by Susan Wiggs
Although the camp was under construction, its bunkhouses, cabins and main pavilion were still habitable. Two more of Greg’s grown nieces had arrived to help with the wedding preparations, and the barbecue was in their honor. Greg’s parents and his older brother Philip were there as well. When he and Max arrived, everyone was gathered on the deck of the pavilion, laughing and talking while music drifted from the outdoor speakers. Daisy was there already, having driven herself earlier. The sight of her, seated at a table so her pregnancy wasn’t visible, laughing and drinking lemonade with her older cousins, caused Greg to feel a clutch of regret.
Knock it off, he told himself. Not being okay with her pregnancy was simply not an option. He’d had months to get used to the idea, and he needed to put these twinges behind him.
Max took the stairs two at a time, in a hurry to see everyone. Carrying a bottle of wine and a six-pack—his contribution to the barbecue—Greg watched everyone surround Max, enfolding him in a cocoon of relatives. In the Bellamy family, Max was the youngest son of the youngest son. He would be the last of his generation to come of age. His aunts, uncles and cousins seemed to cherish his youth, wanting to keep him young for as long as possible. Greg had no trouble with this. He already had one kid who had grown up too fast. Max’s favorite member of the Bellamy family was Olivia’s dog, a little mutt called Barkis. Within minutes, the two of them were on the floor, playing tug-of-war with an old stuffed toy.
The gathering included Olivia and Connor, the bride and groom-to-be, and an assortment of cousins and friends. Olivia was just ten years younger than Greg, but he hadn’t spared much attention for his niece when she was growing up; he’d been too busy for that. He vaguely remembered some awkward years for Olivia—braces, frizzy hair, glasses, a weight problem. At some point she’d morphed into this lovely woman, filled with confidence and glowing with happiness.
Stranger things had happened, Greg thought, his gaze focusing on Rourke McKnight. Avalon’s chief of police, off duty at the moment, had been the ultimate confirmed bachelor—until last winter, when he was snowed in with Jenny Majesky, Nina’s best friend. People liked to joke that the chief of police had married her because she owned the Sky River Bakery and he was addicted to her unbelievable, ecstasy-inducing doughnuts, but Greg knew the story was a lot more complicated than that. Relationships always were, whether they succeeded or failed. Greg resolved to talk to Jenny later, try to see if she’d give him some insight as to what Nina was thinking.
During dinner, he let himself relax and, with a wave of gratitude, enjoyed the company of his family. Simply by being present, being who they were, they had helped him survive the breakup of his marriage. He watched the nieces and Daisy mapping out the wedding ceremony with the precision of battle commanders. Olivia, ever-organized, brought out actual diagrams, moving the desserts aside to spread them out on the table.
“So after Jenny—my matron of honor—all the girl cousins will come in order by age,” Olivia was saying. “Is that okay?”
“You’re the bride,” Jenny said. “You don’t need to ask.”
Daisy nodded. “I’ll be last—but not least.” She patted her belly. Her cousins responded with genuine affection. They seemed happy about the baby, which didn’t exactly allay his own panic, but it seemed to please Daisy.
“Julian Gastineaux is going to be the best man,” Olivia told Daisy. “He’s coming from California next week. I figured you’d want to know.”
Greg watched his daughter’s face bloom like a rose. Not a good sign. Connor Davis’s brother Julian was the same age as Daisy. She’d met him last summer, when both of them were working here at Camp Kioga. Julian was the kind of kid whose very name made girls blush. He was tall, good-looking, biracial and incredibly cocky. With dreadlocks, a pierced ear and at least one visible tattoo, the kid was a wild card for sure. He’d worked at Camp Kioga the summer before, and since they were the same age, they hung out a lot. Greg remembered him as an adrenaline junkie, obsessed with heights and dangerous speeds.
