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JACK PAUSED AT the entrance to the living room to watch his ex-wife sift through a red plastic tote basket filled with the girls’ travel toys. The woman even looked sexy sorting crayons and markers.
“Meg! Hi!”
They both looked up at the chirpy greeting to see Tanya Stanton leaning over the second-floor railing. She wore sprayed-on black jeans and a loose pink V-neck sweater that had slipped off a shoulder, revealing a black bra strap. The necklaces dripping into her cleavage were without a doubt pure gold. Her hair was big and platinum blond. Last time Jack had seen her, it had been red.
She leaned farther over the railing, stretching the sweater and revealing even more of the bounty spilling from her push-up bra. Somehow Jack didn’t think the display was for Meg’s benefit.
Tanya stage-whispered, “That Winston is adorable, Meg. Do you know he’s in there helping your little girls unpack and setting out their little shoes and toothbrushes and hair things all in neat little rows, lined up just so? He’s just adorable!”
Meg glanced nervously at Jack. With great strength of will, he took a deep breath and unclenched his fists. Damned if he’d let her see him lose his cool.
Tanya started down the stairs, negligently straightening her sweater’s neckline, which simply slid off the other shoulder. “How was the boat ride over, Meg?”
“Choppy. The wind has picked up and I don’t like the way the sky looks. The Mermaid will return on Sunday around noon to take us back.”
Jack ran a hand over his stubbly, unshaven jaw and pushed a few errant light brown curls off his forehead. He wished he’d had time to make himself presentable before seeing Meg and the girls, but Tanya, with typical foresight, hadn’t invited him until late last night.
He’d been putting in long hours at the Wolf Mann Brew Pub, longer hours than his partner, Kevin Mann, who had a wife at home. The frantic pace of the early years had slacked off. The pub was in the black and they’d hired dependable, trustworthy help who knew how to keep the place running in their absence.
But Jack preferred the cheerfully hectic ambience of the pub to his own brooding company at home. So he spent sixteen hours a day there, supervising brewing and other business in the mornings and overseeing pub traffic until one a.m. when he locked up.
That didn’t leave much time for niceties like regular haircuts, and what did it matter how shaggy he looked? Kevin didn’t care. And as far as his customers were concerned, a touch of grunge only enhanced his image as a maverick independent brewmaster.
But then came Tanya’s call with the invitation to spend the long Thanksgiving weekend with her and Pete—and Meg and his little girls. Jack had known it wouldn’t sit well with Meg, but he figured he’d worry about that when he got there. He’d asked Kevin to cover for him, thrown some clothes into his beat-up duffel, swung by the pub for the cases of beer, and driven all night from Ithaca down to eastern Long Island.
With his foot to the floor, he’d just made the seven a.m. departure of the boat the Stantons had chartered to take the family to the small private island that had been in Pete’s family for four generations. Meg and the kids were taking a later boat. Naturally, Tanya had failed to mention that Meg was bringing her fiancé. A deliberate oversight, no doubt. Pete had been furious to see Jack, of course, but Tanya had managed to calm him down. If there was one thing Tanya excelled at, it was manipulating men.
The lady now lingered at the bottom of the stairs, where she struck what she no doubt considered an alluring pose. Jack tore his gaze from the spectacle and caught Meg’s eye. Just for an instant. Long enough for them to read each other’s minds. As one, they turned from their hostess and bit their lips to keep from chuckling. It was a bittersweet moment, a reminder of the wordless bond they’d once shared.
Tanya’s response to the lack of attention was an eloquent sigh. “Well, I better go check on that turkey.” She ambled out of the room.
A moment later her bloodcurdling scream made Jack’s heart leap into his throat.
“Stay back!” He shoved Meg behind him protectively as they charged into the kitchen.
Tanya stood frozen, her bulging eyes focused on what her husband was doing to the bird of honor. Pete Stanton, stogie clamped firmly between his teeth, held a propane torch, its blue flame directed at the paper pouch of giblets still crammed into the turkey’s nether regions.
He plucked the cigar from his mouth and announced in his snide nasal drawl, “Son of a bitch is still frozen.” When it came to attitude, Meg’s uncle could give lessons to Jack Nicholson. “Bet I could cook the whole damn thing this way, whaddya think?”
The aromas of charred turkey and smoldering paper overwhelmed even the stench of Pete’s cigar. Jack was dumbfounded as to why a man who could afford truckloads of Dunhills would willingly smoke stinky bargain cigars. Then again, knowing Pete, he probably did it simply to get on everyone’s nerves.
