“She was talking about not going anywhere, though. About moving here.” Now that he’d started talking, Sawyer was overcome with the desire to make them understand. “She had a scholarship at U of T, and there was a study-abroad program she wanted to do. She was going to walk away from all of that. She started looking for full-time jobs. Dead-end full-time jobs. She knew Lucille would never sign off on her not going to school, so she was talking to Barbara Northridge—remember, she owned the diner before Sadie? Back when it was a dive that kept failing health inspections?” Law nodded. “She was going to wait tables there.”

“And you couldn’t just let her make her own mistakes?” Law asked. “So she slings crappy coffee for a few years. Is that the end of the world?”

“I couldn’t just let her give up everything for me.”

“That’s awfully big headed,” Jake said. “Maybe she just liked it here.”

They didn’t understand. He shook his head. “No. She was worried about me and Clara. That last summer there was this…incident with my dad. I tried to keep her away from him—just like I did with Clara. But I’d miscalculated one day, and we were at my house while I thought my dad was at work.” They’d been working on this very boat, in fact, but he didn’t want to say that for some reason. “My father showed up suddenly, drunk. He had wanted me to do some damn thing around the house that I hadn’t done.”

“Well, you were a little busy raising his daughter for him,” Law said, and though this conversation was turning out to be unexpectedly wrenching, Sawyer appreciated the loyalty.

“What happened?” Jake asked.

“He went into a rage. He screamed all the usual garbage at Clara about how it was her fault Mom was dead, and then he laid into me. I had to yell at Eve to run inside with Clara, which she did.”

Law whistled.

“Yeah. It was bad.”

“So Eve decided to stay and save you,” Law concluded.

“And you decided to make her go to save her,” Jake added.

A crash from the yard had him on his feet. He’d thought Clara was long gone. But, okay, they were supposed to be talking about stuff now. Not necessarily Evie stuff, but Clara was mature beyond her years. He could explain this.

He stuck his head out around the open door that led to the yard. “Clara, I—”

It was not Clara.

Evie.

“Hi!” Her voice bordered on hysterical.

He made a frantic gesture at the canoe, and God bless his asshole friends, they quickly moved to cover it with the tarp it had been under for the past decade.