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  Heart surgeons with no hearts, Aidan thought, and not for the first time. He laughed out loud. It was darkly comical, and since he knew there was nothing he could change about it, dark humor with Gram was a fine way to cope.

  “You laugh now,” Gram said, a spark in her eyes, “but William spoke to me about you, as well.”

  “He isn’t worried about my finances, is he?”

  “No.” She waved her hand again. But this time she met his gaze seriously. “I’m worried about you, too, Aidan, but I’m worried about your well-being.” She leaned forward and peered more closely at him. “You’ve been through a terrible situation. I wish you had come home last October when it happened. I don’t know why you stayed.”

  No more humor, he thought sadly.

  “How are you, Aidan? Honestly?”

  “I’m fine, Gram,” he insisted.

  She shook her head. “I may have been on my phone just now, but I noticed you’ve been ignoring your text messages. That isn’t fine.”

  His grandmother didn’t miss a trick. Surely she’d also caught a glimpse of who the text messages were from—Fleur’s parents. Right now, he just wasn’t in a good place to speak with them. Eventually he would be. But not yet.

  He gazed out the window at the view overlooking the blue Atlantic. Sailboats bobbed in the bay. In the distance was a faint smudge of land—one of the islands in the outer harbor.

  “Aidan?”

  He glanced at the water glass he’d been idly rubbing his finger around. “Yes, Gram?”

  “It is nice to have you back. And to see you looking civilized again, even if your hair isn’t quite short enough yet.” She reached out and touched his hair.

  He smiled faintly at her. “You asked them to do that for me. It wasn’t my idea.”

  “Yes, I did ask them. Discreetly of course. And now you look much better. You look cared for.”

  Ashley had washed it for him. “Cleaned it up,” she’d said. He could turn ninety, and he would never forget the feel of her fingers brushing his scalp. It had been one of the most sensual experiences of his life, and yet they’d both been fully clothed. Her breast near his face. The rustle of her skirt as she’d turned. The soft knock of her heels on the wooden floor. The pads of her fingers as she’d brushed a soap bubble from his brow.

  “Aidan?”

  Again he snapped to. Hadn’t realized he’d been daydreaming. “It’s strange to be in Boston,” he admitted.

  “Home,” Gram amended.

  Was it? Outside the windows near the street, Boston whizzed by. The buildings were familiar; the shops and restaurants in the same places with some facades and names changed. Always, though, the throngs of students—college kids—at the crosswalks.

  “How do you feel?” she asked again.

  He closed his eyes, ran his palms over his newly smooth hair.

  “Honestly, it doesn’t feel like home anymore.” He’d spent his childhood here, had gone to college and done his residency here. Now he’d been gone for a year, and it felt like a foreign country.

  Gram rummaged inside her tote and pulled out a stack of mail secured with a rubber band. “Your mail. I suppose now that you’re back, I’ll no longer need to handle it for you.”

  She’d done the job well for him. Periodically, he’d received an email from her assistant, detailing bills paid on his behalf, invitations answered and declined. “Thank you,” he said.

  She waved her hand. “You may stay at my townhouse tonight, if you’d like. I had the guest suite made up for you.”

  “I still have my condo.” The words came out gruffly.

  There was a pause. She was being circumspect, his formidable grandmother, who had a big heart and who loved him with all of it. “Yes,” she said softly. “Yes, you do, Aidan.”

  His condo was filled with Fleur’s presence, of course. With her things and her memories. He’d toyed with the idea of turning his back on it, selling it as is. Hiring someone to empty it and never going inside again.

  “You’re welcome to stay with me tonight,” Gram said again. “In the morning I’m stopping by St. Bartholomew’s School for a meeting of the board. It would be nice if you came along.”

  He looked at her sharply. Of course, he’d suspected back at the hair salon that there might be some angle with St. Bartholomew’s somewhere. With his grandmother, nothing was coincidental.

  “Why did you really bring me to that hair salon today?” he asked. “Tell me the truth, Gram.”

  She smiled at him. “To bring you back into civilization with me. Even if she didn’t cut it, Ashley did a nice job.”

  Gram was lying. Feeling sad, he took his napkin off his lap and placed it on the table. “How do you know Ashley? Be honest.”

  “I’ve spoken to her only once before.”

  “In what capacity?”

  Gram folded her hands over her purse and looked him squarely in the eye. “Her son, Brandon, is the best fundraiser for the Sunshine Club we’ve ever had.”

  Aidan swallowed his shock. The answer was cold and businesslike, even for her.

  Yet the Sunshine Club was his grandmother’s pet project—her fundraising arm for children’s cancer research. The Sunshine Club was Gram’s baby. She’d started it decades ago after her youngest child—an uncle Aidan had never known—had died of childhood leukemia. Gram often said that if Luke had been born today, with all the advances in medicine, then he would have lived.

  Few people outside the family even knew of Luke, or of Gram’s continuing grief. She kept it that way on purpose. Gram had a soft heart, though she preferred to show the world the sharp, hardened exterior she’d developed through her business and charitable pursuits.

  “Did you meet Brandon through the Sunshine Club, as well?” he asked. “I understand he’s also a leukemia survivor.”

