Thinking about how empty the woods had looked without the vendors sparked a memory of running into Simon back here. The memory collided with the number twenty-seven in my head, and now I knew what I needed to see.

It took longer than I expected to find the young tree with the memorial plaque to Simon’s brother—the lanes looked so different with the Faire set up around it—and when I did, I found crouching down to be problematic in this outfit. Instead I sat on the ground—thankfully the rain we’d gotten earlier in the week had dried by now, so my skirts wouldn’t get muddy. It was almost like I was at a cemetery, and I wanted to say something. But I’d never met Sean Graham, and I didn’t know what was going on between Simon and me, so I brushed the leaves away from the plaque and sat in contemplative silence.

“I think I understand.” My voice was small, a secret whispered between me and a man who had died years ago.

“Understand what?”

I should have jumped, should have felt guilty that Simon had caught me here. He didn’t know I knew about this place. I was prying. I had no right to be here, a thought that was only underscored when I craned my neck to look up at him. His jaw was set in a hard line as he looked past me to the plaque that held his brother’s name, and his pirate hat with its ridiculous feather hung limply in one hand.

“Understand what?” He turned his eyes to me as he repeated the question, and I was surprised to see no hostility in them. Just curiosity.

I pointed at the plaque. “Of course you didn’t want to go out last Sunday. That was the anniversary of his death, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah.” Simon exhaled in a sigh as he crouched down next to me. “Well, it was Monday, but close enough. Things always feel . . . kind of off this time of year, and the day itself . . . well, it’s a hard day.”

I looked back at the plaque because the sadness on his face was too raw, too intimate. I didn’t have the right to share it. “And twenty-seven.”

“Hmm?”

“He was twenty-seven. Same age you are now.”

“Yeah. That’s . . . yeah.” He deflated the rest of the way, dropping from his crouch to sit cross-legged beside me in the dirt at the side of the lane. “Sean was . . .” He chuckled softly. “A force of nature. You would have liked him. Everyone did. He got all of this going by sheer force of will.” He ran a hand over his cheek, down his jaw. “He was the one who made me become a pirate. He said I was too quiet, too serious all the time. Making me do this—he thought it would give me swagger.” He shook his head and the tiniest smile played around his lips, but his eyes looked brittle. “I didn’t want swagger, but you couldn’t say no to Sean.” He didn’t look at me as he spoke. He looked at his brother’s name, etched on the bronze plaque. “After he was gone I had three years. Three years of him still being my older brother. But this year . . .”

“This year you’re twenty-seven.”

“I’m twenty-seven,” he repeated. “I caught up with him.” He ran his fingers over the feather in his hat, pulling at it, his eyes fixed on the plaque. “And in September I’ll hit an age he never did, and I don’t deserve it. I shouldn’t get to have years that he doesn’t.”

“Of course you do.” Out of instinct I reached for him, placed my hand over his before he could shred that poor feather. “He wouldn’t want you to think that.”

“Maybe not.” He turned his hand under mine and grasped it, and we were sitting there holding hands like it was the most natural thing in the world.

I tried for a happier memory. “Chris told me he was a football star.”

Simon gave a ghost of a laugh. “He was an everything star. Except track; that was what I did. You know, those long cross-country runs?” He wasn’t looking at me, but I nodded anyway. “Not as flashy as football, no cheering crowds, but I didn’t care about any of that. I actually think I liked it better that way. Measuring up to Sean was impossible, so it was better to not even try.”

I frowned at this, because I wanted to disagree. From everything I’d heard about Sean, he seemed like a charismatic slacker who relished the spotlight, while Simon worked hard for little thanks. The dead are held in such high esteem that we only remember the good things, and we not only forgive their faults but we forget them. I thought about Mitch and Stacey, joking about the time that Sean hadn’t gotten the beer for the beer tent. They’d turned a negative trait into a positive memory. Maybe if Sean hadn’t died so young, Simon would see his own value a little more.

