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fraternal twins bore a slight resemblance to each other. Katie had blue eyes while Julia’s were grayer, and her hair was darker than Katie’s. Their smiles were similar, but Julia was much freer with hers than Katie was.
    “What’s up with Mom?” Julia asked the others. “She’s all glowy looking.”
    “Um, that would be called happiness,” Jeff said. “Something we’ve never seen on her before.”
    “What do we know about this guy?” Josh asked. “We should get John to check him out for us.” John was a cop in Tennessee and had been unable to get away from work to attend the wedding.
    “He’s a great guy,” Shane said of Charlie Grandchamp.
    Julia eyed him skeptically. “Oh yeah? Do tell.”
    Shane decided Charlie’s story was one that Charlie should tell Sarah’s children himself, if he chose to. It wasn’t Shane’s place to tell them that Charlie had spent fourteen years in prison for a crime he hadn’t committed, or that his stepdaughter, Stephanie, had devoted herself to getting him released. “He’s first class. I’ll let you figure out the rest for yourselves.”
    “So there’s more,” Julia said with a sigh. “Isn’t there always more?”
    “It’s not always bad,” Shane said, even though in his experience it often was. For some reason, he wanted Sarah’s kids to give Charlie a chance. “Trust me when I tell you that you have nothing at all to worry about where he’s concerned.”
    “You’ll have to excuse us if we’re a little cynical,” Cindy said in a soft Southern accent that was in sharp contrast to the steel behind her words.
    “I understand.” How could he not understand when he’d lived with Owen and Sarah as they prepared for the trial? He knew far more than he wanted to about the way the Lawry children had been raised and empathized with their desire to protect their mother from any more harm.
    A waitress came to take drink orders, and since he was off baby duty, Shane ordered a Bloody Mary.
    “That sounds good,” Katie said. “Make it two.”
    Charlie’s stepdaughter, Stephanie Logan, came out to welcome them all to Stephanie’s Bistro and to hug and kiss the newlyweds. She’d been one of Laura’s bridesmaids and would marry Shane’s cousin Grant on Labor Day.
    She listed the brunch specials for them and then left the party to her capable waitstaff.
    “Does everyone know about us?” Katie asked him softly as he perused the menu and tried to decide between eggs Benedict and the French toast special.
    “Excuse me?”
    “Does everyone on the island know about our family? About our father and what he did?”
    “I wouldn’t say everyone knows, but some people do.”
    “Do you know?”
    “Some of it,” he said tentatively. Both Laura and Owen had talked to him about the trial, the charges and the horror of Owen’s upbringing, but Shane didn’t see the need to tell Katie that, not when she seemed ashamed that people knew.
    Katie gazed over the heads of her siblings to the ocean that stretched endlessly before them.
    “Hey,” he whispered. When she looked over at him, he said, “It’s no reflection on you—any of you. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
    “Intellectually, we know that. Emotionally… That’s a whole other can of worms.”
    What could he say to that? He’d been born into a loving home with two parents who’d worshiped each other and their children. He had no way at all to relate to what she’d been through. Except Laura had been raised the same way and had found a way to relate to what Owen had endured at the hands of his father.
    Still, he felt he should say something, so he went with the most innocuous thing he could think of. “Everybody’s got something, you know?”
    “Even you?”
    His laugh was sharper than he intended. “Ah, yeah, you could say that.”
    “Something bad?”
    “Yeah, it was pretty bad, and people know about it, which is tough. So I understand better than you might think.”
    “I’m sorry you had