Page 103 of The Summer Guests

“Oh.” An uncomfortable pause. That’s what cancer did to a conversation; it made everyone nervous about saying the wrong thing. “She’s lucky to have such a good brother.”

He shrugged. “I could have been better.”It’s a universal truth,he thought. When it comes to the people you love, we all could be better. “How is Mrs. Conover?”

“They’re treating Susan for pneumonia. She got it from inhaling the pond water. But the doctor said she should be able to go home in a few days.”

“And her girl?”

“Zoe’s awake. She’s got months of rehab ahead of her, but she’s young. Those broken bones should heal up just fine.”

“I’m glad for them.” It felt strange, to be saying that about two members of the Conover family. For so long, he’d clung to his bitterness, had used it as a protective shield against the world. To let go of that bitterness now made him feel vulnerable. Adrift.

To his surprise, Jo sat down beside him on the garden bench. “Zoe doesn’t remember who attacked her,” said Jo. “The doctor said it’s retrograde amnesia. That can happen after severe trauma to the head. The first thing she remembers is waking up in the streambed.”

“Is she ever going to remember the attack?”

“Probably not. But aside from the amnesia, sheisgoing to recover. And that’s good news.”

He nodded. Said the words again, the words he never thought he’d say about a Conover. “I’m glad.”

“I wanted to thank you, Reuben,” said Jo. “You saved Susan’s life.”

He found her steadfast gaze unsettling, and he turned away. He focused instead on the rosebushes with their sweet, extravagant blossoms. “What else could I do?” he said. “I saw them drag her out of the house. I heard her crying.”

“If you hadn’t stepped in, we might never know what happened to her. Even now, we’re still putting together the pieces. We think it all has to do with the bones. With the woman Brooke killed sixteen years ago.”

“Anna,” he said softly.

“You remember her.”

His vision suddenly blurred, and he swiped a hand across his eyes. “They saidI’mthe reason she quit. They said I scared her away. When all I ever did was bring her flowers.”

“Why?”

He finally managed to meet Jo’s gaze. “Because she was kind to me.”

For Reuben, that was enough, that a woman would look at him without recoiling, as everyone else in town did. That Anna’s smile was real, even though he also saw sadness there, a sadness that would lift, however briefly, whenever he brought her a gift of wild daisies or buttercups or Queen Anne’s lace. Every morning there she’d be, sitting on Moonview’s dock, waiting for him.

Until the morning she wasn’t.

“You didn’t scare her away, Mr. Tarkin,” Jo said. “In fact, you may have been the only friend she really had here.”

Until now, he’d been afraid to really look at Jo Thibodeau because of who she was, and what her uniform meant. But now he dared to face her, and he saw a woman who looked back at him with respect. A woman with a square jaw and a direct gaze and the unadorned face of a sturdy Maine girl.

“I see someone who wants to talk to you,” she said.

“What?”

She pointed to Ethan Conover, who’d just stepped out the hospital doors. “He was worried you wouldn’t want to talk tohim. Maybe it’s time for you two to bury the hatchet?”

As Ethan crossed toward them, Reuben rose to his feet, prepared for ... what? He didn’t know. For too many years, the Conovers and Reuben had warily faced each other across Maiden Pond. Now Reuben and Ethan stood close enough for their fists to connect.

“I want to say, I’m sorry,” said Ethan. “I didn’t know, Reuben. I never knew, about your father and what really happened to him. About what my parents did to ...” He swallowed. “I understand, now. Why you hated us.”

Reuben was silent.

“I also want to thank you, for saving Susan. For being there, when I wasn’t. When I should have been ...” Ethan’s voice broke, and he couldn’t seem to say anything else. Instead, he reached out and placed his hand on Reuben’s shoulder.

Reuben stood frozen, feeling the weight of that hand, not knowing what to do with this gesture. He was relieved when Ethan pulled away, and he took a step back, as if to once again put a safe distance between them.

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