  “Initially, yes.” Gram paused. “My staff supervises him and handles all communication between his mother and the organization. Prior to Brandon, we’d used baseball stars—from the Captains—as our television fundraisers. But quite by accident, Brandon stepped in. And he proved to be much more effective than any of them were.”

  “How so?”

  She smiled at him. “Brandon is very good on television. He’s a natural showman.”

  Aidan thought of the studious-looking kid in the St. Bartholomew’s blazer. Brandon had looked like an average twelve-year-old to Aidan. He shook his head. “I don’t know that I would have gone on television and asked people for money at that age,” he murmured.

  When Ashley had first mentioned Brandon wanting to be a pediatric oncologist, Aidan hadn’t really believed her. To his cynical mind, it had seemed like more of a parent’s dream than a kid’s dream.

  “You would have done it for the chance to be a ball boy for the Captains,” Gram said matter-of-factly.

  Aidan sat up straighter. “Ashley’s son is a ball boy for the New England Captains?”

  “Oh, yes.” His grandmother nodded. “It was the price I paid for keeping him happy.”

  Aidan completely understood the “happy” part—he would have killed for the opportunity to be a Captains ball boy at Brandon’s age. Any kid of Aidan’s acquaintance would have.

  Rubbing his tired head, Aidan sat back. “So why all the subterfuge? Why didn’t you just introduce Ashley and me? Simple and easy. Say, ‘Aidan, meet Ashley. Maybe you’d like to give her some advice on her son’s school’?”

  Gram snorted. “You don’t know yourself as well as you think you do, do you?” Then she pulled back. “It’s...a delicate situation,” she said carefully. “I had to proceed with caution. I do need your help, Aidan. You’re the only person I know who can help—the best person—and yet I needed to know that you could work with Ashley on your own terms. If I’d been too early, pushing yo
u to meet her, to sit with her, to talk about her son—do you think you would have lasted five minutes?”

  No. Of course he wouldn’t have. And he hated to be manipulated.

  Yet here he was again, put in that situation by people close to him.

  Even Gram. And it hurt.

  She leaned over the table and put her hand on his “I know how hard it was for you at St. Bartholomew’s. It wasn’t a happy place for you, and I did the best I could to give you support there.”

  Yes, she had. His enrollment had been his parents’ insistence.

  He raised his head. He had to ask the question, because he had to know. “Did you pull strings to get Brandon admitted to St. Bartholomew?”

  She sighed. “Yes. Though it pained me to do it.” She blotted her lips with her napkin, and put it down on her plate. “His aunt was looking at schools in New Hampshire for him, appealing for scholarships. I couldn’t risk losing him at the Sunshine Club.”

  “St. Bartholomew’s is academically rigorous,” he said quietly. “Can Brandon handle that?”

  She gave him a sad, serious look. “Come with me tomorrow, and we’ll find out.”

  With a sinking heart, Aidan did a quick calculation. The kid would be in his first week of his first year at St. Bartholomew’s. Preliminary academic testing results would be coming back soon. Maybe Gram had some inside information.

  “Is there a chance Brandon will be asked to leave?” he asked his grandmother.

  “My influence is limited.” She held up her hands. “I can recommend a student for admission, but I can’t keep a failing student enrolled.” She shook her head. “You know how it is there.”

  Aidan did. All too well. The school prided themselves on being academically rigorous, among the best in the world. They would keep a lagging student on for the first term, but then at the winter break, they would show Brandon the door, if necessary.

  Ashley would be crushed, he thought.

  He sat for a moment, thinking about that. He didn’t want to picture how upset she would be.

  “There’s another reason I keep Ashley LaValley at arm’s length,” Gram said carefully, “You should know this.” And Aidan glanced up, suddenly alert.

  “She went through alcohol rehabilitation four years ago,” his grandmother said grimly. “Her childhood was difficult from what I understand—an alcoholic mother, as well—and in such cases, I find it best to keep a certain distance.”

  His mouth hung open. He could feel it.

  But his shock was soon replaced with anger. Wasn’t that narrow-minded of her to think that way?

  “You could have mentored Ashley all these years,” he pointed out. “Instead of expecting me to mentor Brandon now.”

  Gram gave him a faint smile. “That’s one of the things I love most about you, Aidan. You have a kind heart.” She glanced at his phone. “Perhaps now you might return Albert Sanborne’s text messages?”

  Point taken. “Since you seem to know everything,” he said drily, “why don’t you tell me what Fleur’s father wants?”

  “Actually, we’re all assuming—hoping—that you’ll be staying in town long enough to help organize the one-year memorial service for Fleur.”

  He shook his head. He hadn’t even considered there would be such a thing. She’d passed away last October—eleven months ago. There had been a small, private funeral, of course, and though he hadn’t attended—he was still in Afghanistan—Gram had.

  He was grateful to her for that even now.

  “Aidan? Give the word, and I’ll handle it for you.”

  “No, thank you,” he replied.

  “It’s not a problem for me to do so.”

  “I said no.”

  “Would you like me to arrange a room for you in one of my vacant apartments?” she pressed.

  “No, I have a condo.”

