tables for parties of two and four in the middle of the restaurant, and up to the counter, with its row of chrome swivel stools that children loved to spin on. And there, at the counter, he imagined Caroline, a smile on her face, a pot of coffee in her hand, saying “Hello there. What can I get for you?”

But that smile wasn’t for him, he realized. It was for another customer. And so were the friendly words. Because when she saw him, she’d be shocked. Shocked and angry. And instead of saying “What can I get for you?,” it was more likely she’d say something like, “What the hell are you doing here?”

No, not hell,he decided. She wouldn’t say hell; she wasn’t a big one for swearing. She’d say something like hell, something that let him know, in no uncertain terms, that his being here was not a good thing and that she wanted him to leave. The sooner the better. He felt a trickle of perspiration start to work its way down from his temple to his jaw. Just thinking about seeing her was making him, quite literally, sweat.

He reached over now and turned the air-conditioning up and pulled the visor down against the noonday sun. But it didn’t help. He glanced at his watch again. Daisy was now ten minutes late.

He swallowed, hard. His throat was parched, his mouth as dry as sandpaper. He reached for the water bottle in the drink holder and saw that it was empty. Not that it really mattered. It wasn’t water he wanted, anyway. He wanted a drink, a real drink, a neat tumbler of single-malt whiskey. It swirled around the glass in his mind’s eye, its amber color the loveliest thing he had ever seen. No, not the loveliest, he corrected himself. Because the loveliest thing he’d ever seen was in Pearl’s, right now. She was the reason he was here, sweating in the arctic chill of his air-conditioned truck. He’d give Daisy five more minutes, he decided. Then, with or without her, he was going in.

At the exact moment Jack Keegan made that resolution, Caroline Keegan was sitting in her cramped office behind the coffee shop, staring at a monthly bank statement on the desk in front of her. She’d already reviewed it carefully, com­mitted it to memory even. But she kept staring at it, hoping the numbers would somehow magically rearrange themselves. They didn’t. She sighed, stretched, and bent to examine it again. Nope. Still the same. She’d have to make that appointment, after all. The one with the bank, the one she’d been absolutely dreading having to make.

But before she could do that, her cell phone rang. She glanced down at the display. It was Buster, her boyfriend of three years. She hesitated, then let the call go to voice mail, then felt guilty about letting it go to voice mail. Of course, Buster never minded when she didn’t take his calls, though sometimes, honestly, she wished he did mind. Just a little. But that wasn’t fair, she told herself. He didn’t mind because he knew she’d call him back when she found the time. And she would. It was just that, lately, it seemed to be getting harder for her to find the time. Well, she’d think about that later, she decided, scrolling through her cell-phone’s contacts for the bank’s number. But she was inter­rupted again, this time by a light tap on the door.

“Do you have a minute?” Frankie, who was the cook at Pearl’s, asked as he opened the door just wide enough to poke his head in.

“Yes, of course,” she said, though she suppressed a little flicker of irritation as she said it. She wasn’t irritated at Frankie—the man was a saint—but at the constant interruptions that every workday brought with it. Normally, she didn’t mind those inter­ruptions; she even welcomed them. They were what kept her from getting bored. Not today, though. Today she needed to do something about the problem staring up at her from her desktop.

Still, she smiled at Frankie as she simultaneously motioned him into the office and locked the bank statement back in her top desk drawer.

“What can I do for you, Frankie?” she asked, as he lumbered in, immediately filling the entire space with his massive bulk.

“Um, well, it’s not for me. It’s for the customers. They’re complaining—whining, really—that it’s too hot in Pearl’s,” he said, in a tone that suggested they were being unreasonable. Frankie was so loyal to Caroline, and to Pearl’s, that he took even the most minor customer complaint personally. “I don’t think it’s that bad, though,” he added. “I mean, we’re having a heat wave; what do they expect?”

“They expect to eat their breakfasts in an air-conditioned coffee shop,” Caroline said, automatically.

“It is air-conditioned,” Frankie objected. “The system’s just a little old.”

“Frankie, that system is more than just a little old. It’s ancient. It needs to be replaced. You and I both know that. Now our cus­tomers know it, too.”

Frankie sighed, an enormous sigh, and shoved his gigantic hands into his apron pockets. “Well, what do you want me to tell them?”

“Who’s complaining?” she asked.

