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pretty, a sprawling ten-acre campus with a view of the Santa Monica Mountains. Kat loved the Spanish Mission–style architecture of the building, with its cream stucco walls, sweeping arches, and clay tile roofs. Off in the distance, the boys’ track team was doing laps.
    Kat and Beau just held hands for a long moment and didn’t speak. “I’m exhausted,” she said finally.
    “I know, sweetheart. I don’t know how you do it all, running the restaurant and taking care of the kids and taking care of me and—”
    Kat shook her head. “No, that’s not it. Well, yes, of course, I’m exhausted by all that. But what I really meant was, Kyle exhausts me. She exhausts me to the very core. I’ve tried to be there for her, to reach out to her, but it’s like she’s hell-bent on pissing me off. Pissing us off. But mostly me. Like all those crazies she brings to our Sunday Night Dinners. And not taking her job at the restaurant seriously. And why do we bother paying a fortune for her private school tuition—money we don’t exactly have—when she’s just wasting it all away? Honestly!” She buried her face in her hands.
    “Darlin’, darlin’ . . .” Beau wrapped his arm around her shoulders and hugged her tightly. “It’s gonna be okay. She’s a teenager. She’ll outgrow this. If I recall, you weren’t above a little misbehavin’ when you were younger.” He laughed softly.
    Kat sat up and glared at him. Was he talking about the things they used to do when they first met, when she was seventeen? And he was a rookie pitcher for the Dodgers, fresh out of Tulane? How she used to sneak out of her parents’ house after they were asleep so she could spend the night with him, and sneak back in before dawn?
    Or was he talking about what happened later, after she was married to David?
    Whatever it was, she didn’t want to talk about it now. “What are we going to do about her?” she said helplessly.
    “Let’s do what the good headmaster suggested. Let’s help her to get her grades up.”
    “Sure. But how?”
    “Why don’t we hire a tutor to help her out?” Beau suggested.
    “Oh!” Kat lit up. “That’s actually a really good idea!”
    Beau chuckled. “I guess I’ll take that as a compliment?”
    “It is! So how do we find a tutor? I guess we could go online, or maybe Pippa knows somebody, or—”
    “What about Benjy?”
    “Our Benjy?”
    “ Our Benjy. Lookit . . . he’s a straight-A student. He and Kyle are in a lot of the same classes here, so he’d be familiar with the material. He’s got a load of patience. And he’s been talking about wanting to make some extra money, right?”
    “True. I was thinking he might want to bus tables at the restaurant. But I guess tutoring would be a better fit for him?”
    “Exactly.”
    Kat nodded slowly. Beau was right. Benjy was the perfect candidate for the job.
    Of course, they would have to talk to Kyle about all this ASAP, informing her that she was going to have to commit to these tutoring sessions with Benjy (if he agreed to them), put her nose to the grindstone, and achieve a respectable GPA, or else. Kat was not looking forward to that conversation. Frankly, she didn’t look forward to any conversations with Kyle these days.
    Kat remembered when Kyle was born, how sweet she was, how she just wanted to nurse and cuddle all day long. Her first word was mama, and when she was three, she told Kat in her adorable toddler lisp that she was her “bestest friend, forever and ever and ever.” When she was in elementary school, Kat and David used to call her “Cinderella” because she was so helpful and well behaved and eager to please.
    When did things go wrong? The darkness seemed to have seeped into Kyle’s personality soon after David’s death. Kyle had adored her father, who had pampered her maybe more than the older girls because she was the baby. In some ways, Kyle had taken his death the hardest, by not grieving properly or giving herself