It was only late at night, when his defenses were down and the memories pressed in close, that he wondered if the presence of Violet Figg in his mind—burned into his synapses long before he met Alice—was part of the reason he hadn’t fallen apart when his marriage did.

Despite all that had happened since he’d last seen Violet—all the work he’d done to move on—his heart had betrayed him today. He might as well have been that twenty-seven-year-old tongue-tied kid who couldn’t put one foot in front of the other to go talk to her, but he wasn’t. He was much older now and he’d lived a full life without her, but one glimpse all these years later, and his heart went and filled right back up again.

With his leg calmer he pulled the small stool over and propped his foot on it. Keeping an eye on his shady backyard and the birds flittering around his feeders, he gave himself over to the memory.

1982

The night Frank met Violet, he’d been assigned to a duty none of the cops at the precinct wanted to take: security detail at the Sandbar. As the lowest on the totem pole, having only recently been released into the world—or at least the world of Sugar Bend—as a full-fledged police officer, Frank was often chosen for the weekend gig. But the truth was he didn’t mind it much. Many of the other guys didn’t like it because they’d rather be at home with their families or girlfriends than keeping an eye on intoxicated troublemakers at the local dive bar. Others preferred to specialize in something flashier like narcotics or criminal intelligence, which would keep them from having to take crap assignments like this.

At twenty-seven Frank wasn’t married and didn’t have a girlfriend, and he hadn’t yet decided which path he wanted to pursue within the police department. And to be honest, he liked to people-watch. Almost as much as he liked to bird-watch, though he didn’t admit either of those things to anyone at work.

He didn’t work the security gig every weekend—a couple other guys shared the burden—but he’d been there enough to become a familiar sight at the door to the Sandbar, and he recognized most of the regulars who came every Friday and Saturday night, and some of them likely more often than that.

So when he saw the petite woman with chestnut-brown hair dressed in white pants with a wide belt and a pale yellow sweater, he knew he was seeing her for the first time. Something in him began to hum, a low roar that made his ears itch and his legs restless. As she approached the door she pulled out her ID and handed it to the man on the stool.

Inside, music swelled from the band onstage. The woman seemed to steel herself before lifting her chin and walking inside. The man on the stool glanced at Frank and shrugged.

Another group of young people approached the door, but Frank’s mind stayed with the woman. He imagined her walking inside, finding the person she was meeting, and settling in for the evening, a man’s arm snug around her shoulders.