“A couple of hours ago,” Holt answered.
Lucy sighed and shook her head. “And you’re already popping stitches. Some things never change.”
Holt laughed despite himself, remembering all the times he’d landed up in this very clinic. But back then, Lucy’s father was the doctor. “Yeah, it seems so.”
“I’m going to stitch you back up and give you a local anesthetic so you won’t feel it,” Lucy said. As if on cue, a nurse appeared in the doorway, and Lucy rattled off a list of supplies she needed.
“I’m also going to need to check your other wounds,” Lucy continued, reaching into the nightstand and pulling out a clean hospital gown. “You’ll need to put this on, please.”
Holt groaned. “The rest of my wounds feel fine.”
“I could always keep you here for observation for a few days,” Lucy warned with a smug smile.
Holt sighed in defeat. “Fine, give me ten minutes to change.”
“I’ll give you ten minutes,” Lucy agreed, leaving him to change, pulling her gloves off, and popping them into a bin as she left.
While he struggled out of his bloodstained shirt and into the hospital gown, Holt let himself think about June and the shocking news of her car accident. He made a mental note to call some of his contacts in the Miami Police Department to see what he could find out about what had happened to her.
A few hours later, his mother was driving him home and lecturing him about going off on his own when he was supposed to be resting and recovering.
“I know, I know,” Holt said, settling gingerly into the passenger seat. “I’ll be more careful.”
“You’d better be,” she said, then paused. “How did you manage to pull those stitches anyway?”
“I fell,” Holt lied, not wanting to get into the complicated truth about June being in Sandpiper Shores. He could hardly believe it himself, let alone explain it to his mother.
Then something else occurred to him, a connection he hadn’t made earlier. As they pulled up to the lighthouse, he turned to his mother.
“Willa Parker,” Holt said. “Rad mentioned she has two daughters?”
“Yes,” his mother nodded. “Grace and Becky.”
Holt’s eyes widened as the pieces fell into place. “Is she June’s daughter?”
“Yes,” was all his mother said as she turned off the engine and climbed out of the car.
“When Willa walked into the cottage earlier, I was floored by how much she looked like June,” Holt said, following his mother toward the house. “June with beautiful blue eyes.”
“June has green eyes,” his mother pointed out.
“I know,” Holt said. “Willa obviously got her eye color from her father.”
“That’s exactly what I think too,” his mother said in a voice that made Holt frown, as if she knew something he didn’t.
“Did you know June’s late husband?” Holt asked, and his mother’s eyebrows shot up.
“How do you know June’s husband is deceased?” She looked at him suspiciously.
Caught. Holt gave her a sheepish grin. “I’m in the FBI. I know things.”
“Uh-huh,” his mother said skeptically.
“Actually,” Holt raised an eyebrow, remembering that someone else had told him about June’s husband, “you were the one who told me eighteen years ago when it happened.”
His mother nodded as the memory of telling him occurred to her. “Yes, of course.”
They walked inside together, and that ominous feeling Holt had experienced when they’d first arrived in Sandpiper Shores returned with renewed intensity. Now he understood why. His past had caught up with him, and fate had placed June and him back in close proximity in the very place where they’d first met over forty years ago. Was this destiny drawing them back together or was it fate playing a bad joke on them both?