Now, however, Greg was forced to admit that Julian was not the ultimate risk-taker. Daisy was. Last summer, she’d been a high-school girl, flirting with a boy from California. A year later, she was about to become a mother. Yet judging by her blooming face, he figured she wasn’t quite ready to leave romance behind. Greg reminded himself to quit worrying. These days, Daisy had bigger concerns than flirting with the brother of the groom.
As the conversation shifted to the guest list, Greg noticed Jenny edge away. She went to stand at the railing of the deck, looking out across the lake. She hadn’t grown up like those girls, a product of private schools and privilege. It didn’t seem to bother her, but he suspected all the talk of people she didn’t know bored her.
Which gave him the perfect opportunity to pick her brain about Nina Romano. He grabbed a chilled bottle of Chardonnay and went to refill her glass.
“Thanks,” she said with a smile. “Nice night.”
Greg surveyed the gathering and for a moment he flashed on the old days, when the camp was in operation. He wondered if those times were really as good as he remembered, or if nostalgia gave everything a rosy tinge. “You doing all right?” he asked.
“I like getting to know Philip’s side of the family, different as they are from my own.”
“We feel the same way about you,” Greg assured her. “Not that you’re different, but that we like getting to know you.”
“Does that mean I should start calling you Uncle Greg?”
“Only if you want to make me feel like a geezer. Seriously, I’m glad you and my brother found each other last year. It’s been a good year for him, too. He’s like a different person. He used to be this buttoned-down, intense, even angsty guy. Now look at him.”
Philip seemed years younger, in shorts and a golf shirt, his longish hair windblown. A new sense of contentment showed in Philip’s face and the way he held himself, at ease in the world. He seemed to be smiling from the inside out. That was how happiness worked—from the inside out. That was why truly happy people shone, even when they weren’t actively smiling. He had two new women in his life—his daughter Jenny, whom he’d met for the first time last summer. And Laura Tuttle, who ran the bakery in town. They were old friends whose friendship was becoming something more. Standing at his side, Laura was a quiet but adoring presence. She and Philip were proof of something Greg hadn’t quite believed in—until now. Not only could you survive a divorce, sometimes second and even third chances were given. They were unexpected blessings you had to hold on to before you missed out.
Greg wondered if that kind of optimism made him an idiot. After his marriage ended, he expected to be jaded about love. Instead, for no reason that made any sense at all, he felt more hopeful than he had in years.
Jenny regarded her father with affection. “Love does that. It changes you. Makes you more comfortable in the world.” She turned back to Greg. “So about Nina,” she said, then laughed at the expression on his face.
“What about Nina?”
“Isn’t that why you cornered me? To ask me about her?”
Greg grinned. “Busted. I want her,” he said, then flushed as he realized how that sounded—Freudian slip. “I need her,” he amended. Oops. Also Freudian.
“Some women wait their whole lives to hear a guy say that,” Jenny remarked.
“For the inn, I mean. She’s the piece I’m missing at the inn. I can’t think of anyone else who has her history with the place, her management skills and her depth of knowledge.”
“Have you told her that?”
“She hasn’t given me a chance. I met with a resort management consultant from the city, and it just felt all wrong. There’s a reason the bank chose Nina to run the place. I don’t know of anyone who would do a better job.”
“Then make sure she doesn’t turn you down,” Jenny said simply.
“That’s the idea. I don’t know what more I can offer to make her say yes.” Greg wondered about
the expression on Jenny’s face, but she offered no further insight. Hell, in his former life, he’d hired and fired people on a daily basis. He wondered why, in this case, it mattered so much.
“So have you made up your mind, Mom? Are you going to take the job at the inn?” Sonnet asked. Although Nina’s daughter was an ocean away, her voice sounded crystal clear over their Internet phone service. Nina tried to picture Sonnet in the Belgian village where she was spending the summer, calling from the cobblestone town square while watching locals and SHAPE personnel going about their business. The regular calls helped make her absence bearable for Nina.
“Every time I think I know what I want to do, I think of some reason why I shouldn’t,” Nina confessed. “I’ve been over and over it in my mind. I’ve tried to think up all kinds of alternatives and there isn’t one that feels right. There’s only one Inn at Willow Lake. I’ve always wanted it. You know that.”
