Harry leaned his elbows on the porch railing, looking out at the shadowy trees, the moon glistening on the water beyond. Now that he was alone, starting to relax, he had to admit he was exhausted. It had taken all his restraint this afternoon and evening not to show his anger when his nephew, JJ, appeared. Except for at John Mickelson’s funeral, Harry hadn’t seen JJ in nearly five years, orchestrating his family’s rare visits to Stone Harbor to ensure their paths wouldn’t cross. After what Anne had told him the night before their wedding, Harry had not known how he would react to seeing JJ again.

Well, now he knew. He would shut up, preserve the peace, like he always did in this family. Shoving himself under the bus of their selfishness. Only this time, he could actually feel proud of it. This time, it was for Anne. She had tugged on his elbow, this afternoon in the yard after she’d come up from the lake, as the children swirled around them. “You won’t say anything to him? Please?” Imploring him with her lovely eyes.

He did not want to see her hurt any more than she already had been, and he’d long ago come to the conclusion that JJ was too self-absorbed to think of Anne after he’d finished with her. But it still made Harry’s stomach twist, thinking of the way Anne had looked the night before their wedding—telling Harry that she’d planned to deceive him but couldn’t go through with it, trying again to give him back his ring. He wouldn’t take it. “It isn’t your fault, Anne,” he’d told her. “It’s my fault for leaving you alone with him. I never dreamed he would do anything like that.” He’d pulled her close and held her while they both cried. Their fusion was complete. Any child of hers would be a child of his. He felt he’d have turned to dust if she had left him.

But forgiveness for his nephew had eluded him, and he had never been tested so sorely as today, seeing JJ’s smug face again. He knew JJ was a war hero, and troubled—but what JJ had done to Anne was a bitter pill for Harry to swallow. Harry could not see that there was any excuse for it. He wondered what his brother Jack would say if he knew the truth about JJ. Not that Jack would ever believe it; Jack almost hadn’t believed the truth about their father. Jack had that stubborn faith that everyone in the family was as heroic as he was. The truth, though, Harry thought, was that average people—and the Mickelsons were average, despite what some of the family might think of themselves—lived at the mercy of their own dissatisfactions and desires.