“Why?” Brook asked.

“Because she thought only the scum of the earth went to public school,” Harper answered for Tawny.

Brook turned to face Dana. “Well, I’m not the scum of the earth. Sounds to me like y’all’s mama was different than my granny Lacy.”

“Little bit,” Dana said and then yelled toward the kitchen, “Great breakfast. I’d forgotten how good your pancakes are, Uncle Zed.”

Tawny would have traded mothers with Dana in a heartbeat. When Lacy came to pick Dana up in the summers, she’d been sweet to Harper and Dana both. And Dana actually missed her mother while they were at the resort. Tawny could never remember having that kind of feeling. Mostly she wished she never had to go home.

Zed brought out another platter with six big pancakes on it and then went on back to the kitchen. “It’s Annie’s recipe. Secret is in beating the egg whites first and then folding them into the batter. Makes good light pancakes. I’ve got to get the lunch special started. Word’ll get out about us bein’ open, and some of the folks around these parts always eat here on Friday.”

Tawny hurried through the rest of her breakfast, cramming a biscuit full of scrambled eggs and bacon to take back to the cabin for a midmorning snack. Watching grass grow might work up an appetite. A gentle morning breeze brushed against her cheeks as she walked back to the cabin. She zipped her jacket and sat down on the porch in one of the vintage metal lawn chairs. This one was red, like the one on Harper’s porch. Seemed fitting—she and Harper shared parents and a bloodline, so that made them like two chairs cut from the same pattern.

A cardinal lit on the railing around the tiny porch and cocked his head toward her. She sat perfectly still and listened as he and a squirrel in the willow tree between cabins number seven and eight argued with each other. Off in the distance, she heard a rooster performing his wake-up calls. A couple of frogs joined in the mix, and a pair of robins chirped as they hopped around the yard.

The sun, a bright-orange ball sitting on the horizon, sent enough light through the trees that she could make out a few new spring leaves. There were a few tiny little whitecaps on the lake, and by cocking her head to one side she could hear the distant drone of voices—most likely fishermen already out there in the coves trying to catch their dinner. The cardinal grew bored with her and flew away, leaving one red feather fluttering from the railing to the porch.

She picked it up, went inside the cabin, and removed her jacket. When Zed had said that strangers would be coming into her personal space, it had freaked her out. So she’d arranged the desk, file cabinets, and everything to do with the business under the window looking out over the porch. Then she’d taken down one of the twin beds and carried one piece at a time to the storage room behind the laundry house. That’s where she found the bookcases and had asked Zed to borrow his old truck to take them to her cabin.

She’d pushed her bed under the window looking out over the backyard and wooded area, leaving only enough room for a nightstand on either side, and then built a wall of four bookcases to divide the room. On the back side was her personal space. Just inside the door was her office. She carefully laid the red feather on a top shelf.

She circled around the makeshift wall—bed made tight enough to pass Retha Harper-Clancy’s inspection, a thousand percent tougher than anything the military required. Her mother had never cleaned a house in her life, but by damn, she expected perfection in her hired help as well as her daughters.

It was no secret that Retha hadn’t wanted children. She’d made that clear, often and loudly, especially when Tawny or her sister weren’t perfect little angels. It had gotten worse after they’d sent Harper off to boarding school. Whatever it was must have been horrible because they hadn’t sent Tawny away when she was sixteen and got caught with a flask of tequila in her locker at school.

All schools, private or public, smelled the same and for the most part looked alike. The Frankston School had changed very little since the last time Dana was in it. She’d hated leaving her friends, but at the end of her eighth-grade year her mother, Lacy, had married the first stepfather and they’d moved to Austin, where Dana had finished high school. Now Lacy was married to Richard, stepfather number three, and that marriage was on shaky ground.

“Is that really Dana Clancy?” a deep voice behind her asked.

She glanced over her shoulder and stopped in her tracks. “Well, hello, Marcus. What are you doin’ here?”

“Teachin’ history.” His smile showed perfectly straight teeth.

“You’re kiddin’ me,” she gasped.

Brook raised an eyebrow. “Mama?”

“This is an old classmate of mine back when I went to school here. Marcus, meet my daughter, Brook, and Brook, this is Marcus Green.” No way was she going to tell her daughter that her history teacher had been one of the biggest pot smokers in junior high school.

“Pleasure to meet you.” Marcus nodded toward Brook. “So you’re married?”

“Was,” Dana answered. “Many years ago. Right now we’ve got to get to the office and get her enrolled.”

Marcus fell in beside her as she started down the hallway. “Moving back to the lake, are you? I was sorry to hear about Annie.”

“Thank you. It came as a shock to all of us, but we are all settling in.”