Max lay awake for a long time after taking Marcy home. Normally, he fell into bed at night, exhausted from the day’s labors, and was asleep pretty much the minute his head hit the pillow. But today had just been so bizarre, running the gamut from the dreadful to the divine, from the apprehension of searching for Finn Foley to the exhilaration of kissing Marcy Hanlon. Even if it had only been on the cheek, it had been their first kiss. And it had been everything he could have ever dreamed. It had been perfect. The whole night had been perfect. The sky was perfect. The breeze was perfect. The wine was perfect.
Marcy was perfect.
She’d been perfect since third grade. Doubtless she’d been perfect since birth, but third grade was when the Marcy clock had started running for Max. That clock hadn’t always kept the best time. It had almost always run slow or fast, and occasionally had stopped. Tonight, though, that clock had run exactly the way it was supposed to. Tonight, that clock had been perfect, too.
He rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling fan turning laconically overhead. What he saw, though, at least in his mind’s eye, was Marcy as she sat beside him on the blanket at the park, her eyes the same clear blue as the flowers on her dress. Even after the park lights had gone out, and she was bathed only in moonlight, her eyes had shone brighter than the stars overhead. He didn’t think he would ever grow tired of looking into Marcy’s eyes.
He wondered where she would go when she left Endicott after this week.
That thought, too, was keeping him awake. She’d said something in the garden that morning about how she didn’t want anyone in town to know about her failed marriage, at least until after she left. At the time, Max hadn’t really had a chance to think about it. Now he did. She hadn’t said where she was living now, or even what place she’d left to come here for the festival. It was clear she was living stateside now that her marriage was over, but what state? New York, where she’d lived in college before she got married? San Francisco, where she’d lived before that? Or was she someplace closer to home?
No matter where it was, she’d be returning to it in a matter of days. They’d made plans to attend Mrs. Barclay’s gala together Friday night. That was the official end of the comet festival, even if there would be hangers-on around town for another week. She’d said her reservation at the inn was through Sunday morning, though, so there was still the opportunity to see her for a couple of days beyond the gala. But what happened Sunday afternoon? Would she find a way to extend her stay, or would she be all packed and ready to leave, never to return again?
It bothered Max a lot that, in spite of all the time they’d spent together over the past few days—and in spite of all the googling he’d done about her—he still knew so little about who Marcy was now. Tomorrow night, he told himself. He’d ask her all about everything tomorrow night. Tonight, he then reminded himself, since it was after midnight. The realization made him smile. Tonight, he promised himself, would be as perfect as the evening he’d just enjoyed. Because tonight, Marcy would be with him here at his house. And that...
Well, that was just perfect.
Those words echoed in his ears that evening when he went to pick her up at her house. The house that wasn’t hers anymore and hadn’t been for a long time. The house he’d been forbidden to enter when he was a teenager. The house he could go into now whenever he wanted, invitation or no. The house that had been purchased with his tax dollars so, in a way, he was an owner now. He’d never thought about it like that before. That Marcy’s house, having been purchased, at least in part, by taxes he paid to the city and state, belonged to everyone in that city and state, including him. But not her. It was a weird realization.
It hadn’t always been that way, of course. Although Mr. and Mrs. Hanlon hadn’t had a problem with his employer, Mr. Bartok, coming into the house to use their bathroom or grab a glass of water or whatever, they’d made clear that wasn’t the case for Max. In spite of that, he had actually been in the house when he worked there before—once. It was an event that had ended, well, badly. It had been an unseasonably hot spring day not long before the Hanlons moved, and he’d drunk all the water in his water bottle, right down to the melted ice. Since the water from the hose was warm and gross-tasting—not to mention possibly noxious—he’d decided to go to the back door and ask Mrs. Hanlon point-blank if he could come in and use the kitchen faucet. When no one responded to his knock, Max had done what any thirsty teenager would have done. He arrogantly decided he had the same right to clean fresh water that his employer did and, as he had seen Mr. Bartok do on many, many occasions, he turned the knob and entered the house without explicit permission.
He could still remember the chill of the air conditioner washing over him when he did. His own family had rarely used their AC because his parents had been so frugal. The Hanlons must have kept theirs at sixty degrees, so gloriously cold was it in the kitchen that day. Boldly, Max had made his way to the sink and turned on the cold full blast. Then he filled his bottle, drained it and filled it again. And then...
He sighed now, thinking about it. Then he’d been an idiot teenager. Instead of going back out the way he’d come in, he’d decided he wanted to see how the better half lived. How the Hanlons lived. How, specifically, Marcy Hanlon lived.