“Mr. and Mrs. Sylvester, and Cliff Donahue.”

She frowned. They were all good customers. “Just . . . just comp their lunches and turn up the fans,” she said. “And ask Jes­sica to put extra ice in all the water glasses.”

He nodded and turned to leave.

“And Frankie? I’ll ask Bill Schelinger to take another look at the air-conditioning. Maybe there’s something he can do with it, at least until I can . . .” Her voice trailed off. She had no idea if, or when, she’d be able to afford a new system, not when Bill Schelinger had already told her it would cost over ten thousand dollars.

“Hey, don’t worry about it.” Frankie said, flashing her one of his rare smiles. “It’ll all work out. You’ll see.”

“Thanks, Frankie,” she said, gratefully. And then, with a little frown, “Is Daisy back yet?”

“Not yet.”

“Well, she’s late then,” she said, her eyes traveling to the clock on her desk. “Which is strange, because believe it or not, she wants me to have lunch with her here today. A sit-down lunch. She made me put it in my date book and everything.”

“That’s nice,” Frankie said. And it was nice, Caroline thought, but it was also a little odd. Of course, she and Daisy had lunch at Pearl’s every day in the summertime, but they usually just grabbed it whenever they could. They rarely had either the free time, or the free table, to have it together. Maybe, Caroline thought now, Daisy was trying to make some time for them to­gether in an otherwise hectic summer. And she couldn’t argue with that, could she? Since Daisy had started college, their time together had felt all too brief to Caroline.

“Well, I’ll be getting back to work,” Frankie said, and then he was gone. And Caroline was left to chew distractedly on her lower lip and add the faulty air-conditioning to her list of worries. But she was interrupted again, almost immediately, by another knock on the door.

“Come in,” she called out, her impatience flaring at this latest interruption.

The door opened, tentatively, and Jessica, her waitress, leaned in.

“Caroline?”

“Yes, Jessica?” Caroline said, stealing herself for this exchange. Jessica was Daisy’s best friend, and although the friendship be­tween the two of them had long been a mystery to Caroline— Daisy, the perennial honor student, on the one hand, and Jessica, the hopeless scatterbrain on the other—she tried to be respect­ful of it. She’d hired Jessica six weeks ago, after she’d failed out of cosmetology school, as a favor to Daisy. But Caroline had re­gretted it ever since. Of course everyone had a learning curve when they started waitressing. But Jessica’s was all curve and no learning.

“Um, there’s a problem with a customer,” Jessica said hesi­tantly, her brown eyes wide in her heart-shaped face.

“Yes?” Caroline said, impatiently. Every minute Jessica spent standing here was a minute she wasn’t waiting on tables.

“Well, it’s kind of awkward, but . . .” She shrugged her shoul­ders helplessly and fidgeted with her apron strings.

“Jessica,” Caroline said, closing her eyes and willing herself not to lose her temper, “please tell me this isn’t about one of your ex-boyfriends eating here again. Because I’ve told you before you’re going to have to wait on them the same way you’d wait on any other customer.” And she sighed wearily, because the way Jessica waited on any other customer was with a fairly consistent level of incompetence.

“Oh no, it’s not one of my exes,” Jessica said now, tucking one of her unruly brown curls behind an ear. “It’s . . . it’s actually one of your exes. I mean, not one of them,” she qualified, shifting her weight nervously from one foot to the other. “Just your ex. Your ex-husband, I mean. He’s sitting at one of the tables. And he says he wants to see you.”

“My ex-husband? Here?” Caroline said, her mind a perfect blank.

Jessica nodded emphatically. “Uh-huh.” But Caroline only stared at her, and Jessica, feeling some explanation was in order, went on. “See, what happened was, I went to take this customer’s order. And I said the patty melt was on special, and he said ‘no, thank you,’ he didn’t want the patty melt, he wanted to see you. And I said you were in your office, and I wasn’t supposed to dis­turb you there unless it was absolutely necessary. And I said it had already been absolutely necessary three times this morning, and I was hoping it wouldn’t be again, because the last time I interrupted you, you seemed a little irritated. So I told him if I bothered you again, I might get fired, and I really need this job. And he said—”

“Jessica, stop,” Caroline said. Her brain was finally starting to work again. And her brain told her that Jack Keegan could not be here. “Just back up, honey. Where, in all of this, did this man say he was my ex-husband?”

