"You and I could push for an investigation," Andrew said. "As the neighbors."

"We could do it ourselves."

"That's ex-cop thinking."

"It's caught-between-a-rock-and-a-hard-place thinking. Police aren't going to investigate on our say-so, not with Lauren Grantham Montague wanting to drop this thing."

"She thinks Tess could be stirring the pot," Andrew said, watching Tess across the lawn with his daughter. They'd poured so much water onto the catnip, it'd made mud, spattering their legs. They both were laughing, delighted with their mess.

Harl was silent.

"That's what you mean if we investigate this ourselves," Andrew said. "We'd start with Tess."

"Makes sense. She knew Ike, he gave her the carriage house, she saw a skeleton her first night there. For all we know, she made up the damn thing just to see how people'd react." Harl straightened stiffly, one hand on his lower back as he yawned. Today was one of those days he looked as if he'd been shot in the line of duty, first in Vietnam, then as a cop. "Maybe she's decided something's not right with Ike's whereabouts, and this is her way of rocking the boat, smoking out what's going on. Something."

"The longer Ike stays away, the more it looks as if something's happened to him-after he took off. Or before."

"It's easy to speculate, but we have to go where the facts lead us. Have to keep an open mind, stay objective. He could have gone out for an innocent boat ride, fallen overboard and gotten eaten by sharks. Maybe he borrowed the boat from a friend without asking, the friend reports it stolen, never thinking of Ike." Harl laid his brush on top of the paint can, came over and sat on an Adirondack chair. "I can think of a million ways Ike could have taken off, gotten himself killed and we're none the wiser."

"Or ways he's taken off and just hasn't reported back to anyone in Beacon-by-the-Sea."

"Yeah. Maybe he and sister Lauren had a fallingout that she doesn't want the rest of us to know about. Or maybe," he added, staring across the lawn at Tess and Dolly, "our pretty Tess killed him herself."

"Harl."

"Oh, I've got more far-fetched scenarios than that. One involves Mars. I've been brainstorming this thing."

"I thought you didn't think while you were painting."

"I don't," he said. "This was when I wasn't working."

And it meant Harl probably hadn't slept any last night. Andrew got to his feet, could feel the air shifting, the clouds moving in from the southwest along with rain. He didn't mind. They could use the rain. He heard birds singing in the shrubs and trees, felt the ground soft under his feet, stepping in places where Tess and Dolly had splashed water.

"You let them crawl on you?" Tess groaned. "That's totally gross."

Dolly giggled. "It is not. They're only worms. I think they're cute."

"Worms are not cute, Princess Dolly. Kittens are cute."

"When can I pick them up?"

"In a few days. Your dad will let you know." Tess noticed him, smiled as she stood up, mudsplattered, hands caked with dirt. "They say you get more in touch with the earth if you don't use gardening gloves."

"What do you think?" he asked.

She laughed, her eyes crinkling at the corners, shining. "I think I need a good manicure."

Dolly jumped up, an even bigger mess than Tess. She spread out her dirty hands and came after Andrew, but he finally scooped her up and dangled her upside down by her ankles. She laughed and screeched and still managed to smear him with mud.

He plopped her back down, and she immediately charged off. "I'm going to get Harl!"

Harl headed her off before she got too close to his paint job.

"You two must be doing something right," Tess said. "She's a great kid."

"She came that way. She was a happy baby, too."

"Did it scare you-the idea of raising her on your own?"

The serious question caught him off guard, but he shrugged, pushing back the rush of emotion. Dolly. He'd do anything for her. It had been that way from the beginning. "You do what you have to do."

She seemed to understand, and he remembered that she'd lost her own mother at a young age and must have watched her father sort out his life after her death, carry on. She brushed some of the drying mud off her hands. "I should go clean up." But her light, lively eyes turned up to him, and she added, "Six-year-olds scare the hell out of me, more so maybe than missing skeletons and strange noises in the dark."

"I don't think so. I just think you're out of your comfort zone with kids.You can't let them scare you."

"I'm not afraid of them. It's myself. Saying the wrong thing that ends up sending them into therapy or an opium den-or worse."

"That's the trick, isn't it? To teach them that they are responsible for their choices, not their parents, not their teachers, their friends."

"Yes, but there are things we adults can do to totally screw up a kid's life. Like beat them to a bloody pulp, come home in a drunken stupor-"

"Die on them?"

His voice was soft, as soft as he could make it, but her mouth snapped shut. She took in a quick breath. "I can remember my mother sitting on the rocks not far from here, wrapped in a blanket while she watched me play. I think, somehow, I knew it wasn't her fault she was abandoning me. Kids can figure that out."

"Hang around Dolly a while. You'll see that kids can figure out most things. They know the difference between someone who genuinely cares and is doing their best, and someone who's pretending, going through the motions."

She sighed. "I'm not good at faking it."

He smiled, flicking a hunk of dried mud off her long, slender fingers. "I know."

"Andrew, yesterday-it was just a weird set of circumstances. We were operating outside our comfort zones." She spoke in a low voice, serious, but trying to apologize, he felt, for something she didn't regret. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you about what I saw."

"Do you want to go on as if we didn't-"

"Yes."

"Okay. Go ahead."

She frowned. "Not just me. You, too. It won't do any good if I'm the only one who pretends it didn't happen."

He'd started off toward the house, knowing he hadn't responded the way she'd expected. He'd never been one to operate off someone else's script. He was the antithesis of the Granthams' graciousness and easy charisma. No good at it. Felt phony. He was almost as bad as Harl at cocktail parties, remembering one at the Grantham house when Joanna was alive. She could do small talk, said it was a skill he could learn, like fishing or building a house. She'd wandered through the spacious rooms, smiling, playing her role as Richard Montague's trusted assistant. He was going to the Pentagon now, married to Lauren Grantham. Her brother was off somewhere. And Joanna was dead.

"Andrew?"

He was ten paces away from her, but turned, saw her expression. She wasn't panicked. She was-in-trigued, he thought. He moved closer. "I look life square in the eye," he said. "It's the only way I can operate. I have no regrets about yesterday." Then he added, "Except one."

"And that would be?"

Her eyes were gleaming, excited, no sign she'd ever had any intention of pretending nothing had happened between them. Repressing it, maybe. Or trying to. He noticed the shape of her mouth, its slight tilt at the corners. He smiled. "I shouldn't have made up the guest-room bed."