“So take the deal. You’d have a job you’ve always wanted—one with serious money attached. A killer place to live.”
“A boss with two kids and no idea how to run the place.”
“Then he’ll hand it all over to you, which is what you wanted in the first place. What’s the problem?”
Nina smiled. She took pride in the way her daughter was turning out—mature beyond her years, as practical and blunt as Nina herself. Then the smile faded as Nina realized that she’d asked herself the same question many times over the past week—What’s the problem? Ultimately, she had to admit that, while her job at the inn would essentially be the same one she had imagined for herself, Greg had changed everything. Rather than working toward a goal—buying the inn—she would just be…working. For Nina, that wasn’t enough. Besides, Greg seemed to have some idealized vision of a family business, while she was looking forward to total independence for the first time in her life. Their expectations simply didn’t mesh.
Could she outlast him? That had been her initial thought. She certainly ought to try. However, that carried a risk of its own. If Greg didn’t make a go of this, he might well sell the place to someone else.
“See, you can’t even come up with an objection,” Sonnet pointed out. “And I’d better go. I’ve got a movie date for a midnight showing.”
Nina sat straight up in her chair. “Like a date date?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know?”
“As a matter of fact, I would. Does Laurence—”
“Chill, Mom. A group of us is going to the cinema on the base. Laurence says it’s fine, and he’s way pickier than you.”
“I’m totally picky,” Nina objected.
“Yes, but Laurence practically does a background check on everyone I meet, and he’s got the resources of the U.S. Army at his disposal.”
“Good for him.” Nina glanced at the clock. “I’d better go, too. There’s a Hornets game tonight—they’re playing the New Haven County Cutters.”
“Do you know how cool it is that you brought a baseball team to Avalon?”
“It’s very cool,” Nina said without modesty. “My legacy as mayor.” Or so she hoped. She’d left office shadowed by scandal but now, in the bright light of summer, she hoped her greatest achievement would shine through. The Avalon Hornets were back for their second season. Negotiating with the club had taken an incredible amount of political maneuvering and deal-making, not to mention many sleepless nights, but it was worth the effort.
“Angela was skeptical when I first told her. She didn’t think Avalon was big enough to have a professional baseball team. I told her about independent baseball and the Can-Am League, showed her the Web site and everything. She seemed shocked to discover there’s something she doesn’t know.”
Hearing that Laurence’s wife was skeptical didn’t surprise Nina in the least. “So other than her being a skeptic and a know-it-all, how are you and Angela getting along?”
“Okay,” Sonnet said. “I’m so busy with work that we don’t spend that much time together.”
“You rat,” Nina said. “You like her.”
“You got a problem with that?”
“I do. I’m ashamed that I do. She’s just so perfect. And I’m just so…not.”
Sonnet laughed. “Perfect? I’ll be sure to pass that on to her daughters. Layla just pierced her eyebrow and Kara wants to run away and join the circus, or something.”
Nina felt a wave of gratitude for her daughter. Sometimes they acted more like best friends than mother and daughter. Sometimes Nina wondered who was raising who. “I love you, kiddo. You always say the right thing.”
“Maybe I’m always right. And I really do think it’s the coolest that you brought the Hornets to Avalon.”
“I always felt guilty, taking so much time away from you while I was making that deal.”
“You can quit that right now,” Sonnet objected. “It’s a professional baseball team, Mom, and it’s all your doing. Every time I tell people that, they’re like, ‘she did not.’ And I’m like, she totally did, single-handedly.”
“It wasn’t single-handed, not by any stretch. In fact, the guys I’m going to the game with were instrumental in helping me. Wayne Dobbs and Darryl McNab.”
“And hotties to boot,” Sonnet teased.
Nina chuckled. Wayne and Darryl had been the president and treasurer of the Avalon Booster Club, and the two men had shared her vision of bringing a minor league team to town. “They had what I needed at the time—a giant budget.”
