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while.”
    “I know.” She carried the lettuce back over to the counter and reached for a cutting board. “He’s been so busy with all these cases. The firm is working him like crazy.”
    Her father was quiet again for a long time. The only sound in the kitchen was the chop of the knife against the cutting board. “I guess it’ll be easier for you both once you’re living over there.”
    Becca nodded, swallowing the lump in her throat.
    Her father walked over, laying a hand on her shoulder. “I’m going to miss you though.”
    “I know,” she whispered. “Me, too.”
    “You promise you’ll still come home on the weekends?”
    She set the knife down, laying her hand over his. “I promise.”
    He smiled and she squeezed his hand reassuringly. But if Tom was working late every night and the only time they could spend together was on the weekends, and he always wanted to be in D.C., how was she ever going to keep that promise?

    Driving away from the inn, Colin dialed his father’s number. The sun was beginning to set and warm golden rays slanted through the branches of the white pines and dogwoods lining the marshes. An ebbing tide rubbed against the muddy shoreline, the salty scent drifting through the open windows of the truck as he waited for his father’s voicemail to pick up.
    “Hi, Dad,” he said, after the recorded greeting. “It’s me. I know you’re tied up at the fundraiser for a couple more hours, but call me as soon as you get this. We have a situation.”
    He ended the call and slid the phone back in his pocket. Becca might think there were only a handful of people who knew about the possibility of the elementary school shutting down, but if he’d learned anything from working on his father’s campaign over the past six months, it was that damaging news had a way of leaking at the worst possible moment.
    The press would have a field day if they found out this school was in danger of closing, because Heron Island Elementary wasn’t just any school. It was Taylor Malone’s school—the sole survivor of the Mount Pleasant school shooting.
    Colin’s hand tightened around the steering wheel. Whenever he thought about the deranged teenager who had killed those seventeen innocent children in their second grade classroom in D.C. before turning the gun on himself last September, he felt a wave of white-hot rage.
    Before leaving the SEALs, he had spent ten years fighting to keep the people of this country safe from terrorists who wanted to destroy them and everything they stood for. The thought that something like this would happen at home, by one of their own people, did not sit well.
    It did not sit well at all.
    Passing the small brick building flanked by playing fields, he eased off the gas pedal. Most of the classrooms were dark, cleared out for the holiday weekend, but he could see the colorful student artwork taped to the big glass windows and a sign hanging outside the library advertising a bake sale for the following week.
    This school was where Taylor had come to start over. It was where she had come to escape the memories of her past. It was where she had finally managed to get control of the demons that still haunted her.
    He knew a little something about demons.
    While he didn’t personally suffer from the psychological disorder that affected so many post-9/11 veterans, many of his friends struggled with PTSD. It was one of the reasons why he’d decided to open the veterans’ center. Too many of his fellow former service members were slipping through the cracks, unable to cope with the transition to civilian life after having served multiple back-to-back deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.
    He was counting on the tranquility of this island to work its magic on the men and women who came to stay at the inn.
    Driving through the village, Colin took in the splash of tulips sprouting in the gardens along Main Street. Crabapple and cherry trees bloomed in the tiny front yards of the ice