Brynne was momentarily startled, thinking her mother was referring to the intimacy she and Eli shared. Fortunately, she realized pretty quickly that Alice was still on the death-comes-in-threes theme.

“Always,” Brynne said gently, because she knew she was everything to her parents, even as Freddie Lansing had been everything to his.

Loving another person so completely was a major risk.

After the call, Brynne left the restaurant to Miranda and Frank, since the lunch rush was still about ninety minutes out, climbed into her roadster and headed for the house on Pine Street, the modest split-level ranch she’d grown up in.

Hank, the neighbor her dad hired for occasional maintenance and odd jobs, was there, replacing floorboards on the front porch. A kindly man, tall and thin and blessed with a shock of steel-gray hair, stood up to greet her with a broad smile and a fairly loud, “Brynne! Did your dad send you over here to make sure I’m earning my pay?”

Brynne laughed, though she was still dealing with a mild case of shock—not only were her parents coming home early, but they planned on taking over the family business. And, while they hadn’t said so outright, it hadn’t sounded as if those plans were temporary.

“No.” She smiled, shoving her hands into the pocket of her puffy jacket. “I’m pretty sure my dad would trust you with his life. I’m here to get some of my things from the storage shed.”

“Need any help?”

Coming to the house had been, for Brynne, that rare impulsive move. She hadn’t considered the volume of stuff she wanted to take home in comparison to the minisized car she drove.

Hank had a pickup truck.

“How much to have you deliver a full load of art supplies to the restaurant?”

If she was about to be unemployed, even partially, she wanted to use any extra time to sketch and paint.

“One week of free breakfast specials,” Hank said, with a broad grin.

“You’ve got a deal,” Brynne said, trudging on toward the large storage shed in her parents’ backyard.

Over the next half hour, she sorted through boxes and bins, deciding which pens and brushes and paints to take and which to leave. She wanted her easels—two freestanding and one designed for a tabletop—her extensive collection of watercolor, acrylic and oil paints, blocks of expensive paper, along with the appropriate brushes, and a stack of gallery-wrapped canvas nearly as tall as she was.

Hank loaded everything into the back of his truck, being very careful about it, and hauled the works over to Bailey’s, where he went the second mile by carrying everything up the stairs to Brynne’s apartment and into the first spare bedroom.

Brynne helped where she could, but she mainly got in Hank’s way.

He was too polite to mention that, of course.