“No. I’ve just been working too hard.”

“Shit, drawing pictures, coming up with jingles. Big deal.”

“Kiss ass.” But with a sigh, he sat on the dock. “Are the two of you trying to tell me you’ve talked to Dad? The one who died in March? The one we buried a few miles from here?”

In an easy gesture Cam passed Phillip the cigar. “You trying to tell us you haven’t?”

“I don’t believe in that sort of thing.”

“Doesn’t much matter what you believe when it happens,” Ethan pointed out and took back his cigar. “Last time I saw him was the night I asked Grace to marry me. He had a bag of peanuts.”

“Christ Jesus,” Phillip murmured.

“I could smell them, the same way I can smell this cigar smoke, the water, Cam’s leather jacket.”

“When people die, that’s it. They don’t come back.” Phillip paused a moment, waiting until the cigar came back down the line to him. “Did you—touch him?”

Cam angled his head. “Did you?”

“He was solid. He couldn’t be.”

“It’s either that,” Ethan pointed out, “or we’re all crazy.”

“We barely had time to say good-bye, and no time to understand.” Cam let out a breath. His grief had eased and softened. “He bought us each a little more time. That’s what I think.”

“He and Mom bought us all time when they made us Quinns.” He couldn’t think about it, Phillip decided. Not now, at any rate. “It must have ripped him when he found out he had a daughter he’d never known.”

“He’d have wanted to help her, save her,” Ethan murmured.

“He’d have seen it was too late for her. But not for Seth,” Cam concluded. “So he’d have done whatever he could do to save Seth.”

“His grandson.” Phillip watched an egret soar, then slide silently into the dark. And he was no longer cold. “He’d have seen himself in the eyes, but he would’ve wanted answers. I’ve been thinking about that. The logical step would have been for him to try to locate Gloria’s mother, have her confirm it.”

“It would have taken time.” Cam considered it. “She’s married, she’s living in Europe, and from what Sybill said, she wasn’t interested in contacting him.”

“And he ran out of time,” Phillip concluded. “But now we know. And now, we make it stick.”

SHE HADN’T MEANT to sleep. Sybill indulged in a long, hot shower, then wrapped herself in a robe with the intention of adding to her notes. She ordered herself to drum up the courage to call her mother, to speak her mind and demand a written corroboration of her own notarized statement.

She did neither. Instead she fell face down on the bed, closed her eyes, and escaped.

The knocking at the door pulled her out of sleep into groggy. She stumbled out of bed, fumbled for the light switch. With her mind still fuzzy, she walked through the parlor and barely had the presence of mind to check the peephole.