He’d left the kitchen to enter the house proper, having no idea where he was going. After checking out a few rooms on the first floor—a home office, what appeared to be a music room and a spectacular library paneled in cherrywood—he’d come to a huge sweeping staircase. And he’d figured upstairs was as good a place to look for Marcy’s room as any. At the end of the longest hallway he’d ever been in outside of school, he found it.
The door had been open, as it had been for every room he passed, which was the only reason he found it as easily as he did. And through that door had been an absolute wonderland, painted deep lavender and populated by more plush animals than Toys “R” Us could shake a stick at. He remembered envying Marcy’s floor-to-ceiling shelves crammed with books, not to mention her own personal gaming system and TV. He’d had to share a room with both his brothers when he was a kid, and the fights over which of the three of them would be able to use the two controllers had been epic. They’d all shared one bookcase, too—one shelf each. Max hadn’t been able to imagine what it must be like for Marcy, to have all that to herself.
As he’d turned to leave, his gaze lit on her dresser, where sat an open jewelry box. Sitting to one side, just under an assortment of earrings was a rhinestone hair...thing she’d left there. He remembered seeing her wear it at the holiday band recital at Christmas and how fascinated he’d been by the way it sparkled whenever she moved her head. To this day, he had no clue why he’d done what he did next. He’d just pushed the earrings aside and grabbed it without thinking, then shoved it into his pocket. By then, he’d known Marcy would be moving. And that she’d be moving soon. He supposed he’d just wanted some kind of memento to carry with him—literally—after she was gone.
After that, feeling sweaty and shaky, he’d fled. He was halfway down the first-floor hall when Mr. Hanlon’s booming voice from behind stopped him. Max was amazed that he hadn’t vomited all over the hallway runner that had probably cost more than his parents’ house while Marcy’s dad read him the riot act. Mr. Hanlon had threatened him with everything from jail time, to hard labor, to the back of his hand. He probably would have exiled Max to a penal colony if there had been any left. Then Mr. Hanlon had grabbed him by his shirt collar and dragged him down the rest of the hall and through the kitchen, shoving him out the back door with enough force to send Max to his knees and slammed the door behind him.
Max had figured that would be the end of his employment with Mr. Bartok and the job tending a garden he’d loved more than almost anything in the world. Weirdly, though, Mr. Bartok had never said a word to him. He hadn’t acted any differently around Max at all, had still been his usual good-natured, amiable self. Either he hadn’t seen anything wrong with what Max had done—unlikely, since Mr. Bartok was a stickler for following rules—or else Mr. Hanlon never mentioned it to him. Which was also unlikely, since Marcy’s dad always seemed to be looking for an excuse to come down on Max for whatever he could. Max had decided not to question it and count himself lucky. And even when he acknowledged to himself that it had been wrong to steal Marcy’s hair thing from her room, he’d had no idea how to return it to her without seeming, at best, cringey and, at worst, stalkery.
He still had that rhinestone hair thing. It was in his top dresser drawer, in a basket of odds and ends he’d collected over the years and didn’t know what to do with. He supposed he could confess to Marcy now what he’d done that day and return it to her. They could share a laugh about the dumb stuff teenagers did with their not quite fully developed brains. Of course, if she did end up leaving town again, that would mean he no longer had something to remember her by.
He shook off his memories as best he could and pulled out his phone. He and Marcy had exchanged numbers at the park the night before, so when he entered the former-foyer-now-lobby of the former-house-now-hotel, he texted her to let her know he was here. A few minutes later, she was striding down the stairs he himself had crept up and down fifteen years ago. She was wearing another one of those flowy dresses, this one in a color he knew many people called rose, even though he’d never seen a rose that color in nature. At the moment, he didn’t care, because on Marcy, it was the most beautiful color—the most perfect color—he had ever seen.
She came to a stop on the bottom step, right in front of him, which brought her eye-to-eye with him. “Hi,” she said.
“Hi,” he replied. And, for the life of him, he couldn’t think of a single other word to say.
Marcy didn’t seem to know what to say, either, because she just stood there staring back at him, her gaze locked with his. Finally, and a little dreamily, she told him, “You have the most interesting eyes. I always thought they were a mix of gray and blue, but there’s some green in there, too.”
She might as well have told him he’d grown an extra nose, so surprised was he by the statement. She’d noticed his eyes that much?
