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that just when you got a taste of success, a sample of happiness, it could all be ripped away.
    Andrew had always promised himself he’d never be like that, and yet when Nora left he’d felt a sense of betrayal. She left when he was most vulnerable, before he had even gotten a publishing contract, before he had anything concrete in hand that he could promise or offer her. But he couldn’t be angry with Nora. He couldn’t blame her. It was his fault. Andrew wondered if he was destined to sabotage any success and happiness that came his way. Because like his father, he worried that all of it could be taken away as quickly as it had come. Is that what his writer’s block was about? Was it just another way to sabotage the success he was amassing as a novelist?
    “Be careful what you wish for,” his father would often warn, usually after several whiskeys, “you might get it, only it won’t look anything like you thought it should.”
    Andrew shook his head and stole one more glance in the mirror. He was not his father. He had spent a lifetime making sure of that, and yet here were his father’s eyes, staring at him, warning him again.
     
CHAPTER 7
     
    10:03 a.m.
     
    He was waiting when Melanie drove into the parking lot. Her stomach took a slow nosedive when she saw him. She knew how much Jared hated to wait. He sat in one of the wooden rocking chairs, the last in a row that lined the restaurant’s deck.
    She glanced at her wristwatch. She was on time. Okay, maybe a minute late, but only a minute at the most. And even though he sat slouched, feet propped on the handrail, as though content enough to catch a nap, Melanie knew he would be pissed. Pissed that she wasn’t the one waiting for him. That she hadn’t been anxious and excited, ready to jump when he told her to. In other words, that she wasn’t the same little girl who looked up to her big brother, constantly wanting to please him. That girl would have been here on time. No, that girl would have been here early.
    He nodded at her without really looking at her. There was something different about him. Something Melanie wasn’t prepared for. He was smiling, almost a grin, which made things worse. Jared smiled only for a couple of reasons, none of them because he was happy. This smile was his “I have something over you now” smile. If Melanie had had any appetite left—which she didn’t—it would be gone for sure.
    He dropped his feet one by one as if he was in no big hurry, each an exaggerated plop against the deck’s wood floor. Then he pushed himself out of the rocking chair, scooping up the backpack that Melanie only now noticed.
    “That’s Charlie’s,” she said in place of a greeting, pointing to the worn purple backpack, its corners scarred with black-and-white marks. She’d recognize that ratty old thing anywhere. Charlie could lift a new one—hell, he could lift a dozen new ones—and, yet, the boy carried this thing around like that pathetic Charlie Brown character with his worn-out security blanket. Because that’s what it was to Charlie. Her son, who wasn’t scared of anything or anyone, carried around this pathetic old canvas bag like it was his Superman cape, drawing strength from its simple presence. “Is he here?” she asked, looking around, but not seeing Charlie’s pickup in the parking lot.
    “No,” Jared told her, the smile already gone as though he didn’t feel the need to explain. “But he will be.”
    Melanie watched him sling the backpack over his shoulder with exaggerated purpose, as if to reinforce the fact that Charlie would eventually show up. Sort of like a ransom. Ransom? That was silly. Why in the world would she even think such a thing? Charlie was crazy about his uncle Jared. He looked up to him like a father figure. Even during Jared’s five years in prison, it was Charlie who visited when Melanie couldn’t make herself go to the prison. Instead she had kept in touch via phone calls and letters. Melanie