"I was getting to that.”

“Well, get to it faster.”

“He said he didn’t want to get me in trouble, but I’d still need to tell you that Jack Keegan, your ex-husband and Daisy’s father, was here. And that he wanted to see you.”

Jack?Here? After all this time? It took a lot to shock Caroline. But this did it. This completely, and totally, shocked her.

“What do you want me to tell him?” Jessica asked now. “Be­cause I’ll tell him anything you want me to, Caroline. Even if it’s not true. I mean, I try not to tell lies, I really do. Especially big lies. But small lies are different; sometimes you can’t help telling them. Well, you can help telling them but—”

“Jessica, please. Just . . . just stop talking. Just for a minute,” Caroline said, needing it to be quiet in the office. Needing to think—and think quickly.

“No,” she said, after a moment of silence.

“No, what?”

“No, I won’t see him, Jessica,” she said, knowing that it was the only possible answer to his request to see her. “Tell Jack—Mr. Keegan—that he has no business turning up here, without warn­ing, in the middle of the workday. And, furthermore, that I can’t imagine why he’s here, or what he could possibly want.”

“I, I don’t know if I can remember all that,” Jessica said wor­riedly. “I mean, not exactly the way you said it. Should I write it down?”

“No,” Caroline snapped. “Just tell him I can’t, I won’t, see him.”

“Okay,” Jessica said, scurrying out of the office and closing the door behind her.

But it seemed to Caroline that not sixty seconds later she was back, knocking on the door again.

“Yes, Jessica?”

Jessica opened the door, slightly breathless. “Caroline, I told him what you said, and he said to tell you he’s not leaving until after you see him. He said he’ll sit at that table all afternoon if necessary.”

“He actually said that?” Caroline asked, her face flushing with anger.

Jessica nodded anxiously. “Do you want me to have Frankie ask him to leave?” This was generally how they dealt with the rare unwanted customer at Pearl’s. Frankie asked them to leave. He never had to do more than ask them either. Having people listen to you was one of the perks of being six feet six inches tall and weighing three hundred pounds.

“No, don’t tell Frankie,” Caroline said. “It’s tempting. But Jack is just brave enough—or stupid enough, I should say—to take Frankie on. And I don’t want there to be a scene. I’ll ask him to leave myself.”

So she was going to see him again, she thought, after eigh­teen years. And then something occurred to her, something that made the corners of her mouth twitch up in a smile. She’d often wondered, since he’d left, if the passage of time would be kind to Jack’s looks, and she’d decided that it probably wouldn’t be. After all, all those years of hard living would take their toll on anyone, even someone as good-looking as Jack. She pictured him now with a receding hairline, a spreading waistline, and a jowly neck.

“How does he look?” she asked Jessica suddenly. “Does he, you know, look bad?”

“Bad how?” Jessica frowned.

“Bad like . . . well, like old and kind of broken down. You know, bloated. Puffy. The way a man looks when a lifetime of bad habits finally catches up with him.”

Jessica looked perplexed for a moment, but then she shook her head. “I don’t know what he looked like before. But he looks good now. I mean, really good. When I first walked over to his table— before I knew he was Daisy’s father, because now, of course, it feels a little strange to think this—but when I first walked over there, I thought, ‘This guy’s not from around here. If he were, I’d remember him.’ We don’t have that many—”

“Okay, that’s enough, Jessica,” Caroline said with a flash of an­noyance. “You can get back to work now. I’ll handle Mr. Keegan.”

Jessica nodded and started to leave, but Caroline called her back. “Where’s he sitting, hon?”

Jessica considered. “At table five, I think. Or maybe it’s table seven. I get them mixed up. It’s the one—”

“Never mind,” Caroline said distractedly. “I’ll find him.” Jes­sica nodded and closed the door behind her. And Caroline stood up from her chair and then immediately sat back down again. She wasn’t just angry, she realized; she was nervous, too. Which was ridiculous, really. She had nothing to be nervous about. He was the one who should be nervous. He was the interloper here, not her. And not Daisy. Daisy! In all the tumult following Jes­sica’s news, she’d completely forgotten about Daisy.

