As Maggie droned on, Alice stared at the back of Richard’s neck. What was his deal? She had such a hard time getting a read on him. He was always polite to her and Charlie, but she sometimes thought he hated them. No, not hated. Hated was the wrong word, too passionate, and he regarded them above all else dispassionately. As obstacles to be overcome, the things standing between him and what he wanted most—their mother. Occasionally Alice would catch him watching her, an eager, determined look in his eye, and she could practically hear the wheels spinning in his brain: How should she be handled? What would be the best, most effective method? The one that would require the minimum effort and yield the maximum result? (No wonder his architecture firm was so wildly successful—he was such a good and efficient problem solver.) It was like, Alice felt, he was nice to her without actually liking her, which was unsettling, to say the least.

The car had finally reached the parking lot behind the clubhouse. A valet attendant, a young guy with a head of curly dark hair that looked like it had been combed hurriedly, probably with his fingers, came up to the window, knocked on the glass. Richard jumped in his seat a little. And Alice, with something of a shock, realized that he was nervous. Thinking about it, though, she understood she shouldn’t have been shocked. He wasn’t walking into a new situation the way she and her sister and her mom were, but he almost was. He hadn’t been back in Serenity Point since Camilla died. Yes, he’d been in Serenity Point all this past week and a half, but he’d been holed up in his beach house pretty much the entire time. More like holed up in his room. (As he and Maggie loved to remind her and Charlie in this giggly, nauseatingly teenage way, they hadn’t gone on a proper honeymoon.) So he hadn’t yet reentered Serenity Point society. But that would all change tonight at the annual summer solstice party, the official kickoff of the season.

No wonder he was too distracted to talk about boats. It had only been a little over a year since he’d lost Martha, not even a year since he’d lost Camilla. The wounds were still fresh.