Clara tilted her head, considering. “Not really. Two, I think? And not serious ones. Neither of them moved in with us or anything.”

“Yeah, I can’t imagine your dad really going for that.” Not that Eve knew Charles Collins that well. She’d only met him in person a handful of times. She and Sawyer always hung out at the inn or in the town’s various nooks and crannies, often with Clara in tow.

Except that time they’d been at his house at the wrong time. Why had they been there to begin with? Hanging out at Sawyer’s house was not something they did.

The memory exploded in her head, making her gasp.

The canoe.

How could she have forgotten that?

That canoe had meant more to her, back then, than anything. Sawyer was making her a boat out of nothing. No one had ever done anything like that for her before.

It was like the time he carved his declaration of love into the gazebo, but more.

It had been set up in his backyard. That’s where he worked on it—but only when his dad was at work.

He had gotten his father’s schedule wrong that day.

The rest of the memory came pouring in. Charles’s rage. Him swinging a garden shovel at the half-finished canoe. Running inside with Clara. Calling the police.

Icing Sawyer’s black eye later in the kitchen at the Mermaid.

She had to work to slow her breath. As much as Sawyer had broken her heart—as much as she hated him—she still didn’t like to think of him suffering as he had that day. As he had every day, really, even if most days hadn’t ended with black eyes.

Clara didn’t seem to notice her distress, though. “Oh, no, Sawyer and I haven’t lived with my dad for almost ten years. Sawyer got an apartment when he enrolled in the police academy, and later he bought a house.” She smiled ruefully. “It’s a lot more peaceful than living under Charles’s roof—or so I gather. I don’t really have a lot of memories of my dad.”

Eve looked at Clara again. Really looked. She seemed…healthy. But what did that mean? She would be seventeen. All seventeen-year-olds looked healthy. “So you’re headed into your last year of high school?”

“Yep.”

“You know what you want to do after that?”

“I want to go to the University of Toronto and major in some kind of engineering—either computer or electrical.”

“Wow. That’s really…” Specific. “…impressive.”

“I mean, if I get in.” One of Clara’s shoulders lifted and fell, but it seemed like she was performing a shrug more than she was actually shrugging.

“That’s false modesty, isn’t it?”

She grinned. “Totally. I have a 4.0 GPA, and I’m super into science. And science policy. And acting. Do you know Maya Mehta?”