John felt like a little kid when his parents walked into his hospital room, both looking rumpled and exhausted. But nobody pretended they’d gone to all the trouble of getting to Saratoga just for his sake.

“You look awful,” Nick said.

“It’s all the dope they keep feeding me.”

Nick didn’t look convinced. Mattie kissed her only child on the forehead. He might have been nine, except his mother had never been one to hover. “How are you, darling?”

“Getting there.” He nodded to his father. “I thought you said the trip east would kill you.”

“Almost did.”

Mattie scowled at him. “You’re not ready for the glue factory yet, Nicholas Pembroke.” She straightened, effortlessly transforming herself from a solicitous mother into the independent, eccentric, tough woman who’d walked away from a stunningly successful Hollywood career. Her dark, still-beautiful eyes narrowed on her ex-husband. “Tell him, Nick. Tell him everything.”

Then she retreated to the waiting room, where Dani, discreet for once in her life, was keeping her distance.

Nick grumbled something about Mattie being more like her father than she’d ever admit.

“Tell me what?” John asked.

Sighing, Nick sat on the edge of his son’s bed and told him that he was being blackmailed over Lilli’s role in Casino when she disappeared.

John listened without interruption. It was just one more thing his wife and father had shared that he hadn’t. Shut up in his office in New York, trying to do the right thing, giving Lilli the space to pull herself out of her grief, John had been of no use to her or anyone else. Lilli must have thought him a bore who just didn’t give a damn about her. Nick, on the other hand, could never be faulted for lacking interest in a woman’s troubles.

But it was far, far too late to condemn Nick for being who he was, and there was time yet to go on condemning himself.

“Mattie knew?” he asked.

Nick grunted. “Not until I told her on the train.”

“I’m surprised she didn’t throw you off. Maybe she’s mellowing.”

“Don’t count on it. Next she’s going to make me tell Dani.”

John’s head vibrated with pain that zigzagged right down to his broken ribs. “She’s right, Nick.”

“I know it.” He coughed, a wet, sloppy cough the by-product of which ended up in John’s wastebasket. His father was clearly exhausted but insisted on getting to his feet. “There’s something I neglected to tell even Mattie-I’ll be damned if I know why. Not to spare her, for sure. I guess I just don’t know what to make of it myself.”

“What?” John prodded.

“Joe Cutler came to see me shortly before he was killed. He was on his way home via California and stopped in.”

“What for?”

His father’s eyes were watery, with spots of yellow clouding the whites, but utterly sane. “He wanted to know if I’d ever figured out who was blackmailing me.”

“You didn’t, did you?”

“Hell, I thought it was Joe.”

John sat up, pain shooting through him. “Nick-”

“But it wasn’t. And now I keep wondering if maybe he figured out who it was-or something. I don’t know.”

“I’ll talk to Zeke Cutler,” John said.

“Yeah. One other thing, John. There was never anything between me and Lilli. Not even a glimmer. I know it’s been on your mind. She treated me like a father-in-law.”

“Whom she adored and respected.”

“She came to me because she wanted to try something new-to stretch herself. That’s all. When she turned up missing, she hadn’t made up her mind, as far as I know, about what she was willing to sacrifice to realize her dreams. John-I swear, I just wanted to make her happy.”

John reached for his father’s bony hand. “I know, Pop. We all did.”

Dani flopped down onto a chair at the umbrella table in her cottage garden, kicked off her sneakers and put her feet up. Ira had reported that Pembroke security was on the alert; they’d already escorted several uninvited reporters off the premises.

She unscrewed the top off a bottle of lime-flavored mineral water she’d grabbed ice cold from her refrigerator. Nothing made any sense. Her mother, her father, Mattie, Nick, Joe Cutler, Zeke, movies, Tennessee, blackmail-how could she ever hope to put all the pieces together?

It was hot and sticky even in her garden. She rolled up the hem of her shorts, noticing the grass and dirt stains. She must look terrible. She ought to turn Magda loose on her.

Ira, semirecovered from his encounter with Quint Skinner in the woods, had insisted on greeting the two film legends like royalty when Dani arrived at the inn with Mattie and Nick. If Ira hadn’t had such a rotten day, he’d probably have drummed up a red carpet and a couple of crowns. As it was, he’d waltzed them off to the former ballroom-where Nick’s grandfather was so famously born-for a candlelight dinner and oohing and aahing by the guests.

Mattie and Nick pretended not to be fazed, but Dani wasn’t fooled. They loved every minute of the attention they received.

Nick had called her “urchin” when Dani had picked them up at the train station and acted as if she’d never yelled at him on the phone. Mattie had repressed her earlier hurt and decided Dani’s anger had been all to the good. “It’s wonderful that we can disagree and disappoint and still be friends. I never could with my father. We never even argued. When I told him I was going to California, he only said, ‘If you do, there’s no turning back. I’ll disown you.’ And he meant it.”

So even if all wasn’t forgiven, Dani and her grandparents accepted the reality of being stuck-and more often than not blessed-with each other for family.

None of which explained anything. The past and the present were intertwined, inseparable. Answers were elusive, she knew, if not nonexistent.

Zeke walked out of her kitchen onto the terrace carrying a tall glass of iced tea. He must have gotten in through the front. Dani hadn’t even heard him. “Iced tea’s probably a sacrilege around here,” he said, “but one more bottle of mineral water or natural soda and I’m likely to effervesce right into space.”

“How’d you get into my cottage? I’ve been locking my doors.”

“Locked doors are a specialty of mine.” He sat beside her, and she saw him take in her bare feet and everything else about her appearance. “I just left the inn. Your Pembroke grandparents are holding court, enjoying their decorative, healthy meal from what I could see.”

“They are a pair.”

“Imperfect but, to you, wonderful.”

She smiled. “My definition of a family. I’ve been pretty hard on them-”

“You’re hard on everybody,” Zeke said without condemnation. “Especially yourself.”

“If something had happened to either of them before I could make things right…” She shook her head and drank some of her flavored mineral water. “I don’t know.”

“They know how you feel. It’s obvious that you know they can do wrong and don’t care.” He looked at her, the lines at the corners of his eyes more prominent against the background of the increasingly gloomy sky. The air was pregnant with impending storms, heavy and still. “And you can’t make everything right, Dani. No one can.”

“I thought a white knight’s mission was to right all wrongs.”

He sipped his iced tea, looking distant. “I gave up on that a long time ago. Maybe when I started I wanted to make up for what Joe did-not just for my sake, but for his. What he became wasn’t what he was, Dani. I can’t explain. Anyway, I came to understand I can’t change the past.”

“So you live in the present. You isolate yourself from other people.”

His dark eyes penetrated her. “So do you.”

“Me? I have tons of friends-”

“What about marriage, children?”

His voice was soft and rhythmic, filled with challenge. Dani set down her bottle of mineral water. She could hear Kate-as she had a thousand times-telling her that she needed a man who wouldn’t be afraid to ask the tough questions. “I’ve been busy. You’re older than I am. What about marriage and children for you?”