“What are you doing to my turkey?” Tanya shrieked. She was scarlet from her impressive décolletage right up to the dusky roots of her hair. A vein bulged in her neck.
Pete set his stogie on the edge of the sink, his garish diamond pinky ring winking with the movement. He turned down the torch and held the turkey’s blackened hind end under a stream of cold water, then jammed his beefy fingers into it. With a savage twist and a mighty pull, he freed the half-frozen giblet bag and tossed it into the sink.
“Voilà.” He picked up his cigar, noticed it had gone out, turned up the propane torch, and relit it.
“Get out.” Tanya said. “I’ll finish this.”
“You?” Pete cackled. “This sucker isn’t one of your Lite Time entries, sweetheart. It won’t fit in the microwave.” Tapping his ash onto the tiled floor, he announced to all present, “Last time I left my wife alone with a turkey, she cooked the damn thing with the whatchacallits—giblets still in it.”
Meg, ever the diplomat, said, “Tanya and I will stuff this bird and get it in the oven. You guys scat! Both of you.” She picked up a kitchen towel and snapped it hard at her uncle’s ample butt.
“Ow!” On his way out the door he called back to Meg, “You’re the only gal with the grit to stand up to me, you know that? That’s why I hired you.”
“And stay out if you want to eat.” She slammed the door.
Back in the living room, Jack found himself alone with his host for the first time. He despised being an unwelcome guest, despised the way Pete was looking at him, as if he were something that had crawled up from the beach.
It was a look Jack knew all too well. And it still made him feel like the poor, scrappy kid he’d once been, his pride savaged by constant reminders that he wasn’t good enough to share the same planet with guys like Pete Stanton.
Now here he was, thirty-two years old and a business owner—okay, part owner—and he still wasn’t good enough for this meddling, self-important bastard.
So why bother? Why put himself through this?
But he knew why. For his daughters. To spend four whole days with them. Even if it meant watching their mother cozy up with her fiancé.
If it weren’t for Tanya’s invitation, he’d be spending Thanksgiving alone at home, washing down a turkey sandwich from the deli with a bottle of...
Let’s see... an ale would be too heavy. Some kind of lager. Jack mentally snapped his fingers. An Oktoberfest, redolent of rich toasted malt. Not too sweet, and aromatic enough to stand up to tangy rye bread without overpowering the turkey.
“What the hell’s got you so damn goo-goo eyed, Wolf? A second ago you looked mad enough to spit.” Nobody could sneer like Pete Stanton. He settled into an easy chair and reached across the lamp table to pull a huge crystal ashtray closer.
“Beer.”
“Huh.” Pete’s bushy salt-and-pepper eyebrows pulled together as he worked the stogie to the other side of his mouth.
Jack picked up a smaller ashtray, crossed to the fireplace, and leaned back against the cool stonework. Digging into his jeans pocket, he pulled out a small cellophane pack of sunflower seeds, his addiction of choice for the past seven years since he gave up cigarettes. Not as satisfying but certainly healthier. When Marie was born and he’d looked into her sweet blue eyes for the first time, he’d decided then and there that he wanted to live to see his grandchildren.
Pete now looked downright goo-goo eyed himself. All it took was the mention of beer. Jack was well aware that Pete didn’t want to like anything about his favorite niece’s ex-husband, but he couldn’t help himself. Pete’s arrogance might scream old money, but he was as nouveau riche as they came, with tastes to match. No delicately perfumed chardonnays for him. He’d been weaned on Pabst Blue Ribbon.
The man liked beer.
Jack’s expertise on that wondrous subject—its history, its endless varieties, even how to make the golden elixir—commanded respect. And that irked the hell out of Pete.
Though he’d made millions from Murder Won, the gritty, bestselling board game in which the aim was not to solve murders but to commit them, Pete’s taste in beer remained on a par with his taste in tobacco. He cheerfully swigged can after can of the thin, pale, fizzy lagers that, until the microbrewery revolution, were all that was available to American beer drinkers. What Kevin liked to call lawn-mowing beer.
Pete’s craggy smirk couldn’t disguise the interested glimmer in his eyes. He gesticulated with the moist, masticated cigar stub. “You bring anything halfway decent from that fairy-mary beer bar of yours?”
