He nodded, feeling awkward now. He’d expected her to maybe collapse with relief in his arms or something along those lines. But she was practically vibrating with anxiety.

“What’s going on, Remi?” he demanded.

He watched the mask slide back into place on her pretty face. “Nothing. Thanks for the information. I’ll see you around.”

And with that, she slipped out of his grasp and through the front door where Carlos “Dead Man” Turk was waiting astride his snowmobile.

“Fuck.”

22

Between looking over her shoulder, obsessively checking her phone for any messages from Camille, and ignoring a certain burly bartending police officer, Remi officially debuted Mackinac Visits with a motley crew of thirty-plus volunteers and a roster of residents looking forward to their first visit.

At this point in the long, bleak winter, most everyone was feeling a little stir-crazy, which had led to a bigger influx of both volunteers and visit requests than any of them had expected.

Remi signed up to take the Kleckners, an adorable elderly couple who lived in a little ranch house tucked away in the woods mid-island.

Lois was a retired school teacher who’d worked with Remi’s father. Ben had worked as an engineer on the mainland for forty years before dementia complicated things. Remi hadn’t seen either of them in well over a year, but she did vividly remember Ben’s sweet tooth.

She opened the doll-sized oven and sniffed. Molasses cookies were neatly taking shape on the baking tray. She’d had to get creative, baking only a dozen at a time.

Her baking skills radically improved as her creative talents withered and rotted on the vine.

She pulled the tray from the oven and set it on the cooling rack, then surveyed the kitchen mess. This was her fourth dozen. The first was going to the landlord across the street who would remain nameless. She’d avoided exchanging a single word with the man for an entire week now. A feat considering she spent so much time staring at blank canvases in his house and meeting up with old friends for drinks at his bar.

If Remi Ford had a superpower, it was nurturing a good grudge. And Brick was feeling it. The average person wouldn’t know it just by looking at him, but she knew that beneath that stoic surface, her freeze-out was slowly killing him.

She was proud of the effort. At least she was doing something. And something, no matter how immature, was better than nothing.

Remi bagged up two dozen cookies and put on actual pants. However, thanks to her bulky sweater, rebelliously skipped a bra.

She ran a brush through her hair, slicked on some mascara and Chapstick, then realized she looked fourteen and spent another minute or two on real makeup. If she wanted the island to realize she was more than a teenage troublemaker, she had to look the part. But she still wasn’t putting on a bra.

It was a damp, gray day. Snow was in the forecast because it was winter in Michigan. Still, she decided to walk instead of borrowing her parents’ snowmobile. She needed to move and breathe. To do something with this pent-up energy. Even if it was only nineteen degrees outside.