With a roll of her eyes that was too close to teenage angst for Brick’s liking, Hadley reluctantly sauntered over and grabbed his left leg.

“Is that Brick I hear?” Gilbert called from the back of the house. “Come on back, bartender.”

Carefully, Brick made his way toward the sound of adult voices, a kid attached to each leg.

“It’s not working, Ian,” Hadley observed.

“Try to weigh more,” Ian insisted.

Brick couldn’t help but crack a smile as he rounded the corner into the Ford family’s airy kitchen, a space that had felt like home to him for the last decade and a half. Like a home, he corrected, not his home. Growing up, home had been a never-ending series of rentals that rotated every few months depending on which parent was following their dream or scheme at the time. They bounced around from places like Reno and Las Vegas to Oklahoma, Kansas, Montana, and even a stint in Florida when his father got a hot tip on a land deal.

Sometimes he had his own room.

Sometimes he and Spencer didn’t even have their own beds.

He’d envied kids who went home to the same house every day. Kids whose parents came home every night.

The Ford girls had grown up with both of those things.

Darlene, still in her Mackinac PD sweatshirt, was bent over a saucepan on the stove. Gil, in corduroys and a sweater vest, was peering at a printout of what was probably his new drink recipe. Kimber was tucked back in the breakfast nook by the fireplace, arranging neatly sliced vegetables on a tray.

Remi was nowhere in sight. But he still felt her.

He reached down and plucked Ian off his ankle, throwing the kid over his shoulder. “Delivery for a Kimber Olson,” he reported officially.

Kimber accepted her wriggling, giggling son with a series of noisy kisses on his face. “Just what I always wanted,” she said.

“Ew! Mom!”

She was an attractive woman by anyone’s standards. Thick russet hair shades darker than her sister’s framed a lean face with a full mouth and straight blade of a nose. She had her mother’s unflappable calm and leggy height. She loved fiercely, without fuss, and could always be counted on.

In Brick’s never voiced opinion, Kimber could have done a hell of a lot better than Kyle Olson. A man who appeared to be absent once again.

Hadley disengaged her leg lock and took Brick’s contribution to the meal—a bottle of decent bourbon—over to her grandfather.

Kimber turned her wriggling son loose and greeted Brick. “Nice to see you, Sergeant Callan.”

“Hanging in there this winter?” he asked. It was a natural question for anyone who lived on Mackinac through the winter. Isolation, loneliness, boredom, depression. Everyone was susceptible sooner or later, regardless of who they married.

“Like a champ,” she said. The smile she flashed was a tired one that didn’t quite climb to her eyes.

“Mom’s learning French this winter,” Ian piped up. “Say something French, Mom!”