“I’ve forgotten so much about this place. It’s nice here. For so long I blocked it out, made it a place I never wanted to visit again... turns out I was wrong,” he said. “The people too. I mean, they’re nosey as hell, and are continually asking me questions, which weirdly I seem to be answering, but still, I hadn’t realized how much I missed Ryker until I came back.”

“I-it’s nice here.”

The whispered words were a start.

“Please tell me what’s wrong.”

“Dylan, we don’t do this, so just let it go.”

“This being?”

“The brother-sister thing. The acting like we give a shit.” Her words came out with a bite to them.

“Because we’ve never wanted to.”

“Right.”

“But maybe now I do.”

Did he?

Her laugh was ugly. “Too little, too late. We are a product of a dysfunctional family; let’s not break with tradition.”

He drove past the end of the street his parents lived on and followed the river down to the boardwalk.

“Where are you going?”

He kept driving until he saw the basketball court and the beginnings of a building site. He found shops, saw a herbalist, a massage place, and a greengrocer. The window display had lots of leafy vegetables and baskets of fruit with the word organic written in large gold letters. Dylan lived a healthy life because his body needed some of that from time to time, but not too much, and it certainly looked like a place he would avoid while in Ryker.

He parked facing the water, then switched off the engine.

“That’s going to be a recreation center. Mr. Goldhirsh told me about it. Joe Trainer wanted it built, our mother didn’t, he won,” Dylan said, looking at the water.

“Imagine Mary Howard not getting her way.”

“Yeah, hard to believe, isn’t it. I found out that she’s been making the Trainers’ lives hell since I left, especially Joe’s.”

Charlie turned to look at him.

“What? Why?”

“Because she blames him for me leaving, and I’m not entirely sure she’s going to stop, even though I’ve told her to.”

“Why do you care?” She looked out the windshield again. “This place is nothing to you. You don’t do personal, remember.”

“Don’t you get sick of that?”

“What?”

“The not caring, the living for yourself with no connections?”

“It’s all I know,” she whispered.

“Me too, and I thought that suited me, but coming here, it’s like someone’s taken a can opener to me and now all this stuff is leaking out.”

“What stuff?”

“Emotions, needs. It’s weird, I’ve been back only a few days and I’ve talked more with people here than I have in years in New York. Really talked. Laughed too. Hell, this morning I did exercise class with a group of seniors.”

“You’re kidding me?”