But I couldn’t tell him that. Not now, and probably not ever. It wasn’t even remotely my place to do so. Instead I steered the conversation another way. “What do you think he’d be doing now?”

Simon drew a slow, deep breath. “You know, I have no idea. Sean was amazing, but he didn’t have a lot of . . . drive. So at thirty he’d probably still be getting his gen-eds out of the way at the community college. But being Sean, he’d somehow make it look like a stroke of genius.” He shook his head. “Either that, or he’d have been elected mayor of Willow Creek by now.” He smiled in response to my laugh. “After he died I started . . . I don’t know, channeling him or something. I get to take the best parts of him, the parts I miss the most, and put them into the role I play here. These six weeks in the summer I get to stop being so serious, so responsible. I get to be more like Sean.”

“Swagger,” I said softly. The word was the last one I would use to describe Simon, but somehow it fit.

“Swagger.” His chuckle was barely there, a mere exhalation of breath. “I feel close to him again. When I’m out here, in some ways it’s like he’s not really gone.” His voice thickened on the last word, and he cleared his throat hard. “This Faire was so important to him. His pet project. He didn’t care about much, but this . . . this he was good at. He worked so hard to expand it, to get more acts and then this space.” He waved a hand around, encompassing the woods surrounding us. “The first summer we were out here in the woods was the last year he . . .” He had to stop and clear his throat again. He didn’t finish the sentence.

I took up the thread of the conversation. “He’d be proud. I mean, look at this place. There’s no way he wouldn’t be proud of what you’ve done.”

He dropped my hand abruptly, as though suddenly remembering that we weren’t people who held hands with each other. “It’s all I have left of him.” He looked at me for the first time now, his eyes shining with tears that had gathered but he’d denied. “Sometimes I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t have these summers. It’s almost like he’s still here. What happens if it changes too much, and it’s not the way he left it? What happens if it ends? But then sometimes I don’t . . .” Simon shook his head hard, dismissing that last thought before he could voice it. He ran a restless hand through his hair before clearing his throat and turning his attention to me. “You know what I mean, though, right? You have an older sister. I’m sure you feel the same way about her.”

He looked so hopeful that I hated to disappoint him. “April and I aren’t really like that.” I shrugged. “I think it’s the age difference. I was an afterthought baby, so she’s twelve years older. By the time I was old enough to be interesting she was already out of the house. College, getting married, having a kid. She wasn’t around to be a role model or anything. I mean, she’s my sister and I love her, but growing up we were never particularly close.”

His brow furrowed. “I don’t understand. You’ve been here ever since her accident. Didn’t you basically drop your whole life in order to help her out?”

“My whole life.” I tried for a small laugh, but it came out much more bitter than I’d expected. “There wasn’t anything to drop.” I’d made the joke before to April, and making it again now didn’t make it any funnier, or any less painful to say out loud. “The only thing I had going for me was my English degree, and . . .” I sighed. “You already know how that ended.” I tried to sound casual, but the sting of our conversation from a few weeks back was still fresh. I could still see the disappointment in his face when he’d learned I hadn’t finished college.

He nodded carefully. “You dropped out of school.” His voice held no judgment, which surprised me. But he still didn’t know the whole story, and since we were sharing confessions . . . what the hell.

“My boyfriend, Jake, had gotten into law school. But it’s expensive, and it’s hard. He had a lot of work ahead of him. Studying, clerking. So we made a deal. I’d drop out and support him, and when he passed the bar and got a job it would be my turn.”

Simon had drawn back a little when I’d mentioned having a boyfriend, but something in my tone of voice must have alerted him that the story didn’t have a happy ending, because his face darkened a little. “And what happened when it was your turn?”

My bitter laugh turned shaky, and even though I blinked hard a tear still hit my cheek. “Turns out a big-city attorney doesn’t need a college dropout around anymore.”