I can’t quite get my head around it. He looks good, too. I expected to find a man with bloodshot eyes and a haggard expression. But he’s a spry and healthy sixty-year-old from the looks of it. He wears newish fleece-lined work boots and a red flannel jacket with a black collar. He looks like an ad for L.L. Bean.

“Did you bring luggage?” he asks suddenly.

“Yeah, I left it with the bellhop.”

“You’ll have to put it in your car and drive it up to the employee lot,” he says. “The bellhops don’t take bags up the hill. I don’t know if there are sheets on the beds in there, either. Might have to take some out of the linen closet in the house. Twin size.”

I open my mouth to ask a question about the room, but then I blurt out something else entirely. “Did you know that Ava and I used to date?” Although date is entirely the wrong word for it. It was the most intense, passionate love affair of my life.

And it ended very badly.

“Huh. She graduated from Middlebury College, so I asked her if she knew you. She said yes and then did not elaborate. So I suppose the thought crossed my mind. But what difference does it make?”

I bite back several unhelpful comments. The difference it makes is that my head is exploding. This was like showing up at the dentist for a root canal and learning that you would also be undergoing knee surgery. I’d braced myself against one brand of pain, but not this other one. Fuck.

“She’s a good worker,” my father adds, oblivious to my pain. “Hell, she runs this place.”

“I thought you ran this place? Otherwise, you wouldn’t need to sell.”

“We both work our asses off, Reed. Running this place is hard. And why do you care if I sell?”

That’s something else I don’t have a good answer for. “It just seems hasty.”

My father actually laughs—that’s another thing he didn’t used to do. “There’s nothing hasty about it. This has been a long time coming. You and your brothers don’t want the place.”

“You didn’t ask,” I argue.

My father stops in his tracks. “You didn’t come home for ten years.”

And I guess we’re not waiting for tea and cookies to have this conversation. “It’s not just me, though. What about Weston or Crew?”

“Weston and Crew who?” He shakes his head. “I know things weren’t so great around here when you all were teenagers…”

I snort at this outrageous understatement.

“But that was a long time ago. I’ve made overtures, but I am rebuffed at every turn. I eloped, Reed, to spare you the discomfort of turning down my damn wedding invitation. The least you could be is grateful.”

“Grateful? It’s not fucking likely.”

Anger flashes in my father’s eyes, and I wait for him to start shouting.

But that’s not what happens. He just grunts and resumes walking toward the house.