“I was raised by a romantic,” Sonnet said. “Don’t get in trouble, Mom.”
“With Darryl and Wayne? That would be a stretch.”
Sonnet said, “Oh, and I meant to tell you, I’ve been I Ming with Daisy. Olivia’s going to send you an invitation to the wedding.”
A Bellamy wedding. At Camp Kioga. Nina would rather have her teeth drilled. “I don’t do well at weddings. I never have.”
On the way home from Camp Kioga, Greg’s gaze was drawn to a pale glow on the horizon at the west edge of town. He made a snap decision. At a junction at the end of the river road, he turned off, wending his way along a gravel road leading to a broad field flooded with white stadium lights.
“Hey, cool,” Max said. “We can catch the end of the game.”
Greg handed his phone to Max. “Do me a favor,” he said. “Call your sister and tell her we’ll be a little late.”
Although Greg knew it was a good idea to take his kid to baseball games, he kept forgetting to do it. He told himself to no longer be the guy who was too busy working or being preoccupied or miserable to go to a game with Max. Starting now.
The bleachers, though only six deep, were full of spectators. With their team colors, face paint and war whoops, they showed major league enthusiasm for their minor league team. The concession stand was doing a brisk business, and the smells of popcorn and hot dogs filled the air. The ball field organ music was canned, but the announcer called out plays with expert, rapid-fire delivery. Some families were making a night of it, with blankets spread on the grass outside the field, people eating and laughing, passing half-asleep babies and toddlers back and forth between them.
Although he’d just finished dinner, Max claimed he was hungry again. Greg provisioned him with a red-and-white-striped box of popcorn and a neon-colored drink called a Blue Crush. As they made their way to the bleachers, Greg saw that it was the bottom of the seventh, score three to two, the visiting team in the lead. The Hornets were at bat, and a few minutes later, they made their third out and players jogged to the outfield.
A spot appeared for Greg and Max on the bottom row of the bench. Greg murmured his thanks, then realized the person who had made room for him was a woman. Thirty-ish, attractive. No wedding band. A pleasant smile and a less-than-pleasant cindery smell of cigarettes. And an expression that telegraphed the message that she was available.
Greg was fast developing a sixth sense about women. He knew when they were checking him out, and could feel the cindery woman’s attention wafti
ng toward him. Pretending not to notice, he chatted with Max, who appeared to know more about the Hornets than Greg did. “The general manager is a guy named Dino Carminucci,” Max was saying with the kind of authority Greg wished he would apply to his schoolwork. “Used to be a field manager in Duluth, but he grew up right here in Avalon. He’s had two league championships in the past five years. And the Hornets, their record’s not so hot because they’re new, but they got a hot new pitcher this season—Bo Crutcher, out of Texas.” He pointed out a long, lanky guy peeling a jacket off his left shoulder and loping out to the mound.
The hometown crowd cheered as the outfield assembled, then jeered when the batter from New Haven stepped up to the plate. The first pitch confirmed Max’s information. It flew like a speeding bullet, but was so wild that shouts of “Ball one” came from the rival team’s spectators well before the ump confirmed it.
“It’s okay, Crutch. You got it,” someone shouted.
That voice. The sound of it was like a smack on the head. Greg immediately swiveled around. And yes, she was there. Nina Romano, flanked by a pair of guys in backward-facing baseball caps, drinking beer and cheering on the team. She caught him staring at her and offered a wave of acknowledgment and an uncertain smile he couldn’t quite read. Feeling awkward, he turned his attention back to the game.
Or pretended to. His mind was now on fire. He wasn’t sure why the sight of Nina with two men bothered him so much. Maybe because she was supposed to be home, perhaps pacing the floors as she decided to take him up on his offer.
Right, he told himself. She’d probably already made up her mind to turn him down and hadn’t bothered to tell him. Maybe she was going to throw in her lot with Dumb and Dumber, whoever the hell her escorts were.