“He should,” Jack declares. “If you know a person is suicidal, or just suspect or even just fear it, you do not give them opportunity. If you care about a person the way he supposedly cared about my mother, you do not take them out on a foggy night with warnings of micro-bursts on the marine channel, and if you find yourself in the middle of one, you put on a fucking life jacket.” Tossing both hands in the air, he stalks off down the drive toward his house.

“Jack,” I call, twisting to watch.

His head is downcast, eyes refusing to see more. In the sole indication that he has heard my voice, he raises a palm halfway, let me be, you have nothing to say that I want to hear, you’re on the wrong side. And there we are, twenty years back.

Only we aren’t. We’re twenty years older, twenty years wiser, and, regardless of where our relationship is headed, I’m not letting words come between us. I may be an inveterate peacemaker. But making peace won’t work just now.

Bolting after him across the gravel, I shout, “Wait.” But his long stride doesn’t falter. Finally catching up, I grab his arm. “Walking away accomplishes nothing.”

He turns on me. The glasses on his head do little to tame his chestnut hair, which is nearly as wild as his eyes. “It makes me feel better.” His voice is dark. “He was your father. She was my mother. Nothing has changed.”

“It has so.” Ignoring everything else in the air around us, I hold his gaze. “We’re all brilliant in hindsight. Of course, he shouldn’t have taken her out if he thought she was suicidal, but did he think that?”

“You’re defending him.”

“Shouldn’t I?”

“He never defended you.”

“Right, and we now know why. So that was a flaw of his, but the issue here isn’t me. It’s your mother. I don’t believe there was anything malicious in what he did with her that night.”

“She died.”

“And we don’t know how it happened, but do you seriously think he wanted her dead?”

He opens his mouth to argue but stops.

“Right,” I repeat, relieved that he is listening. “Think of his behavior when he returned to shore that night. Think of what Paul said about his recent visits. We know he was tormented—because, I’m sorry, Jack, even apart from the principles, Tom wasn’t much of an actor. If he had been, he might have treated me better all those years, which is neither here nor there right now. We do know that your mother’s death tormented him. We even know it tore his own marriage apart.” I lift a quick hand. “And yes, there was reason for that totally apart from her, but what happened that night and the scandal in the days after clinched it. I’m not taking sides. I’m just trying to make sense of this.”