“I’m familiar with how meals work.” I was tetchy. Carson’s messages had gotten to me.

“I have to get cooking, yeah?” Norton said. “We’re a lot of people. It’s gonna take time.”

Once again this man was asking if he could disappear into the kitchen. Out of sight. At that point I’d questioned nearly everyone, and all had their share of problems. Abella was unemployed, weeks away from being deported. Flynn’s lover was cheating on him. Bebe and Ned were engaged in an affair that, when exposed, would wreak havoc on their lives. Jade was losing Jasper to a fiancée. What about Philip Norton? He’d been working for these people for twenty years. It seemed unlikely their profound dysfunction hadn’t worn off on him.

“Hang back a minute,” I said.

“Is there something you need?” His gaze fell to the spilled coffee on the library rug and he set his jaw. “I should clean that up before—”

“Sure, sure. I’ve just got a couple more questions first.”

“Oh?”

I motioned for him to sit down. “You said you only work here during the summer?”

“During the season,” he corrected. “April through October. I’ll be shuttering the house for the winter next week.”

“And you come whether Mrs. Sinclair visits or not?”

“There’s a lot to be done on an island.”

“Where do you spend the rest of the year?”

“A-Bay.” He smiled. “Same as you.”

“Getting some well-earned rest, I imagine. You went to a lot of trouble this weekend. Must be exhausting,” I said.

“It’s a special occasion. Jasper never brought a lady out here to meet Cam—Mrs. Sinclair—before.”

It was the second time I’d caught him calling Camilla by her first name. I remembered Abella watching them in the parlor. I needed to talk to her again, not just to hear what she wanted to tell me but to ask what she knew about Norton and Camilla’s friendship. “I guess that means it’s serious,” I said. “Can’t see him bringing a girl all the way out here otherwise.”

“Mrs. Sinclair hopes so. She’d like to see him married soon.”

“Because she’s ill.”

Norton’s eyes widened. “Who told you?”

“Bebe. Cancer, huh?”

He dropped his gaze and nodded.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “She talks about you like you’re family. Got any family of your own around here?”

“Not locally.”

“Never been married?”

“Nope.”

“No kids?”

Norton shifted his weight around in his seat. “I didn’t say that.”

“I saw a picture in your bedroom. You and a little boy.”

He nodded. “That’s my son. His mama and I were real young when he was born. He doesn’t live around here. Never did.”

“Ah.” It was a tale of woe I’d heard a million times before, and it instantly changed the way I felt about Philip Norton. I pictured him in his teens, telling his baby mama he couldn’t raise a kid because he was still a kid himself. “This place must feel like home to you, then.”

“Two decades is a long time.” The whites of his eyes were alarmingly bright surrounded by all that pink skin. “I’ve seen some things over these years, you know?”