“I’m helping with the reno,” Pearl said, still performing her mock outrage. “How many times have I sent you to help Eve with something?”

He closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, his voice had gone cold. Icy. “You were helping her with the reno, back when you thought that was the way to trap her here. Now that you realize that wasn’t working, you switched gears and started sabotaging everything.”

The shock on her face was real this time. Good. He was pissed, and he wasn’t hiding it. There was the old folks’ cute but ultimately harmless meddling, and there was truly interfering in people’s lives. Costing them time and money. Deceiving them.

“Don’t you take that tone with me, Sawyer.” Pearl shook her finger at him.

“Then stop meddling in Eve’s affairs, Pearl.”

“The real question here, Sawyer”—the finger made contact with his chest—“is why aren’t you meddling in Eve’s affairs?”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Do you want her to sell it? Do you want her to leave?”

He wanted to scream in frustration. She didn’t understand that it wasn’t about what he wanted. Pearl wouldn’t understand the concept of loving someone so much that you gave them up.

“Stop being so goddamn honorable, Sawyer.”

See? She didn’t understand. She was incapable of it.

“All right, Pearl.” Art, who had been watching their spat in silence, put his arm around Pearl and tugged. “He heard you.”

Art led Pearl away, but he shot a look at Sawyer over his shoulder. Sawyer would have expected it to be apologetic, sheepish.

But it wasn’t. As he shook his head slightly, he looked almost…disappointed?

Well, whatever. He wasn’t responsible for the emotional machinations of these people. He was too busy for that—he had tradespeople to yell at. Again.

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Nineteen

Eve had never seen a storm like this one, in Moonflower Bay or anywhere. It had been raining all day, but raining didn’t do justice to what was happening out there. Water was pouring from the sky, but almost horizontally, on account of the wind. Lightning lit up the sky every few minutes, followed by cracks of thunder so loud they made her heart thump. It was the end of February. It should be snowing, not raining.

When the power went out, around four in the afternoon, she decided to check in on Pearl. It made Eve nervous to think of her in the dark kitchen by herself.

If she’d been worried about a vulnerable little old lady frightened of the storm, she needn’t have been. She found Pearl not cowering in the kitchen but wearing a full-body wet suit.

“Eve! Just the woman I need! Can we take your car down to the lake? There’s a rescue underway.” She was loading pastries into Ziploc bags.