“You are so welcome. And this is for you,” she says, extending the bottle of scotch in my direction but stops. “You’re not on the wagon, are you?”

I laugh. “Nope.”

“Oh, thank God,” she sighs, and hands it to me.

I don’t recognize the label, but I do notice that the bottle has been opened and some of the liquid is gone.

Mildred reads my mind.

“I had to know if it was any good,” she offers without a hint of shame.

“And now, it’s my turn. Care to join me?”

*

We spend a little while talking in the kitchen while Caitlyn enjoys one of Mildred’s ‘twice-spanked’ cookies. The wind has finally died down to a gentle breeze and we head outside.

Mildred and I sit on the back porch, sipping our scotch, enjoying the sunshine, and watching Caitlyn stand knee-deep in the water and attempt to skip rocks. Occasionally the wind will kick back up for a second, grab hold of one of the flat stones Caitlyn just threw, and send it sailing to the left.

“So, Daniel Price. What do you do for a living?”

“I’m an author.”

She raises an impressed eyebrow. “Really? What do you write?”

“Novels.”

“Anything I would know?”

“Maybe. In the Shadows of Justice? It’s a political thriller.”

She shakes her head. “Nah. I only read the steamy stuff. If I’m not going to blush, I want nothing to do with it.”

I chuckle and take another sip. It is good scotch.

“Is there a Mrs. Price?” she asks, hesitantly.

“There was. She passed away eight months ago.”

“Oh … that sucks.”

“Yes, it does.”

She contemplates her scotch and shrugs. “Still. A sexy, single, successful author? The women of this town will eat you alive.”

She catches me mid-sip and I erupt in a fit of laughter and coughing.

I’ve found that there’s a ritual to disclosing Nicole’s death. I’ll be having a pleasant conversation with someone. They’ll ask. I’ll tell them. There’s a moment of awkward shock. They’ll offer their condolences and then a shadow hangs over the rest of the conversation. It’s refreshing for someone to take it in their stride and I’m oddly thankful for it. Besides, I knew Nicole’s sense of humor, and she would have found it hilarious.

“What about you, Mildred Johnson?” I ask, after the coughing subsides. “Is there a Mr. Johnson?”

“Yep. That’s how I bought that thirty years ago,” she says with a wave towards her house, which is about a hundred yards down the shore. She then looks back at the Nightingale House. “You’ll love this place.”

“Did you know the people who lived here before us?”