“I mean, I guess it’s the shirt,” she added in reference to the fern-green camp shirt he’d thrown on for the occasion, still sounding a little distracted. “But they’re really beautiful.”
She seemed to realize how much she had revealed—not that Max minded at all—because she suddenly snapped out of her reflection and back to the here and now.
“Sorry,” she quickly said. “Didn’t mean to get all mushy.”
“It’s fine,” he assured her. “I don’t mind. I got my dad’s eyes. Mom and Lilah both have brown eyes, and Zach and Gabe have a mix of brown and green. Genetics are weird.”
And they were. The Travers kids all had different skin tones, too, even coming from the same parents. And different hair colors and types. His parents really couldn’t have been more different, physically speaking. His dad’s ancestry was tied exclusively to the British Isles, and his mom’s family still resided in Ethiopia, where they’d been living as far back as any of them could remember. She was dark brown, his dad was lily white and their kids were everything in between.
“Genetics are weird,” she agreed. “All four of us Hanlon kids came from the same parents, but we couldn’t be more different from each other.”
Well, Max didn’t know about that. Certainly, Marcy was different from the rest of them. And her mother, probably, in some ways—Max had always gotten the impression that Mrs. Hanlon was no happier to be married to her husband than Max was to work for him. But her brothers were all cut from the same cloth as far as Max was concerned, even if they didn’t much physically resemble each other outside of their builds. And it was the same pinstriped cashmere that epitomized their father.
“All set?” he asked in an effort to change a subject that very much needed changing.
“All set,” she assured him.
Marcy smiled as Max crooked his elbow, then slid her arm through his. She hoped he couldn’t hear her heart pounding in his ears the way she did as they made their way out to his truck. The sun hung low in the sky, burnishing everything in soft golds and ambers. The wind kicked up softly and blew a strand of her hair over her eyes, and they both reached for it at the same time. Max got there first, though, and gently guided the strand back, tucking it behind her ear. It was an innocent touch that should have barely registered. Somehow, though, it made something inside her that was already wound too tautly cinch tighter still.
He opened the creaky door and helped her inside, then made his way around the front to the driver’s side. She remembered him telling her no one ever rode on this side of the seat, something that suggested he didn’t date much. Or at least hadn’t for a while. Until tonight. This was a date, right? Unless maybe he had only invited her to dinner as a friend and was just being polite for old times’ sake? When he kissed her last night, it had just been a chaste little peck on the cheek, and she had been surprisingly disappointed by that. Maybe she was wrong, thinking there had been something else going on between them over the past few days besides reigniting an old friendship that had never really been that much of a friendship. Maybe he still just wanted to be friends. Maybe she’d been completely misreading him this week.
And why did it bother her so much that that might be the case?
“This is seriously the only vehicle you have to drive?” she asked when he was sitting behind the wheel.
“Yep,” he told her. “This gets me wherever I want to go. I don’t need anything else.”
Meaning he wasn’t concerned about impressing—or even accommodating—a potential romantic interest. So maybe he didn’t see her as a romantic interest. Which, of course, was fine, because, naturally, she didn’t expect—or even want—anything romantic to blossom between them. She still wasn’t positive he wasn’t a thief. How could she possibly want—or even expect—something romantic to blossom between them?
Max made his way down the road that used to be her driveway and headed toward town. His farm, she knew, was on the other side of Endicott, meaning she would get to see many of her old proving grounds as they drove. She hadn’t really done much sightseeing since her return. She hadn’t even gone into town for any length of time since that first day, when she saw Max at the bookstore. Part of the reason for her self-isolation was her hope that she might get some writing done while she was here—hah—and part was due to her wanting to just keep a low profile and avoid seeing people she would have to talk to or, worse, reminisce with.
As she and Max drove through Endicott proper now, though, she smiled at the places she recalled from her childhood and adolescence. Not just the shops she’d loved, but the mailbox where she used to secretly mail fan letters to the Jonas Brothers every week. And there were the bushes dividing the Mazzoni and Patel houses behind which she’d received her first kiss—from Rajiv Patel when she was twelve. And there was the elm tree at the entrance to Amanda’s old neighborhood, where Marcy and her friends would ditch their bikes in a pile, then sit and talk about which boys were cutest or which girls wore the coolest clothes. Really, she should make an effort to look up her old friends before she left. It actually might be kind of nice to hear what they were up to, even if she did have to come clean about her own disastrous, post-Endicott life.
“What are you thinking about?”
As always happened when she was losing herself in her memories—which had happened a lot since her return—Max’s voice seemed to be coming from a long time ago and a galaxy far, far away.
