Page 91 of These Summer Storms

They fell silent for a few minutes, watching the stream of people coming down the rise on the path from the helipad and up the lawn from the docks. After the third helicopter left, Alice asked, “Did Dadlikeall these people?”

“Absolutely not,” Sam said. “He would have had something to say about everyone here.”

“And walked away with them all in his pocket, nonetheless,” Alice said. “Franklin Storm never met a person he wasn’t able to control.”

“Including us,” Sam said.

Silence fell and they watched the throngs of people crisscross the meadow, lingering at a distance from Elisabeth, who was more than ready to accept their condolences and attention. No one looked up to the children, along the stone wall.

“She’s avoiding making a scene, at least,” Greta said, tilting her head in the direction of their mother, a false, patient smile pasted on her face as she listened to Twyla.

“I cannot believe this is the first I’m hearing of her not liking them.”

“Well, maybe if you hadn’t disappeared for so long…” Sam trailed off, and Alice bit her tongue, knowing he was aiming to get a rise out of her.

“Sam, stop. She would have known if she hadn’t been trapped in the pantry with Jack all morning when it happened…” Emily said, an edge of teasing in her voice. “Where is your friend, speaking of?”

“First of all, I was trapped in there by myself. Second, he’s not my friend,” Alice said, raising a hand to silence her sister. “Why would I know where he is?”

He was two-thirds of the way down the lawn, beneath a large canopy, in effortless conversation with a group of men, each in perfectlytailored menswear and still not looking even close to as handsome as Jack in a sleek navy pinstripe—bespoke as hell and worth a small fortune.

Why did he always have to look so good?

And worse, why did she have to notice all the time? Weren’t fixers supposed to be unassuming? Charming and effortless and seemingly harmless before they did whatever her father had paid Jack to do? Seduce people, probably. That was clearly one of his top skills.

As though sensing her attention, Jack looked up toward the house and found her. Lingered for a heartbeat while she felt immense relief that her dark sunglasses hid the fact that she had found him first.

Not because she’d been looking. Alice had done her very best to avoid him since the moment in the foyer the day before. She’d steered clear of the boathouse, of her father’s office, of being alone in the common spaces of the house.

No Jack,she’d decided, and she was sticking to it. Every time she was alone with the man, she lost her way. If he wasn’t making her think about the kissing they’d done (more than that, but she was doing her best to put it out of her mind), he was being kind to her.

Asking her to trust him.

Making herlaugh. Ugh. That might be the worst of all the infractions, because she was such a sucker for a guy who could make her laugh. And he’d been that guy on the train platform—but she’d convinced herself that it had been a lie. That there was no way this man, who’d lied to her and betrayed her trust, was in any way the thoughtful, funny guy who’d joked about being a Boy Scout with her.

He was the kind of guy who knocked out a photographer. That behavior made sense. It was boorish. Brutal. Criminal.

Sexy.

That was her reptilian brain talking. Jack was her father’s fixer, here exclusively to fix. And when Franklin Storm fixed things, it wasn’t kind. It wasn’t funny. It wasn’t safe. It was extremely serious.

“Fuck that guy,” Sam said, as though he’d been a party to her thoughts.Yes.Alice agreed. (Metaphorically, at least. Literally was not a good idea, for the aforementioned reasons.)

“Where’s Claudia?” she asked Emily, who pointed in the direction of her wife, deep in discussion with a group of Elisabeth’s friends. “Wow. She really just fits right in with Mom’s crew, doesn’t she?”

“Don’t say that,” Emily replied with a laugh. “Sometimes I really do worry that Mom would sell us all for a dollar as long as she got to keep Claudia.”

“Is that Mrs.Austin?” Sam interrupted, tipping his chin toward one of Claudia’s companions, an older woman who’d been a part of long-ago summers on the island. Her husband had owned three hundred acres of ice-wine vineyard in the Sakonnet Valley.

“Who’s Mrs. Austin?” Emily asked.

“My god,” Alice said. “I haven’t seen her since…God, Em you must have been two or three.”

“I’ve never seen that woman before.”

“Because Mom sent her packing after she hit on Dad,” Sam said, waving over a server headed into the fray with a tray of wine.

“No!” Alice’s excited utterance was loud enough to carry, and to make the server nervous.