As much as she wanted a chance to make things right, the best thing she could give Cody right now was space. Because what he needed was very different from what she wanted.

Knowing that almost broke her heart.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

THIS WAS A BAD IDEA.

Cody stormed out of Louisa’s house, which still felt a lot like his house, and drove the Jeep back to his place, trying not to think about the box on his front seat.

They’d left Nantucket in a rush after his father died, but once they got home, they had to leave that house behind too. There was no money.

Cody could still remember hearing his mom on the phone with someone he could only assume was a money guy.

“There’s nothing left?” she’d asked, a waver in her voice. “But where did it all go? Daniel was a fanatic about saving.”

Cody found out later that while his father was a financial genius, in the weeks leading up to his death, he’d withdrawn large sums of cash, leaving their personal accounts drained. He had no life insurance policy—an oversight to be sure.

Where had their nest egg gone? How could his father have been so stupid as to drain everything? And worse, where did that money go? Sure, he had investments—some they couldn’t take out right away, some that would sustain them for a time—but their lifestyle had to change. Their security was gone.

The questions were too big, too heavy, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answers. Besides, the seething cocktail of his mother’s anger and grief was enough to keep him from digging around. He decided that his dad must have had a plan for it. His father always had a plan.

Right?

It didn’t matter. At least that was what he told himself. Wherever it was, his dad’s nest egg was gone. None of it was left for Cody, Marley, or their mom. The pain of that sliced through their family like a newly sharpened knife through a ripe cantaloupe.

His father’s death turned his mother into a different person. She went from joyful and engaged to nearly catatonic, and the only thing Cody wanted to do was take her pain away.

When it came time to pack up the house, she haphazardly filled boxes, and Cody and Marley went behind her to try to make sense of the disorganized mess. Their last night in the house, Cody realized his father’s office door was still closed, and as far as he knew, nobody had packed anything from inside.

He pushed open the door and inhaled—the scent of his dad’s aftershave still lingered in the air. Nagging guilt nearly overtook him. How was it possible that his dad was really gone? Weren’t fathers invincible? Cody had always thought so.