She smiled. “I was just thinking about when I lived here before and all the stuff I used to do with Amanda and Claire when we were kids.”
“Have you seen them much since you left town?” he asked.
She hadn’t even looked them up to see if they still lived here. She hadn’t spoken to either of them for more than a decade. They’d stayed friends on social media after Marcy moved, and they’d talked on the phone from time to time, but she’d deleted all of her accounts in college upon learning about her father’s indictment and severed ties with virtually everyone she’d ever known. She hadn’t been able to bear the questions she knew her friends would ask about him once the news was made public. Not that the news was ever widely known, thanks to Remy’s efforts. Marcy still hadn’t wanted to take any chances.
“I haven’t,” she told Max. “I wasn’t even sure they still lived here.”
“Amanda does,” he said. “She’s married with two kids and lives up the street from her parents. Claire got a full ride to Michigan State for field hockey and then moved to, I think, Grand Rapids. Last I heard, she and her partner own a couple of cannabis dispensaries. But she’s back for the festival. You should look them both up.”
Max might as well have told her Amanda was raising the dead in her basement, and Claire was living her life as a manatee. Amanda had always sworn she would be single for the rest of her life so that she could circle the globe as many times as possible, and Claire had been so uptight about chemical or herbal enhancements when they were teenagers, she wouldn’t even take ibuprofen. She was definitely going to have to reconnect with them both somehow.
Before she could comment on either of her friends, though, Max was talking again.
“So what will you do after you check out of the inn Sunday?”
She was kind of surprised he hadn’t asked the question before now. Not that she would have been prepared for it at any point. She couldn’t afford to stay any longer than she was. It had been all she could do to scratch up enough money for even that.
“I don’t have plans to stay in Endicott,” she told him, deliberately being vague. At least it was the truth.
When she didn’t clarify, she sensed, more than saw, him glance over at her, but she kept her gaze on the passing scenery. She pretended she was too wrapped up in it to notice his attention. Thankfully, he was a dutiful driver and returned his attention to the road after a second or two.
“So you’re leaving?” he asked.
She truly didn’t know. Part of her couldn’t wait to get out of town. But another part of her—a bigger part—wished she could stay forever. How she could manage that, though, was beyond her. If Bob would just get off his duff and grant her wish...
All she said to Max, though, was “I’m not sure yet.”
She did look at him then, but he had his gaze fixed firmly on the road ahead. The wind bustled through his open window, tousling his curls and blowing them over his forehead. They were moving away from the town and its immediate environs now. The Lambert farm—Max’s farm, she corrected herself, the one he may or may not have bought with her parents’ money—wasn’t too much farther down the road. Only a few more minutes until they arrived. But there was enough time for Max to ask her questions she’d really prefer not to answer.
“So what place do you call home these days, anyway?”
Like that one.
She had no idea how to answer it. She didn’t really call anyplace home these days. Even when she’d been living in a fixed place, deep down, that place had never felt truly like home. Not the way Endicott had. Not the way Endicott still did, she made herself admit. The moment she’d arrived in town last weekend, she’d felt as if she was breathing genuine air for the first time in fifteen years. Most recently, though, she’d lived in New York. So she decided that was probably the closest thing she had to, at least, a residence. Even though the residence she’d left before coming home had belonged to someone else. Before coming to Endicott, she hastily corrected herself.
“I was in New York before I came here,” she said, congratulating herself for being able to tell the truth again.
“New York City?” he asked.
She nodded, then, when she realized he was still focused on driving, she clarified, “Manhattan.”
“You have a place there?”
“I did,” she replied before she could stop herself. Though that was true, too. She’d just had a place there years ago, that was all.
Now he glanced at her quickly before returning his gaze to the road. “But you don’t anymore?”
“I didn’t renew the lease on my apartment,” she told him. The one she’d moved out of when she married Ollie and moved to France. Let him think of that what he would.
What he thought, however, she had no idea. Because he said nothing more about it. On one hand, she was grateful. It was a subject she really didn’t want to think about right now. On the other hand, she knew she had to make plans quickly. In a matter of days, she’d be roomless in addition to being homeless.