Thank God she was late, she thought, glancing at her watch. Thank God she hadn’t seen her father. Hadn’t seen her father yet, she corrected herself. And just like that, her nervousness was gone, replaced by a pure, blind fury. She practically catapulted herself out of her chair, flinging the office door open and run­ning down the narrow hallway to the coffee shop’s back door. It was one thing for Jack to spring himself on her, she thought, her mind racing as fast as her body; it was another thing for him to spring himself on their daughter. After all, Daisy had long since accepted the fact that her father was a father in name only. The last thing she needed now was for him to reappear, opening up old wounds and bringing back old memories.

Caroline opened the back door to Pearl’s and came out from behind the counter, her eyes scanning the room. There he was, at table five. Table five, Jessica, she thought, gritting her teeth and heading straight for him. He didn’t look up. Instead, he leaned back comfortably in his chair, glancing casually at the menu, acting as if his being here were the most natural thing in the world, as if the only thing on his mind was whether to order the BLT or the turkey club.

When Caroline reached him, she stopped abruptly, and, rest­ing her hands on the tabletop, she leaned across it toward him.

“Jack,” she said, not bothering to lower her voice. “What the hell are you doing here?”

He looked surprised, shocked even, but only for a second. After that, he recovered his equilibrium, his infuriating equilibrium. “Caroline,” he said, putting down his menu, “I don’t remember you ever swearing before.”

“Well, I don’t remember ever having as good a reason to swear before, Jack,” she said, leaning a fraction of an inch closer to him.

“But we don’t have time to discuss that now. You need to leave before Daisy gets back. And I mean it,” she added. “She’s not going to see you here today. Today or any day. Is that clear?”

“Caroline, calm down,” he said. But she saw a worried expres­sion flit briefly over his face.

“I will not calm down,” she said, bringing her fist down on the table hard enough to make the ice jump in Jack’s glass of water, hard enough to make the customers at the table next to theirs stop their forks in midair and turn to stare. But Caroline, usu­ally the consummate professional, didn’t care if she was making a scene.

“Caroline, it’s all right,” Jack said, his tone placating. “I’ve al­ready seen Daisy. Not today. But recently. And she knows I’m here now. She’s supposed to be here now, too.”

“What?” was all Caroline could say.

“Look,” he said, almost gently. “Sit down, okay? Just for a minute. And I’ll explain it all to you. Or I’ll try to, anyway.”

Caroline, moving mechanically, pulled out the chair across from him and sat down on it. Not because she thought sitting down at the same table with him was a good idea. She didn’t. But because she couldn’t think of anything else to do right at this moment. She was, quite simply, in shock.

“Miss, excuse me,” she heard Jack say, at the periphery of her consciousness. “Can you bring Ms. Keegan a glass of ice water?” A moment later, Jessica was back with the water and, looming up behind her, was Frankie.

“Is there a problem here?” Frankie asked, towering over their table. Caroline took a sip of the water and watched while Frankie gave Jack the once-over. She’d seen Frankie do this to men before, with predictable results. But Jack, she saw, more than held his own, returning Frankie’s stare with a cool, levelheaded one of his own. Jack, she knew, was an excellent poker player. Whatever else you could say about the man, he knew how to bluff.

“There’s no problem,” Jack said. “I’m just meeting my ex-wife for lunch.”

Frankie’s face registered surprise, something it rarely did. “Is he . . . is he who he says he is?” he asked, looking at Caroline.

She nodded dumbly.

“Do you, uh, do you want him to stay?” Frankie asked.

She hesitated, then nodded again.

“Well, okay,” Frankie said uncertainly. “But let me know if you change your mind,” he added. He glowered at Jack again and left the table. Caroline, meanwhile, sipped her water and felt her shock beginning to recede. That was when she looked over at Jack and saw him—really saw him—for the first time that day.

There was no receding hairline, she noted with regret, and no expanding waistline, either. No bloating or puffiness. Jack Keegan was still very much the man she’d remembered him to be. He still had more than his share of tousled brown hair, for instance, none of which looked like it would be going anywhere anytime soon. And his dark blue eyes were brighter and clearer than they had any right to be, too, especially when you consid­ered how little the man slept, and how much time he spent in dark, smoky rooms. Add to those his healthy suntan and lean athletic build, and he was a disappointment to her all around. But she consoled herself with the thought that, unlike Jessica, she knew enough about Jack Keegan to take some of the shine off all that handsomeness.