Jack made a show of examining a black-and-white sunflower seed with its fine patina of salt. He raised it to his mouth and cracked the shell between his molars, relishing the familiar explosion of taste—salt, followed by the nutty sweetness of the seed. He placed the bits of shell in the ashtray.
“Ah, just drop the damn things,” Pete said. “Tanya’ll sweep ’em up later.”
“She’s busy enough getting dinner ready.”
“Tanya’s never busy enough. She’s got too much time on her hands. That’s what gets gals into trouble. Don’t you think?”
Jack paused with a seed halfway to his mouth, transfixed by the chilly flatness of Pete’s stare. His nape prickled with the need to steer the conversation to safer ground. “I brought three mixed cases, about a dozen varieties of beer.”
“Huh.”
“There’s a nice dark Christmas ale. Goes well with something heavy like a beef stew or pot roast. And a couple of bottles of cream stout. You like stout?”
“Never tried it. Looks like mud. Smells like burnt mud.”
“You’ll like this stuff. It’s got shoulders. You can mix it with a lager to make a half-and-half, but I like it straight with a salami-onion-and-cheddar sandwich. Wholegrain bread. Plenty of brown mustard.”
“What are you, Martha Stewart? I don’t give a crap what kinda food it goes with. Just tell me about the damn beer.”
Jack did. And by the time he was finished, his host looked parched.
“That stuff cold yet?”
“Nope.”
“Too bad.” Pete hauled himself out of his chair and made a beeline for the pantry. Jack didn’t bother to remind him that it wasn’t even noon yet.
“Look at Daisy, Daddy!”
He looked up to the second-floor railing where little Daisy stood between her older sisters, gingerly touching her new hairdo. Her golden curls had been swept up and secured on the top of her head with a plastic barrette shaped like a teddy bear. The straggling bottom strands were bound by two mismatched hair ties. She looked preposterous.
“You look beautiful, angel,” he said. “Real fancy. As pretty as Mommy.”
She grinned. “I look like Mommy!”
“Can we do your hair, Daddy?” Marie pleaded.
“We’ll make a ponytail,” Nora offered. “A little one. You got a lotta hair now.”
“Two ponytails!” Daisy squealed. “Like me.”
“Uh... I have to go out and... do something for Uncle Pete.” He started edging toward the door. “Mommy’s in the kitchen. I bet she could use some help cooking Thanksgiving dinner.”
The three little girls whooped and charged down the stairs. Marie and Daisy ran into the kitchen, but Nora hung back. Jack’s middle child was the worrier, the deep thinker. At five she’d already engaged her parents in exhaustive discussions of death, justice, and the moral ramifications of tattling.
“What is it, sweetheart?” He knelt. She took a hesitant step toward him. “Nora?”
“Mr. Kent’s gonna be our new daddy.”
Don’t lose it. Jack mentally chanted those three words in a silent litany of restraint, though it was hard to hear the command over the slamming din of his pulse. When he could speak calmly, he asked, “Did Mommy tell you that?”
“Uh-uh. Mr. Kent did. Is it true, Daddy? I don’t want it to be true. I don’t want you to stop being my daddy.” She bit her quivering bottom lip.
He opened his arms and she ran into them. Let herself be swaddled in the cocoon of his unconditional love.
“I’ll always be your daddy,” he whispered into her fine, warm hair, inhaling the mingled scents of baby shampoo and little girl. His eyes stung. “Always. Nothing is ever going to change that. Okay?”
She clung to him with savage tenacity, his sweet, skinny little Nora, all arms and legs and elbows and knees. At last she pulled back. She nodded, her blue eyes solemn. “Okay.” She followed her sisters into the kitchen.
Slowly Jack got to his feet and ambled to the front door. He grabbed his faded denim jacket from a peg and shrugged into it, instinctively seeking to separate himself from the rest of the household. A little fresh air to chase away the ugly impulses.
D. Winston Kent could do with a bit of straightening out. Jack would teach the counselor a thing or two about closure. He’d like to start by closing the “new daddy’s” eye with his fist.
He’d like to, but it wouldn’t happen, of course. Such a barbaric display would accomplish nothing except to reinforce his ex-wife’s assumptions about his character.
When he stepped outside, the icy, brine-scented wind whipped his hair and billowed his jacket. The rain-swollen sky appeared ready to disgorge its burden any second. It looked like there was a real nor’easter brewing, though the weatherman hadn’t said anything about a storm.
He strolled across the sloping lawn to where it gradually gave way to beach grass, scrub pines, and beach-plum shrubs. He stood at the top of a log staircase that led down to the beach and watched the wind churn the bay into whitecaps that slapped the wooden pier.
