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“She got down okay?” Marlowe asked. It was a stupid thing to say. Clearly, her grandmother had made it down without injury. She was chatting with the firemen, lapping up their attention.

Jace nodded. “We all had to promise to avert our gazes while she climbed down the ladder.”

Marlowe blinked in disbelief. “You let an eighty-two-year-old woman climb down a ladder without watching her?”

Jace dipped his chin. “I never said we kept that promise.”

Marlowe huffed and folded her arms. “I should’ve figured as much. You were never big on promises.”

This caused Jace’s eyes to widen slightly. “Is that right? Which promises are you talking about?”

Why couldn’t she have just kept her mouth shut? She’d moved on from high school romances and the teenage promise he’d made to always be there for her. She should’ve pretended she had no hard feelings over the things that had happened when she was sixteen. But no, five minutes after running into her ex, she’d brought up their breakup.

Could she be any more pathetic?

“Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean that. This has all just been a shock.” She tucked her hands in her jacket pockets to keep them warm. “What are you doing back in Lark Springs?”

“I have a six-week break before I take my second board exam, and I decided to come home.” He gestured at the truck. “Sometimes I volunteer for the fire department. It’s good practice.” He glanced over his shoulder at her grandmother, and his voice turned professional again. “Has she been acting out of the ordinary lately?”

Good. He was going to forget her jab about promises. “Not really,” Marlowe said.

“Is this the first time she’s … wandered off like that?”

Meaning, he thought she might have dementia. “She didn’t wander off. She used a ladder.”

“That doesn’t make this better.”

How did Marlowe explain what her grandmother was like? In some ways, she was unchanged from the independent woman who’d taken care of herself and this house since Grandpa died twenty years ago. When Marlowe was in elementary school studying the solar system, Grandma had helped her learn it by making round sugar cookies in the shape and color of the planets. She wouldn’t let Marlowe eat any unless she could correctly identify them and their place in the sky.

In junior high, Grandma had come to every dance recital and choir concert, clapping louder than the event warranted. She’d even paid to come to high school football games just to see Marlowe perform with her cheer squad at halftime. Her enthusiasm, creativity, and loyalty were unchanged.

In other ways, she was different. Less reasonable. More fragile. And she didn’t seem to realize her limitations. At the neighborhood barbecue last year, she’d gotten up on the Jones’s trampoline, and Marlowe had been forced to remind her, with increasing volume, of the dangers of breaking a hip.

“She’s stubborn,” Marlowe said, “and, granted, a little eccentric. But her mind is fine.”

His gaze flicked to the roof.

“Okay, her judgment isn’t always the best. And maybe this is an indication that she’s a little too addicted to her shows, but I’ve watched a few episodes of her soap opera, and some of those guys are worth climbing up on the roof for. Just saying.” Marlowe was rambling. And sounded like she was in denial. She shut her mouth so nothing more would pop out.

Jace ran his tongue over his teeth. “Look, I’m not trying to overstep. But sometimes, when a person climbs onto a roof in their robe at six-thirty in the morning, it’s not about the TV programs. Satellite companies have repairmen to call for that. There might be something else going on. Has she been forgetting things?”

“Everyone forgets things.”

“You don’t, apparently.”

Ouch. He hadn’t really overlooked her previous jab. She shouldn’t have laughed but did anyway. “I forget a lot of things. Just not you.”

A beat passed. Why did she say these sorts of things?

His voice went soft, and his blue eyes suddenly intensified. “I’m glad I’m so memorable.”

“Marlowe!” Grandma called from her place on the truck bumper. “The front door is unlocked, isn’t it? This nice young man is going to see if he can find the problem with our TV.”

The curly-haired firefighter was making his way to the door.

“Yes, it’s always unlocked.” Marlowe knew she’d said the wrong thing as soon as she turned back to Jace and saw his expression.

His eyebrows were raised in a judgy way. “Are you one of those people who leave their doors unlocked because you think your neighborhood is exempt from crime?”