“Sydney?”

Neil’s voice was a balm for her blistered heart. She turned, suddenly realizing he’d come up behind her without her hearing because he was already close. Close enough she could smell that soap he used, and all she wanted to do in the moment was bury her face against him and keep smelling it.

Might have if she hadn’t looked up and seen the confusion on his face, his attention hooked on the photo in her hand.

“Why do you have a picture of Tate Carter?”

Her breath left her.

“Syd?” He slid the photo from her fingers, his gaze crawling over the three faces and sharpening. “Wait . . . is this . . . it?”

The logo on the young man’s shirt. The truck she’d seen in the driveway the other day when Tatum Carter had . . .

“It’s JR, not JP.” Her heart thudded.

Neil met her eyes. “What?”

“On the back. There’s a scratch. Tatum Carter’s son . . . is he . . . ?”

Neil released a ragged exhale and nodded. “Tatum Carter, Jr.”

My Dearest Robert,

This afternoon Sydney helped me chop vegetables. There were questions I wanted to ask her. I’ve realized, suddenly, how little I truly know of her past. There’s this young man named Micah, you see, and . . .

But that’s not why I’m writing this letter. I’m writing because it’s the questions Sydney asked me I can’t stop thinking about. She asked about Diana. About how I came to adopt her.

And Robert, it strikes me that in all these years of writing to you, I’ve never told you about Tatum Carter.

You were new in Muir Harbor when we met so I doubt you ever knew the Carters. They’re a prominent family. Tatum was two or maybe three years ahead of me in school. And I don’t know—honestly, I’ve no earthly idea—why he took an interest in a grieving nineteen-year-old that summer in between his college semesters. But he did. I’d see him in church or around town and he’d always have a friendly smile for me.

He was volunteering at the hospital that summer. He brought me a flyer one evening—about a volunteer opportunity in the maternity ward. Rocking babies. Literally, that was the whole volunteer role—just rocking babies in the hospital nursery. He said he thought it would be good for me.

I listened to him because at that point, I would’ve listened to anyone who offered any sort of cure at all for my grief. We’d ride together and I’d rock babies and when his shift was over, he’d pick me up at the nursery and drive me home.

And one night, in the middle of the summer, I held Diana. And, Robert, something in me knew even then that she was special. I found out later her mother, Olivia, was horrifically sick with cancer, had chosen to forgo treatments in order to deliver a healthy child. We became friends in the coming weeks. There wasn’t a father in the picture and she didn’t have much more in the way of family.