“We saw the similarity between you two, and Hazel stopped him and asked straight out if he was related to you,” Eppie went on. “The children both were polite and well-mannered and your brother was ever so helpful. We couldn’t reach a can of tomatoes on the top shelf and he kindly agreed to get it for us and then we enlisted his help in the cereal aisle with that granola Ronald likes. He seemed like a lovely man,” Eppie said.
“Inside and out,” Hazel piped up with a wink to the table in general.
Everyone giggled except Sam.
“I haven’t met this paragon of a brother yet,” Roxy Nash, the only other unattached female in the group, said in a voice that sounded like a purr. “Maybe I need to time my grocery visits better.”
Sam chewed salad greens that suddenly tasted bitter. She usually liked Roxy but she didn’t care for that predatory tone. Anyway, Ian Summerhill wasn’t a topic she wanted to discuss. It was bad enough that she couldn’t seem to stop thinking about the man, especially after their encounter with him in the moonlight the night before. She didn’t need to talk about him on her lunch break.
She tried to come up with another topic but Charlene Bailey spoke before she could.
“How nice that he can come in early. Is he helping you with all your wedding preparations?”
That seemed to amuse Gemma. “I would like to say yes, but I’m afraid that’s not really the case. He would be hopeless at it. Ian is a biologist and he’s writing a paper on a species of salmon native only to Lake Haven.”
“Oh, yes. The Lake Haven kokanee,” McKenzie said knowledgeably.
“How on earth do you know that?” Charlene stared at her.
Wynona, Charlene’s oldest daughter, laughed. “Surely you know that Mayor Kilpatrick knows everything that goes on within a hundred-mile radius of Lake Haven. She can tell you every rare bird that ever made a visit, even if it only stopped in a treetop for a few moments to eat a worm during its migration.”
“I can’t help that I like to stay informed,” McKenzie said haughtily, though she looked amused at Wynona’s teasing. “There’s an entire book at the city offices on the flora and fauna in and around Lake Haven. Though it was written in the 1930s, it still contains valuable information about some of the unique species of the area.”
“I’ll have to mention it to Ian,” Gemma said with interest. “I’m sure he’ll want to take a look at it. He’s trying to narrow down historical populations of the salmon as part of his research.”
“I would be happy to show it to him. We only have the one copy, though, so I’m afraid we can’t loan it out.”
“How wonderful that your brother could coordinate his research with your wedding and a vacation for his children,” Eppie said.
“Did his wife come on the trip with him?” Hazel asked. “I didn’t see the children’s mother at the grocery store with him.”
Gemma’s mouth tightened. “I’m afraid not,” she said. “Susan died last year.”
“Oh, no.” Andie Bailey, married to Katrina’s brother, Marshall, looked sorrowful. “Those poor children. She must have been young. What happened?”
Andie was one of the most compassionate people Samantha knew, maybe because she had walked a hard road herself. She had been a young widow when she arrived in Haven Point with her two children. Now she had a busy, joy-filled life and a houseful of children, including Marshall’s teenage son, a toddler and a new baby.
“Cancer,” Gemma said, still with that odd, closed look on her face. Her expression wasn’t sorrow exactly. It was closer to anger, for reasons Samantha didn’t understand. “She was diagnosed with breast cancer a few years ago. By the time they found out, it had metastasized throughout her body.”
What a horrible way to die, she thought again. Samantha didn’t want to think about it. Her mother’s death had been shocking, yes, completely unexpected. But at least Linda had died in her sleep of what doctors suspected was a massive heart attack and probably hadn’t even known what was happening. She hadn’t had to deal with a long, lingering, painful death, knowing she would be leaving behind those she loved.
Those poor children.
Her heart ached again for all of them.
“It’s been a hard year for them all,” Gemma went on.
“How nice that your wedding gave them a reason to take a vacation together,” Charlene Bailey said. “I’ve always found travel to be a great comfort.”
“Yes. This is the first vacation Ian and the children have taken since she died.”
“Well, they couldn’t have chosen a more beautiful time of year to visit our lake,” Barbara Serrano said loyally. “I was thinking this morning what a perfect June we’re having. I don’t think my flower garden has ever been this lush so early.”
To Samantha’s relief, the conversation shifted to gardening and the next cruise vacation Charlene and her husband, Mike, were taking later that summer.
Sam finished her lunch, her thoughts still centered on Ian and the children while she listened to the flow of conversation around her, which now focused on the Lake Haven Days celebration in a few more weeks and the group’s effort to raise funds to build a playground for children of all abilities at one of the city parks.
Ian’s children needed to grieve for their mother and they couldn’t do that by ignoring her life or her death. She knew firsthand how that only led to more pain.
She really didn’t want to talk to Ian about what Amelia had told her, that he was discouraging the children from talking about their pain. It was none of her business. She barely knew the man and was only connected to him at all because he was renting a temporary home near hers.
She couldn’t forget how much it had wounded her when her mother tried