  “Very well. And if you’d like your position back at the hospital—”

  “No,” he said icily.

  “Or a position consulting with the Captains?”

  Gritting his teeth, he stood. He’d just spent a year in a war zone, performing amputations on children; he certainly didn’t feel like coming back to tape sprained ankles for professional baseball players.

  “Take all the time you need,” she said softly. “Think about what I’ve said.”

  He didn’t need time to think, he needed space to think.

  As he walked to the men’s room, he couldn’t help thinking that Gram was perfectly fine. He was the one with the head problems.

  Or maybe they were heart problems. He wasn’t sure anymore.

  * * *

  IN THE END, Aidan stayed with Gram in her spare bedroom. He’d gone back to his condo, but the doorman had handed him a stack of messages.

  One from a reporter. Another from the hospital, his former employer. Yet another from Fleur’s father, Albert, writing this time instead of calling “just in case your phone isn’t working here yet.”

  His head pounding, Aidan had left it all and walked out to the street, where he’d hailed a random taxi and directed it to Beacon Hill.

  His grandmother opened the door in person. She knew enough to hand him a cup of tea and just let him go to sleep.

  The next morning, he was still feeling jet-lagged when his grandmother’s housemaid opened the bedroom curtains and brought in a tray of watery coffee and toast.

  And then he was stepping into his grandmother’s town car again, being driven by Rocco toward the Back Bay and St. Bartholomew’s School.

  He’d discovered that he was curious to see what his grandmother was going to do next. He had a sinking feeling that it might not be in Ashley’s best interests. Or in his.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “BRANDON, HURRY UP, we’re going to be late!”

  If there was one thing Ashley could take heart in, early on this Friday school morning, it was that her almost-thirteen-year-old son wasn’t in the bathroom preening. There were no girls in his classes at St. Bartholomew’s, unlike in his public school. He seemed to be taking that fact in stride, though. Sometimes nothing appeared to faze her happy-go-lucky kid.

  She found him in his bedroom, typing swiftly into his smartphone. He kept a social media account that Ashley monitored as best she could. He shared photos mainly. And his friends commented, in their weird kid-speak that was totally different from the kid-speak that Ashley and her friends had used too many years ago.

  She put her hand on her hip. “Brandon, we need to go.”

  “Okay.” He gave her the lopsided grin that was already slaying female hearts from the North Shore to the Cape—wherever the Sunshine Club donation appeals were broadcast.

  Thankfully, though, her scary-smart kid still liked school. Ashley had been a middling student—not like her reclusive genius of a younger sister.

  But Brandon was neither reclusive nor middling. No, he’d gotten the best of the LaValley family genes—not that that was saying much. It was as if they’d saved up all the good ones for this amazing kid. God, she was lucky.

  Brandon grabbed his backpack. His blazer was looped through the top—it was still warm outside—but every day this week she’d watched as he’d put it on, looking natty, as he entered the school archway.

  With a bottle of juice in his hand, he said to her, “You don’t have to walk with me.”

  They’d been through this. “I know I don’t have to most days,” she said, “but today I need to.”

  He cocked his head. “That note is probably no big deal.”

  He was referring to the letter that the school had sent home, requesting Ashley’s presence at a meeting in the headmaster’s office this morning. “It’s standard, Mom,” Brandon had already explained. “In schools like this, they send notes to parents all
the time. All my friends probably got them, too.”

  Frankly, she trusted his judgment when it came to St. Bartholomew’s more than her own. He’d been there a week already, and he came home happier each day.

  “I’ll see the headmaster and find out what he has to say,” she told him.

  “I know I’m doing well in my English class. There are, like, these kids in my class, they’re from Mexico and Korea, and their English isn’t that great yet.”

  “That’s a long way from home,” she remarked.

  “It is. I wouldn’t want to be them. I’m only a few miles from home. I can still see my old friends on weekends.”

  “True,” she murmured, grabbing her purse from the closet she kept it locked in. Old habits. Their previous apartment had been broken into twice, and she’d learned not to leave her valuables out where thieves could see them. Then she motioned Brandon toward their front door and locked it behind them.

  “So, what does the headmaster do when he wants to talk to your Korean friend’s parent?” she asked as they headed toward the street.

  “Cho,” Brandon said. “His name is Cho.” He ran his hand through his shaggy bangs.

  “Okay, Cho. What happens? Do they get his parents on a video call? Or send them an email?”

  “Cho’s father uses an interpreter from their embassy. I think he’s an ambassador, with an office down in Washington. Or something like that.”

  Not for the first time Ashley marveled at the company her son was keeping. It made her heart swell. She felt weepy with all the opportunities he was getting.

  “So this is just a normal check-in with parents,” she repeated, for probably the tenth time, wishing she had more experience with private schools.

  “Don’t be nervous, Mom.” Brandon shot her a grin. “We’re good.”

  “Right.” She nodded, averting her gaze as they walked past the package store that had made her so nervous yesterday. “Good.”

  Brandon reached in his backpack to put on his earphones and music, but she grabbed his hand. “Can we just talk, please? It’s only a few more feet to walk with your mom.” She smiled as easily as she could. “Humor me.”