After negotiating the steps, he strolled across the wet sand, making his way to a rocky outcropping that formed a natural jetty at one end of the beach. The waves were too violent for him to climb the jetty and walk out into the bay as he’d done during previous visits. Morosely he realized he might never again have the opportunity. It wasn’t likely that he’d be a welcome addition to any holiday get-togethers once Meg and Winston tied the knot.
His presence was barely tolerated now.
The crushing emptiness of his life hadn’t eased in the two years since their divorce. If possible, he missed Meg more with each lonely day. He still reached for her every morning before he opened his eyes. And still felt the same heart-clutching sorrow to find her side of the bed empty.
After the initial anguish and accusations, the establishment of support payments and visitation, their infrequent interactions had become polite, efficient. He almost would have preferred a return to the excruciating first weeks. As raw and wounded as he’d felt then, at least their emotions had been out in the open. Strained civility was a killer.
Jack turned and headed back the way he’d come, feeling none of the serenity he’d hoped to find at the shore. If anything, his thoughts were more disordered, his sense of loss deeper, more enervating, than before.
He shouldn’t have come. He should have turned down Tanya’s invitation.
Waves crashed and receded, licking the beach, leaving the sand smooth and foam flecked and studded with pebbles and small shells. He squatted occasionally to examine the sea-tossed offerings. By the time he reached the steps, his hoard consisted of a tiny clamshell, a smooth black stone, and a piece of green beach glass, its sharp edges long since blunted by nature’s giant tumbler of sand and water.
Treasures for his little girls.
He held the beach glass up to the sky. The meager light barely penetrated it. Probably began life as a bottle of Heineken tossed from a yacht. This one was for Marie, he thought, she of the runaway imagination. She’d be fascinated by its frosty translucence, by the sense of mutability it represented—only she’d call it “morphing.” He smiled, anticipating the tale she was sure to spin, the long and complex history she’d assign this bit of oceanic litter. He dropped the play-pretties into his jacket pocket where they clinked together musically.
He took the log steps two at a time and started across the lawn toward the house. A movement in the distance drew his attention to the woodpile, covered with a blue plastic tarp. He was just able to make out two figures on the far side of it, locked together in a writhing clinch. He saw the back of a blond head and felt like he’d been kicked in the gut. Meg.
The figures turned slightly and Jack realized he was looking at Tanya’s chemically enhanced mane, not his ex-wife’s gleaming corn silk. The young man whose tonsils she was attempting to suck out sported a chestnut ponytail. Designer blue jeans showed off his lean, youthful build.
Neal Stanton. Pete’s twenty-two-year-old son by his first wife, Caroline—the wife who’d stood by Pete through more than twenty years, the wife he’d dumped for young Tanya Willis as soon as the big money started rolling in.
Neal and his father had never been close, but when Pete so callously discarded Neal’s mother, their relationship hit rock bottom. Neal had been seventeen then, openly contemptuous of both his father and his new stepmother. Jack didn’t think his feelings toward Pete had changed much, but as for Tanya...
Jack couldn’t say he was surprised to see these two in a lip lock. He’d suspected it for some time and had to believe that Pete did, too. After all, Neal and Tanya weren’t exactly paragons of discretion or restraint.
Jack wondered if this was Neal’s way of punishing the old man.
He was thinking it was no more than Pete deserved when the first fat drops of rain pelted him and he sprinted back to the house.
*
“WOW, IS IT ever coming down out there!” Holding the curtain aside, Tanya peered through the rain-lashed window. The panes chattered in their frames, buffeted by the wind.
Meg kept her eyes on the carrots she was cutting. “This is a real nor’easter, all right. Everything closed up and battened down?”
“Neal and Jack are double-checking all that now. I better go change. Unless you need some help?”
Meg restrained a disgusted sigh. “No, everything’s just about done.” No thanks to you.
“Cool.” A little finger-flutter wave and she was gone.
Marie asked, “Can I go play in the rain?”
Meg looked over her shoulder at the backs of her three little girls lined up in order of size, sitting on barstools at the opposite counter. They’d spent the better part of the day beautifying one another. Their hair was teased, braided, and bound by every pin, barrette, headband, and hair tie they could lay their little hands on. Their afternoon of glamour would have culminated in the application of pilfered makeup and nail polish if Meg hadn’t caught them in time.
