Page 33

“I don’t know.” And she was looking for… she didn’t even know what in all of that blue. In the space between them, that felt hot and perilous and still, she kept easing closer to him. “I guess everything feels like a haunting when you don’t really know who you are. Or you thought you did, but it turns out you forgot it.”

“Hold on to that thought.” And the way he said it made something prickle down her neck. “Because my mom wants to have a family dinner. And when I say she wants it, I mean she announced that it’s happening, right now, and it’s mandatory.”

“Is that a bad thing?”

Ruthie tried to imagine having a mother, but she couldn’t. She and Grandma had gotten along great. She and her aunts—and cousins—had not. Probably, a whole mother was somewhere else on that scale, but she had no way to measure that.

“Not usually,” Dallas was saying. “But she knows you’re in town. So you can be pretty sure that what you’re going to get is more like an interrogation than just a nice warm meal on a cold December night.”

Ruthie thought about that feeling of being so dislocated from her own life. She thought about the fact that she’d been legitimately wondering if she was actually dead, and haunting herself. She thought about what home meant and how she didn’t even know if she’d felt that way when she was still in Columbus.

Or before—because she didn’t know what she’d been doing these past eight years. What she remembered seemed pale and gray. Mostly taking care of her grandmother, who had needed more help all the time and, not coincidentally, had wanted to admit that she needed that help less and less.

But this was his home. And she already found this place far more vivid and colorful than what she’d left behind.

“I think I would love to go have a family dinner,” she said now.

Dallas nodded, though there was an amused sort of look on his face. “I’ll remind you that you said that.” Then he swung out of the truck so he could circle the hood, open her door, and usher her in.

Even if she was haunting herself, Ruthie thought as she settled into the heated passenger seat, the truth was that she liked it. It felt real. And resonant. She could feel things here.

So whatever this was, she had to think that it was better.

Because it felt a whole lot more like living.

Chapter Seven

Dallas decided that it did him absolutely no good to remember the family dinner they’d had the last time Ruthie was here. He’d been so busy being pissed about everything and nothing that all he really remembered was seething. Whether anyone else could see it or not.

Tonight was different.

For one thing, he wasn’t that guy any longer. He’d spent years figuring out how to actually handle his anger rather than shoving it down, pretending it wasn’t there, and blaming anyone in his blast radius. Turned out, working out like he was still training for combat helped. So did creative projects like every single thing he’d done to renovate that lighthouse.

Not to mention beating himself up on the daily for how he’d blown up at Ruthie.

But it was different for other reasons, too. The family had expanded. It wasn’t just Tennessee and Cat and their mother these days. Tennessee had Matilda. Cat had Wilder. And now they’d expanded again to bring in the Patricks, too.

And Dallas knew that everyone would show up for this, even though it had been late notice for an early dinner. Because he was well aware that Ruthie was one of his family’s favorite topics of conversation—especially when he wasn’t around. They liked to speculate their faces off. Dallas couldn’t be too bent out of shape about it, because he liked to do the same thing when the speculation involved them.

There was no way that anyone was going to miss Ruthie’s actual, live appearance tonight, and he couldn’t blame them.

The sun had gone down before five, while Dallas was ferrying Ruthie up the hill, and folks had started showing up right along with them. Only some of them managed to keep from staring at Ruthie.

Dallas brought her inside, introduced her to his mother, and prepared for an uncomfortable evening.

“We’ve all been told about your memory,” Jenny said forthrightly. Dallas thought he saw Ruthie relax. “I’m sorry to hear about the accident, and your grandmother’s passing. I know how much you loved her.”

Ruthie smiled. “I did. Thank you.”

And she seemed a lot more at ease after that, when Jenny moved away to start stacking plates on the table and getting out the napkins she liked for things like this. Like she thought that initial interaction with Jenny was all the interrogation she was getting.

Poor sweet summer child, Dallas thought. She would learn.

“I come bearing gifts,” Kitty said when she came into the pretty old Victorian house that hailed from the same era as the original lighthouse builder and, like the lighthouse, still had Lisles around. She heaved an armful of pizza boxes onto the table in the kitchen. “Just a few appetizers. And I wish I could stay, but I can’t. I need to be back down at the restaurant before six or my sisters will disown me.”

She turned to smile at Finn, who came in behind her and was gazing at her as if he’d won the damn lottery. Dallas knew that feeling.

But for a long while now, remembering that he’d once had that feeling and had lost the woman who caused it had hurt. Tonight, it didn’t hit the same way.