Thankfully, the entrance to Max’s farm appeared on the right. When the Lambert family lived there, there had been a big, hand-painted sign advertising produce for sale, with little hooks to hang smaller signs, depending on what was in season. She remembered that, in the summer, when she visited with her mother for peaches, there would be seemingly dozens of little signs for berries and cherries and corn and tomatoes and everything else that grew during those months. In the fall, when they came for apples, it would be things like squash and pears and pumpkins and carrots. The Lamberts had grown all kinds of things, and Marcy had never understood why her mother didn’t buy more. Now, of course, she knew it was because her mother had never cooked—their housekeeper had. She’d just liked fresh peaches and apples for her own snacking. The sign, Marcy saw now, was still there and still hand-painted. But it stated only, Peaches in summer. Apples in fall. Help yourselves.
Since the truck was slowing, Marcy rolled down her window as they drove toward the house, inhaling the sweet aroma of the apple orchard in all its full, ripening glory. There was a family in there right now, taking Max at his word. Their SUV was parked with its tailgate open, and two small kids, whose ages Marcy couldn’t possibly have guessed because she knew nothing of children, were dancing around it as their mother loaded a canvas bag of fruit inside. A third child, of indeterminate gender and smaller than the others, was in the father’s arms. He was lifting the child up to one of the trees, and the child squealed with delight as they tugged an apple free.
Max slowed his truck as he and Marcy drew nearer, stopping when he was alongside them.
“Hey there, Lynette and Jack,” he said to the parents.
He quickly introduced Marcy, who greeted them in return, then he looked at the little boys crawling in and out of their vehicle.
“Holy crow, is that you, Colin?” he said to one of them.
The bigger of the boys nodded shyly from behind his mother’s legs.
“How did you get so big?” he asked. “And you, too, Dylan,” he said to the other boy. “I swear you both double in size every time I see you.”
The little boys laughed, but neither said a word.
“It’s from eating your apples and peaches,” his mother replied, laughing. “Sally is finally old enough to eat them, too, now.”
Jack, the father, joined the rest of his family then, the little girl in his arms—still in diapers by the look of it—gnawing on the apple she’d just picked. Marcy would have been concerned about pesticides, but knowing what she did of Max, it was a safe bet he didn’t use them. He’d said he was letting the place return to its natural state.
“Whoa, look at you, Sally,” he said to the little girl. “You’ve got a whole mouth full of teeth now.”
She tucked her head bashfully into her father’s neck. But she smiled at Max with clear adoration.
“Thanks again, Max, for doing this,” Lynette said. “We really love coming out here with the kids. If they had their way, we’d be here every day.”
“Come anytime you want,” he told them. “There’s plenty. And next time, Jack, bring your folks. I’d love to see them again.”
“Will do!” he promised as he corralled his family and got them loaded into the SUV.
Max waved as the family drove away, and Marcy marveled at the exchange he’d just had with them. How was he so easygoing with everyone? she wondered. Even with people she knew well, she had never been able to completely let down her guard. But Max had spoken to those kids as if they were his own. And even if they hadn’t had much to say in return, they obviously liked him a lot.
“Hey, I want to pick some apples, too,” she said impulsively. She had no idea what possessed her to make the statement. It had just been so sweet, watching the family picking theirs, Mom and Dad so cheerful, their children all pink-cheeked and adorable, all of them so wholesome and affectionate and happy to be together. Families like that were so alien to her. She’d never shared the kind of experiences with her own family that they must take for granted. Just once, she wanted to see what it was like to do something so simple and charming and old-fashioned. Whenever she’d come to the farm with her mother, the apples had already been bagged up for sale.
Max looked at her, surprised. “Really?”
She nodded.
“You’re not exactly dressed for it.”
“There are a lot of apples on low branches,” she pointed out. “We don’t have to use a ladder or anything. And it would be nice to have something to take ho—I mean...back to the inn,” she quickly corrected herself. “For snacking.”
He continued to look at her as if he wasn’t quite sure what to make of her. “Okay,” he relented. “Pretty sure there’s a basket in the back of the truck we can use.”
He switched off the engine and climbed out, coming around to Marcy’s side to open her door. Sure enough, there was an old wicker basket in the truck bed that he plucked out for them to use. Thankfully, she had worn flat sandals, so the grassy terrain was easy to navigate. As they drew nearer the orchard, the scent of the apples grew stronger, surrounding her with their fresh, plummy aroma. At first, she didn’t pick anything, so content was she to just be amid the trees, enjoying their fragrance. As they walked, though, one would catch her eye because of its color or shape, and she would pluck it free to put into the basket.
