He squelched his instinct to lecture Clara about not letting down her guard. He’d taken her and moved out when she was seven and he was eighteen. So she didn’t remember the worst of it. Which had been exactly the point of getting her out of their childhood home. Clara’s sense of their dad was more about the series of confrontations they’d had with him over the years that they’d been on their own.

But as he’d just been thinking, they hadn’t had one of those for a long time. “Okay. But call me if you need me. I’ll leave my phone on.”

“Don’t do that. Go to sleep. I’ll call Law if I run into trouble.”

“Or Jake. Call Jake.” Both of his friends would come to Clara’s aid in a heartbeat, but Jake was built like a linebacker.

“Sawyer. I’m not a kid anymore. I’ll be fine.”

She would be fine, yes. But would he?

After she left he heaved himself out of his chair and started the coffee maker—sleep was no longer in the cards for him. Hadn’t been since he’d seen Evie on that rooftop. She had jolted him awake, and who knew how long it would last? He might never sleep again.

Chapter Three

Chapter Three

When Eve answered the bell at the front door early that evening, she was expecting Jason Sims. They had an appointment to go over Lucille’s will.

What she got instead was an elderly woman with blue hair. And not pale, old-lady-blue-rinse blue. No, this was an electric-blue bob.

“Eve Abbott!”

“Pearl?”

The woman looked like the Pearl Brunetta Eve remembered, the Pearl Brunetta who owned Pie with Pearl, the bakery next door to the Mermaid. And judging by the pie she was holding, she probably was.

The blue hair was throwing Eve off, though.

“Honey!” Pearl pushed her way inside, set the pie on the front desk, and enveloped Eve in a hug.

The hug did not stop. It just kept going. “Okay, um…” Eve tried to pull back, but Pearl only squeezed her harder. “What can I do for you?”

That question partially dislodged Pearl. She pulled back enough to look Eve in the eyes. “Honey, no. What can I do for you?”

Eve wondered if there was a polite way to say, What you can do is leave me alone.

Pearl answered her own question, and thankfully, she let go of Eve as she did so. “I can bring you pie, to begin with. Mermaid pie! I started thinking that what you need here is a signature pie.”

“Oh, I don’t—”