“Loads of it, and diving into the past. Isn’t that odd? Diving into the past making the present go by too fast?”

“In what way are you diving into the past?” Beckett shut the door for her and walked around to the driver’s side.

When he’d settled into the driver’s seat she said, “You know that memory book we’re making for my dad?”

“Yes,” he said. “Of course.”

“Well, the situation is a little worse than I’ve let on. I thought the memory book was meant to remind him, but now I wonder if it’s really just helping us know him better.”

“How so, Colleen?”

“You know,” she said, “everyone around here calls me Lena.”

“So I’ve heard.” He smiled as he stared out the windshield, guiding the car along the narrow, winding roads. They were quiet as he drove for only a few minutes; one left turn and two rights, and then he pulled into a gravel driveway shaded with a canopy of oaks. He put the car in park. “Would you like me to call you Lena?”

“No, I like Colleen now. I’ve been using it for ten years and become used to it. I can’t get my family to switch.”

“Why the switch at all?”

Even a few seconds without air-conditioning in a closed car was too much in the August heat. Colleen opened the door. “It’s a long story.” She swung her legs around and then stood before leaning in again to look at Beckett in the car. “Or maybe not so long. I just don’t want to talk about it.” She stepped away and then realized she didn’t know where he’d taken her. “Where are we?”

Beckett stepped out of the car and faced her over the top. “My parents’ house. I wanted to drop off my dad’s tackle box before we go to dinner.”

Colleen turned to look at the modest home. “You grew up here?” If he’d been in Watersend, how had she not known him?

He slammed shut the driver’s-side door and walked around the car to pop open the trunk and withdraw a rusted red tackle box. “No. My parents moved here a couple years after I did. So they’ve been here about five years. My dad retired and when they visited me, they fell in love with the town. They packed and moved.”

“From?”

“Michigan, where I grew up.” He set the box on the ground.

“Michigan,” she said. “I’ve only been there once, and it was in the middle of January. I thought I was going to die from the cold, that it would never leave my bones. I’d have moved here, too.” Colleen fell into step with Beckett, heading toward the front door with a flagstone pathway beneath their feet. “So they moved here for you?”