She’d put them to work mashing sweet potatoes. It would be a nice plus, she thought, if any potatoes actually ended up in the baking dish. The turkey had another hour or so to go. It smelled divine. When the bird came out of the oven, the rolls would go in.
She said, “Marie honey, this is a bad storm. You could get hurt if you go outside. The wind would knock you down.”
“It’s a nowa-ster!” Daisy announced. “Like you, Nowa.”
“Is not!” Nora said. “It’s called a nor’easter.”
“Nowa-ster, Nowa-ster...”
“Daisy, stop eating the marshmallows,” Meg said. “They’re for the sweet potatoes.”
“Daddy!” Marie called. “We’re helping Mommy make Thanksgiving.”
“I can see that.”
Meg looked up to see Jack standing in the doorway. His long legs were crossed at the ankles. One broad, denim-clad shoulder held up the doorframe. It was the same indolent pose she’d witnessed countless times before. But now his clothes were damp, his unruly light brown hair wet from the rain. Obviously he hadn’t shaved that morning, and the beard stubble delineated every dip and groove in his face... the strong line of his jaw... that dimple in his right cheek as he smiled at her.
She swung her gaze back to the carrots, knowing what his next words would be.
“How are my girls?”
The response was a spirited chorus: “Rich, young, and sexy!” He’d trained them well.
He sauntered into the room and lifted the dish towel Meg had tucked into the front of her apron. As he slowly pulled it out, he stared at her, wordlessly urging her to meet his eyes, but she refused.
At the edge of her vision she saw him take off his jacket and toss it over a chair. He ran the towel over his face, then his hair, and when a damp curl fell over his forehead, it took every ounce of her willpower to keep from reaching up to smooth it back.
He joined his daughters at the counter. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen sweet potatoes done with quite this much enthusiasm,” he said.
“Ith got marthmallowth in it!”
“Now, Daisy honey, you know you’re not supposed to talk with your mouth full. Here.” He sat next to her. “You look like a giant sweet potato. If you’re not careful, someone’s gonna cook you and eat you up ’cause you’re so sweet.”
He used the towel to wipe the gooey orange stuff off Daisy’s face and hands. He gave her a conspiratorial wink as he swabbed the sticky marshmallow from her mouth, his touch gentle yet confident. He was good at stuff like this.
He was good at all aspects of being a father.
Meg gave herself a mental shake. No, he wasn’t. Parenthood meant more than wiping your kid’s face. It meant creating a stable, secure environment. It meant putting your family’s needs above your own immature Peter Pan inclinations. It meant settling down and bringing home a regular paycheck—as in the same damn amount twice a month, every month, every year. Something you could count on.
She and her mother might have started out on the same path, made the same initial mistakes, but at least Meg had had the grit and self-respect to cut her losses before it was too late. Out of the misery of her upbringing she’d learned two hard-won lessons, basic truths that had escaped her mother until it was too late. Meg had learned that passion alone can’t sustain a family. And men don’t change.
“What did those carrots ever do to you, darling?”
Somehow Winston had sneaked up on her. She looked at the mangled tubers on her cutting board.
“Whatever are you doing to them?” he asked.
“I’m assassinating them. What does it look like I’m doing?”
“Been slaving over a hot stove too long? Getting a little testy?” He chuckled, exchanging a polite nod with Jack.
She leaned on the counter. It was going to be a long four days. “If you really want to know, I’m tired and I burned my hand and I’m all sweaty.”
“Mother always says, ‘Horses sweat, gentlemen perspire, ladies glow,” Winston said.
Meg whipped off her apron. “Well, this lady is glowing like a pig. I’m going to take a shower.”
“Meg!” Winston called as she swept past him and through the doorway.
“Best to let her be when she’s like that,” Jack said. He’d gotten all three girls cleaned up and had managed to scrape a respectable amount of sweet potato off the counter and into the baking dish. Marie was supervising the placement of marshmallows.
“But I’ve never seen her so agitated.” Winston looked genuinely perplexed. “What did I say?”
“It’s not you, it’s Meg. She gets a little snippy when she’s beat, that’s all.”
“I have these deep-breathing exercises I do sometimes to help me cope with my less civilized moods. Perhaps I could teach them to Meg.”
Jack bit the inside of his cheek and managed not to smile. “You know, I’ll bet she’d appreciate that.”
Winston strolled around the kitchen, hands clasped behind his back, inspecting the meal in progress. He smiled his approval at Meg’s meticulously constructed yeast rolls. The dough had been rolled into uniform little mounds, two mounds to each well in the muffin tins.