He looked at her now, looking at him, and shrugged apologeti­cally. “Maybe this was a mistake,” he said. “I don’t know. But I think Daisy thought—no, I know she thought—it was the only way for the three of us to be together. I mean, let’s face it, if you’d known I was coming, you would have headed for the hills.”

“You’re damn right I would have,” Caroline said, without hesi­tation.

Jack’s mouth lifted at one corner. “Another swear word, Caro­line. That’s two more than I ever heard from you the entire time we were married.”

Caroline ignored that remark. She could feel herself slowly re­turning to her senses. As angry as she was at him for coming here, there were still things she needed to know from him. “Jack,” she said now, knowing Daisy could be there at any moment, “when did Daisy get in touch with you?”

But he shook his head. “Daisy didn’t get in touch with me, Caroline. I got in touch with her.”

“Really?” Her eyes widened with surprise, then narrowed with suspicion. “Why, Jack?”

“Why? She’s my daughter, Caroline. Do I need to have a reason for wanting to see her again?”

“You do when you’ve waited almost two decades to do it,” she said.

He shrugged. “I disagree. After all, there’s no statute of limita­tions on being a parent.”

“Maybe not. But don’t you think it’s a little late for you to start playing that role?”

He lifted his shoulders in another shrug. “I think it’s up to Daisy to decide whether or not it’s too late.”

She sighed, exasperated. They were talking in circles. She wanted—needed—more information from him.

“How did you get in touch with her, Jack?” she asked, her jaw tightening.

“I googled her,” he said, a little sheepishly. “Her name was mentioned in her student newspaper. The intramural volleyball team she played on won a league championship. I figured if she was going to the University of Minnesota, she was probably living in Minneapolis. So I looked up her phone number there and asked her if she wanted to meet me for coffee.”

“How long ago was this?”

“A year ago.”

“And that was the last time you saw her?”

He shook his head. “No. I’ve seen her every month since then. The last time, just a few weeks ago.”

“What?” she said, trying to take it all in. And then she shook her head. “I don’t believe it, Jack. I just don’t believe it.”

“Why not?”

“Because the Daisy I know would never keep something like that from me. Not for a whole year. Especially since we’ve never kept secrets from each other before.” But even as she said that, she realized it wasn’t true. She was keeping a secret from Daisy right now, a secret that she’d just locked in the desk drawer in her office. Who was to say Daisy wasn’t keeping a few secrets of her own, she mused, especially after being away at college for three years.

She watched now as Jack took a drink of his water. He looked uncomfortable, something she’d rarely seen him look in the past, and it pleased her. A little.

“I don’t think Daisy meant to keep a secret from you,” he said carefully. “I think she was afraid that if you knew she was seeing me, you’d be upset.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Caroline said stubbornly. “Daisy’s a grown-up. She’s free to see whomever she pleases. She doesn’t need my approval.”

“Maybe not. But she’d like your approval. And she wasn’t going to get it this time, was she?”

No,Caroline almost said, because it was the truth. But she opted for silence instead.

“Anyway, we’re here now,” Jack said lightly. “All that’s missing is our daughter, who’s running a little late. But when she gets here, Caroline, I think we should both make an effort to be civil, don’t you?”

At that, she shot Jack an irritated look. Since when had he played the role of the adult in their relationship? But still, he had a point. “Okay, fine,” she said. “I can do that. Be civil, I mean. It’s just one lunch. And you probably need to be getting back to . . . where is it? Elk Point, South Dakota? That’s a long drive, isn’t it?”

“Actually, I’m not going back there,” he said, watching her a little warily. “I’m staying here, Caroline. In Butternut. Wayland left me his cabin when he died a few years back. I’m going to be living in it and fixing it up, at least for the foreseeable future.” With a hint of a smile, he added, “They’re going to have to change that sign, from Butternut, population 1,200, to Butternut, popu­lation 1,201.”

Caroline stared at him, rendered speechless for the third time that day, and it was at that moment that Daisy appeared, apolo­getic, embarrassed, and breathless, her strawberry-blond hair di­sheveled, her shoelace untied on one Converse sneaker.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, sliding into a third chair at the table. “The truck broke down, Mom. It was the fan belt. I got it re­placed. But my cell-phone battery was dead and . . .” But she stopped, then, and looked, slowly, from Caroline to Jack and back to Caroline again. “So what did I miss?” she asked, in a way that suggested she didn’t really want to know. 

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