Poppy couldn’t believe it when Carol put the card in her hand. It was Michael’s. He really was real, and he was here, on the Cape.

“I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this. I know you’ve been through a lot.”

The men who’d sent the beers over slowly started to make their way to the bar, but hesitated and turned back around when they saw Poppy look at the card, grab Carol’s arm, and tell her she had to go.

THIRTY-TWO

Michael

Michael looked up and saw Poppy standing in the doorway.

“What’s up?” he asked, a stupid, casual-sounding question that belied the way his heart seized at the sight of her. In the dim light of his office he could see that she looked older, and resembled Connie now. A bomb of emotion exploded inside his chest. Her face was more weathered from the outdoors, with permanent creases around her eyes. She looked like the landscapers he worked with, not older in the sense that age depleted her beauty. She still appeared youthful, only now her looks were more defined, more particular to her.

The string from her sweatshirt hood was wrapped tight around her finger, her expression pained.

He cleared his throat. “I wasn’t expecting to see you.”

“No, no. You weren’t. You don’t expect to see the people you run away from.” Her sarcasm was startling. He couldn’t remember her ever being sarcastic.

“Come in.” He liked to keep things clean, but his office was an exception. It wasn’t a place where he had many visitors. There were piles of paperwork, seed catalogs, and contracts on every surface. He stood up and picked up a pile from the chair in the corner and set it on top of his file cabinet. She looked as though she might leave at any second.

“How did you find me?” he asked.

“Carol,” Poppy said. “She gave me your card.”

“I asked her not to say anything.”

“It would have come out eventually, Michael. She said you’re making a claim on the house.”

He’d planned to approach them in his own way, in his own time, when it felt right. Maybe this was easier. Poppy had always been his ally, although he had no reason to think she’d stand by him now—why should she? What must she think of him after the lie he’d told?

Poppy’s eyes fixed on a framed photograph of Michael and Shelby on a fishing boat that he’d never taken down. “Your wife?”

“My ex.”

“God, you’ve been married and divorced.”

“We didn’t marry or divorce.”

“She’s pretty.”

“Yeah,” Michael said. “She is. How about you?”

“What about me?” she asked.

“Are you married?”

“No. Geez. Everybody asks me that. I don’t have to be married to be happy.”