They took their cones outside, where the breeze was warm off the water, and wandered away from the crowds to find one of the small iron benches the city fathers had campaigned for. Armed with a fistful of napkins, Grace set Aubrey on her lap.

‘‘I remember when you’d come here and know the name of every face you’d see,’’ Grace murmured. ‘‘Mother Crawford would be behind the counter, reading a paperback novel.’’ She felt a wet drip from Aubrey’s ice cream plop on her leg below the hem of her shorts and wiped it up. ‘‘Eat around the edges, honey, before it melts away.’’

‘‘You’d always get strawberry ice cream, too.’’

‘‘Hmm?’’

‘‘As I recall,’’ Ethan said, surprised that the image was so clear in his mind, ‘‘you had a preference for strawberry. And grape Nehi.’’

‘‘I guess I did.’’ Grace’s sunglasses slipped down her nose as she bent to mop up more drips. ‘‘Everything was simple if you had yourself a strawberry cone and a grape Nehi.’’

‘‘Some things stay simple.’’ Because her hands were full, Ethan nudged Grace’s glasses back up—and thought he caught a flicker of something in her eyes behind the shaded lenses. ‘‘Some don’t.’’

He looked out to the water as he applied himself to his own cone. A better idea, he decided, than watching Grace take those long, slow licks from hers. ‘‘We used to come down here on Sundays now and then,’’ he remembered. ‘‘All of us piling into the car and riding into town for ice cream or a sub or just to see what was up. Mom and Dad liked to sit under one of the umbrella tables at the diner and drink lemonade.’’

‘‘I still miss them,’’ she said quietly. ‘‘I know you do. That winter I caught pneumonia—I remember my mother and yours. It seemed every time I woke up, one or the other of them was right there. Dr. Quinn was the kindest woman I ever knew. My mama—’’

She broke off, shook her head.

‘‘What?’’

‘‘I don’t want to make you sad.’’

‘‘You won’t. Finish it.’’

‘‘My mother goes to the cemetery every year in the spring and puts flowers on your mother’s grave. I go with her. I didn’t realize until the first time we went how much my mother loved her.’’

‘‘I wondered who put them there. It’s nice knowing. What’s being said . . . what some people are saying about my father would have got her Irish up. She’d have scalded more than a few tongues by now.’’

‘‘That’s not your way, Ethan. You have to tend to that business your own way.’’

‘‘They would both want us to do what’s best for Seth. That would come first.’’