“Ouch. Senior year?”

She nodded. “And to make it even better, my dad hooked up with the mother of one of my best friends, breaking up two marriages for the price of one affair. It was a huge scandal. We were the talk of the high school.” Looking over at him, she added, “I get how your sons are feeling. Even if your breakup wasn’t a scandal, it was the end of life as they knew it.”

“I suppose so.”

“It’s hard to see your parents moving on with other people, even if you like the other people. I adore my stepfather, but I didn’t at first. To me, he was part of the problem.”

“What changed?”

“He makes my mom really happy, happier than she’s ever been.”

“That counts for something.”

“It counts for a lot.”

“What about your dad? Is he still with the other woman?”

“Yep, they’re married and have more kids together.”

“So everyone is happy. Do you see your father?”

“Occasionally. I didn’t see him for years after it first happened. I couldn’t bear to be in the same room with him. About five years later, he had a massive heart attack, and we thought he was going to die. Since then, my brother and I have tried to be a little more forgiving, but we can never forget what he did to our family.”

After a long pause, Kevin said, “You know what kind of bums me out about my situation?”

“What’s that?”

“I feel like they’re blaming me, when she’s the one who had the affair. She’s the one who left me and wanted out of the marriage.”

“They know that. Why do you think they’re here with you rather than there with her today?”

“Hmm, I figured it was because they’re working here for the winter and it was easier to stay.”

“You sell yourself short, Kevin. They’re here because they want to be. They’ve probably known for some time that she’s back home, but they chose to stay—with you and the rest of their family.”

“It’ll be interesting to see what happens when this job at Seamus’s is done. Mac has told them he wants them to stay, but I’m not sure they will.”

“What were they doing before they came out here?”

“They work for a big construction company in Connecticut. They’re both engineers, and when things happened with Deb and me, they took leaves of absence from work to come out here for a while.”

“And it never occurred to you that they did that so they could help you through a rough time?”

“Not really,” he said with a sheepish grin. “You sure you didn’t go to medical school?”