“Seriously. I saw Janey earlier, and she never mentioned this.” Adam stacked the cooked steaks on a platter that he handed to his dad.

“Apparently, your mother has been holding out on me,” Big Mac said. “What do you say we go inside and get the dirt?”

“I’ll be there in a minute.”

“You didn’t ask for my advice, but I’m going to give it to you anyway.”

“I’d be disappointed if you didn’t.”

Big Mac smiled. “You’ve been away from home a long time. A few weeks here might be just what you need to get your legs under you again and to figure out what’s next.”

“Why do you think I’m here?”

“Don’t stay out here by yourself too long. There’s a whole houseful of people in there who love you and would do anything for you.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

When he was alone, Adam grabbed a beer from the cooler and cracked it open, taking it with him as he wandered to the rail that surrounded the big deck. The sun was setting over the Salt Pond as he looked down upon the hotel and marina, filled with memories of summers spent on the docks or rolling down the hill at the hotel with his siblings.

Those had been good times. The best of times. Like his brothers, he’d yearned for a life away from the confines of the island where they’d been raised. However, like them, he’d learned the real world could be a cold, hard place. There was nothing cold or hard about Gansett Island. Rather, it was a soft place to land while he figured out what he planned to do with the rest of his life now that he no longer had to consider the business that had defined him for most of his adult life or the woman he’d hoped to spend the rest of that life with.

Just as he had the thought, his phone chimed with a text message. Used to being chained to his phone around the clock, he thought about ignoring it. But curiosity got the better of him, and he withdrew it from the pocket of his shorts. He couldn’t believe it when he saw it was from Sasha.

I’m so sorry, Adam. I made a mistake. Can we talk? I miss you and I love you. Please?

Adam wished he’d gone with his first instinct to ignore the text. She loved him? She sure had a strange way of showing it. He wanted to write back and say that, but he refrained. Let her suffer the way she’d made him suffer for days now. It had probably only registered with her that she was royally screwed without him to handle the technical end of the business, so naturally she was trying to make amends.