As they walked, Max talked to her about how, even with him rewilding the place, the trees still produced plenty of fruit on their own, thanks to, literally, the birds and the bees. But he didn’t stop there; he went into explicit detail—well, explicit when it came to plant biology—about how some plants fertilize themselves, what with stamens and stigmas and pollen tubes that enter the ovule to deliver the nuclei. Except that the way he spoke, a little softer and huskier and more bewitchingly than usual, it was way too easy for Marcy to replace people parts with plant parts, and then the images just started getting way too graphic for her to let him finish describing whatever it was that passed for a plant orgasm, since she was way too close to a person one herself. But when she looked at him, he’d already stopped talking, and she could tell that he had started thinking the same way she was thinking, and he was regretting it as much as she was, except not really, because there was a part of him, like there was a part of her, that was wondering what it would be like for their own stamens and stigmas and pollen tubes, and then—
“Okay, I think I’m good,” she said—a little too breathlessly—battling another wave of, um, pollination. “And I’m getting hungry,” she added, hoping like hell after the fact that she had sounded hungry for food and not, you know, pollination.
Thankfully, Max pretended not to notice. He only took the basket from her hand and wove her fingers through his, ostensibly to keep her from tripping over the uneven earth, even though she’d managed just fine up until now on her own. As their fingers curled together, a current of heat sparked in her hand and rushed up her arm, pooling in her chest, where it hummed happily. When she braved another look at him, she saw that his eyes were dark and his lips were parted, as if he was having as much trouble catching his breath as she was.
It was going to be an interesting night.
They set the basket of apples in the truck for her to take to the inn later, then made their way to the house. Max was still holding her hand when they climbed the porch steps and didn’t release it when he pulled his keys out of his pocket with his free hand to unlock the door. The house that had seemed so rickety and dull when Marcy was a girl looked fresh and new now. The dingy white clapboard had been painted barn-red, and the crumbling concrete stoop leading to the front door had been replaced by a covered wooden porch that spanned the entire front of the house. It was dotted here and there with hanging baskets of greenery, and it had a wicker swing swaying at one end and a pair of matching chairs and table sitting at the other.
She would never have guessed a single man lived here. It just looked too comfortable and cozy. It was the perfect place to raise a family, she thought. And now that she did think about it, she was honestly kind of surprised Max hadn’t already married and started one. Any woman would have been ridiculous to turn him down. And he’d been so great with the children earlier. He’d be a wonderful husband and father.
“The house looks amazing,” she told him. And then, because she couldn’t quite help herself, she added, “It must have cost a fortune to do all the renovations.”
“I did most of it myself,” he said.
Which was a lot of trouble to go to if he could have just written a check with a stolen fortune and have someone else do it instead. The more time Marcy spent with Max, the more she began to think her parents were wrong about him. She just didn’t see how he could be so sweet and kind and hardworking and still be a villain. Then again, probably a lot of villains could be sweet when they wanted to be. Even Blofeld in the James Bond movies loved his cat while being a criminal mastermind trying to take over the world. Maybe Max’s decency was genuine. Maybe he’d had his reasons for doing what he did fifteen years ago.
Or maybe, she thought, he just didn’t do it. Maybe the video of him roaming around in their house really had been about something else. From what she’d learned and seen of Max since she’d been back, she just didn’t see how it was possible that he could be someone who would do the wrong thing. Who would betray a trust placed in him. Who would commit a crime. And if he had committed a crime as a teenager, he seemed like the kind of man who would own up to it and try to make things right. She simply was not as sure of his guilt now as she had been before she returned to Endicott. In fact, she was becoming more sure with every passing minute that he was almost certainly innocent. Her parents had clearly made a mistake.
Clearly.
But if it hadn’t been him, what was she going to do now? She’d made a wish on Bob fifteen years ago, one she fiercely needed to come true. If Max wasn’t the one who had ruined her family’s life—and ruined her life, too, by extension—then who had? And how was she going to find that person and make them pay and return things to the way they’d been?
She shook off the thoughts, since they were even more troubling than the ones she’d had of Max’s apparent guilt. Instead, she looked at his charming house again. Sitting on this porch in the evenings while owls hooted and fireflies twinkled must be a glorious pastime. She could spend a lot of time on this porch doing exactly that. She looked at Max again. Maybe...
She shook off that thought, too, before it could dare materialize. “I can’t believe you did all this by yourself,” she told him.
“Well, I had help from Felix and Chance, and my family when they were able to. I did most of the work inside, too,” he added proudly. “Left the wiring and plumbing to the professionals, of course, but the rest of it...pretty much all yours truly.”
As if to illustrate that, he pushed open the front door and held the screen door, gesturing for her to precede him. “Come on in,” he told her with a smile. “Dinner will be ready soon.”