Jack said, “I’ll bet you smoke a pipe.”
Winston smiled. “You’d lose that bet, my friend. Mother disapproves of tobacco in all forms. It’s the smell, you see. It gets into everything.”
Mother saddles him with a name like Winston Kent and then forbids him to smoke? “Your mother and Pete will get along famously.”
Winston chuckled and shook his head. “Quite the character, Meg’s uncle Pete.” He glanced furtively at the door and added sotto voce, “Perhaps a bit of a crackpot.”
“A rich crackpot.” A rich, sadistic, meddling, unscrupulous crackpot.
Winston paused at the sweet-potato station to admire the girls’ industry. “What kind of dessert are you making there?”
Marie said, “This isn’t dessert, it’s for dinner. Sweet potatoes and marshmallows.”
“Why, how novel.” He examined their outrageous hairdos. “I see you girls have been having fun with your little hair things.” He spoke very slowly, eyebrows raised. “I trust you put everything back just where I showed you? Your little brushes and combs and all your other little accoutrements? Hmm?”
Marie and Nora exchanged a look that told Jack they already had this guy’s number. Daisy asked, “What’s cootie-monts?”
Winston flicked one of Nora’s six braids. “Okay, you’ve had your fun. Run along upstairs now and make yourselves presentable. You don’t want to sit down to Thanksgiving dinner looking like that, do you?”
Marie looked like she’d been slapped. Nora’s hand flew to her hair. Daisy tugged on Winston’s tweed jacket. “What’s cootie-monts!”
Slowly Jack got to his feet, expressly to impress Meg’s geek-to-be with his height advantage. Recognizing this for the immature, Neanderthal tactic it was, he did a few of those helpful deep-breathing exercises and felt a lot better.
He said, “That’s right, girls. I’ll bet you brought along some real pretty dresses. Go on up and change into them, and be careful not to muss up your gorgeous new hairdos while you’re at it. Right, Mr. Kent?”
The counselor looked like he was sucking on a lemon. “Yes indeed. Lovely hairstyles. Stunning, really.”
The girls ran out, thrilled at the prospect of looking even prettier.
Winston said, “It would seem I have much to learn about—”
“I’m only gonna say this once, so listen up.” Jack took a step forward, deliberately encroaching on the counselor’s personal space. “Those little girls have only one daddy and you’re looking at him. You want to learn how to be a father, you go make your mistakes on someone else’s kids.”
“I assure you, my friend—”
“I’m not your friend. And I’m not finished. If you ever do or say anything to hurt one of my daughters, you’ll have to answer to me.”
He watched indignation and caution battle it out behind the other man’s narrowed eyes. Winston folded his arms. “Perhaps Meg was right after all when she asked you to leave. You seem determined to make ours an adversarial relation—” The lights flickered and blinked out, enveloping them in near darkness. “What the devil...?”
From upstairs came a chorus of three piercing, high-pitched screams. Cursing under his breath, Jack sprinted through the living room and took the stairs three at a time. As he loped toward the girls’ room, he heard them calling for Meg, who was no doubt still in the shower.
He opened the door to find his daughters huddled in the middle of the room, stripped down to their My Little Pony underpants. He crossed to the window and drew aside the drapes to let in what little light there was.
Marie screeched, “Daddy, get out! We’re not dressed!” She sprinted to a bunk bed and dived under the sheets as her sisters howled with laughter at her newfound modesty.
What a time for his seven-year-old to decide she had something to hide. Feeling foolish, he stood behind the door and said, “The lights went out because of the storm, okay? It’s nothing to worry about. Just sit tight. I’ll be right back.” He rummaged around in the hall closet, located a flashlight, and passed it to Nora through a crack in the door. He heard them fighting over it immediately.
Sounds of conversation floated up from the living room—Neal and Tanya speaking in hushed tones. Jack couldn’t make out the words.
Meg had taken the room next to the girls. When he’d pressed her, she’d blushingly assured him that Winston never spent the night at her home on Long Island. It would be inappropriate with three impressionable young daughters in the house.
But Jack assumed Winston had his own place. Unless he lived with Mother Kent, of course. An unwelcome image slammed into his mind, of that self-important dweeb in some posh bachelor apartment, furiously humping Meg between starched linen sheets. He probably didn’t even sweat.
“Man,” Jack mumbled, “don’t do this to yourself.”