“We’re almost there!” Adrian’s voice came like a cheer from the back seat. “Look! Cows! Horses! I wish Popi and Nonna had horses. Or chickens. Chickens would be fun.”

Adrian opened her window, stuck her face in the opening like a happy puppy. Her black curls danced and blew.

And would, Lina knew, end up in a rat’s nest of knots and tangles.

Then the questions poured out.

How much longer? Can I swing on the tire? Will Nonna have lemonade? Can I play with the dogs?

Can I? Will they? How come?

Lina let Mimi field the questions. She’d have others to answer before much longer.

She turned at the red barn where she’d lost her virginity at not quite seventeen in the hayloft. Son of a dairy farmer, she recalled. Football quarterback. Matt Weaver, she thought. Handsome, built, sweet-natured but no pushover.

They’d sort of loved each other, the way you do at not quite seventeen. He’d wanted to marry her—one day—but she’d had other plans.

She’d heard he’d married someone else, had a kid or two, and still worked the farm with his father.

Good for him, she mused, and meant it. But not and never for her.

She turned again, away from the little town of Traveler’s Creek, where Rizzo’s Italian Restaurant had stood on the pokey town square like an institution for two generations.

Her own grandparents who’d built it had finally accepted they needed a warmer climate. But hadn’t they started another Rizzo’s on the Outer Banks?

In the blood, they said, but somehow—thankfully—that gene had skipped hers.

She followed the creek, drove toward one of the three covered bridges that brought photographers, tourists, and weddings to the area.

Charming, Lina supposed, standing as it did on the little rise at the curve of the creek. And as always, Mimi and Adrian let out twin Woos! as she drove between those barn-red walls, under that peaked blue roof.

She turned again, ignoring the way Adrian bounced like a rubber ball on the back seat, and at last onto the winding lane, across the second bridge over the creek that gave the town its name, to the big house on the hill.

The dogs came running, the big yellow mutt and the little long-eared hound.

“There’s Tom and Jerry! Woo! Hi, guys, hi!”

“Keep your seat belt on until I stop, Adrian.”

“Mom!” But she did as she was told, just kept bouncing. “It’s Nonna and Popi!”

They came out onto the big wraparound porch, Dom and Sophia, hands linked. Sophia, chestnut curls framing her face, hit five-ten in her pink sneakers, and still her husband towered over her at six-five.

Fit and strong, both looked a decade younger than their ages as they stood in the shade of the second-story porch. How old were they now? Her mother around sixty-seven or sixty-eight, her father four years older or so, Lina thought. The high school sweethearts with nearly fifty years of marriage under their belts.

They’d weathered the loss of a son who’d lived less than forty-eight hours, three miscarriages, and the heartbreak of a medical opinion that there would be no baby for them.

Until—surprise!—with both of them in their forties, Lina Theresa came along.

Lina parked under a wide carport beside a shiny red pickup and a burly black SUV. She knew her mother’s baby—the sleek turquoise convertible—had its place of honor in the detached garage.

She’d barely set the brake when Adrian jumped out. “Nonna! Popi! Hi, guys, hi!” She hugged the dogs as Tom leaned against her and Jerry wagged and licked. Then ran full out into her grandfather’s open arms.

“I know you think I’m making a mistake,” Lina began, “but look at her, Mimi. This is best for her right now.”

“A girl needs her mother.” So saying, Mimi pushed out, put on a smile, and walked to the porch.

“Jesus, I’m not sticking her in a basket and leaving her in the reeds. It’s one damn summer.”

Her mother walked down to the porch steps, met Lina halfway. Sophia cupped her daughter’s bruised face in one hand, then, saying nothing, just enfolded her.

Nothing else in the past horrible week had come so close to breaking her.

“I can’t do this, Mom. I don’t want Adrian to see me cry.”

“Honest tears aren’t shameful.”

“We’ve all had enough of them for a while.” Deliberately she drew back. “You look good.”

“I can’t say the same.”

Lina worked up a smile. “You should see the other guy.”

Sophia let out a quick bark of laughter. “That’s my Lina. Come, we’ll sit on the porch, since it’s so nice. You’ll be hungry. We have food.”

Maybe it was the Italian or maybe it was the restaurant genes. Either way, Lina’s parents assumed anyone who came to their home had to be hungry.

The adults sat at the round table on the porch while Adrian played in the front yard with the dogs. They had bread and cheese, antipasto, olives. The lemonade Adrian hoped for filled a glass pitcher. Though it had barely struck noon, there was wine.

The half glass Lina allowed herself helped ease the tensions of the drive.

They didn’t speak of what had happened, not as Adrian ran back to sit—briefly—on Dom’s lap and show off her new Game Boy, or drank lemonade and chattered about the dogs.

Patient, Lina thought, her father. Always so patient with children, so good with them. And so handsome with his snowdrift of hair, the laugh lines crinkling around his golden-brown eyes.

She’d thought all her life how he and Sophia made the perfect couple—tall and fit, handsome, and so completely in tune with each other.

While she’d always felt just a beat out of step.

Well, she had been, hadn’t she? Just a beat off with them, with this place, with the town that locals called the Creek.

So she’d found her rhythm elsewhere.

Adrian giggled when, after her grandparents dutifully signed her cast, her grandmother sketched the dogs and added their names.

“Your rooms are ready,” Sophia said. “We’ll get your bags upstairs so you can unpack, take a rest if you want.”

“I have to go into the shop,” Dom added, “but I’ll be home for dinner.”

“Actually, Adrian’s been talking about the tire swing for days. Mimi, maybe you could walk around back with her, let her play for a bit.”

“All right.” Mimi rose and, though her single glance toward Lina signaled disapproval, she called cheerfully to Adrian, “Let’s go swing.”

“Yes! Come on, boys!”

Dom waited until Adrian ran around to the side of the house with Mimi following. “And what’s this?”

“Mimi and I aren’t staying. I have to get back to New York, finish the project I started in DC. It’s just not possible to finish it there now, so … I’m hoping you’ll be willing to keep Adrian.”

“Lina.” Sophia reached over to take her daughter’s hand. “You need a few days, at least, to rest, to recover, to help Adrian feel safe again.”

“I don’t have time to rest and recover, and where would Adrian feel safer than here?”

“Without her mother?”

She shifted to her father. “She’ll have both of you. I have to get ahead of this story. I can’t let it derail my career, my business, so I get ahead of it and I take the lead.”