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had his thumbs tucked in his front pockets now and studied his brother as Phillip treaded water. “Cool off,” he suggested mildly.
    “This suit is Hugo Boss,” Phillip managed as he kicked toward the dock.
    “That don’t mean shit to me.” Ethan glanced over at Cam. “Mean anything to you?”
    “Means he’s going to have a hell of a dry-cleaning bill.”
    “You, too,” Ethan said and shoved Cam off the dock. “This isn’t the time or place to go punching each other. So when the pair of you haul your butts out and dry off, we’ll talk this through. I sent Seth on with Grace for a while.”
    Eyes narrowed, Cam skimmed his hair back with his fingers. “So you’re in charge all of a sudden.”
    “Looks to me like I’m the only one who kept his head above water.” With this, Ethan turned and sauntered back toward the house.
    Together Cam and Phillip gripped the edge of the dock. They exchanged one long, hard look before Cam sighed. “We’ll throw him in later,” he said.
    Accepting the apology, Phillip nodded. He pulled himself up on the dock and sat, dragging off his ruined silk tie. “I loved him too. As much as you did. As much as anyone could.”
    “Yeah.” Cam yanked off his shoes. “I can’t stand it.” It was a hard admission from a man who’d chosen to live on the edge. “I didn’t want to be there today. I didn’t want to stand there and watch them put him in the ground.”
    “You were there. That’s all that would have mattered to him.”
    Cam peeled off his socks, his tie, his jacket, felt the chill of early spring. “Who told you about—who said those things about Dad?”
    “Grace. She’s been hearing talk and thought it best that we knew what was being said. She told Ethan and me this morning. And she cried.” Phillip lifted a brow. “Still think I should have decked her?”
    Cam heaved his ruined shoes onto the lawn. “I want to know who started this, and why.”
    “Have you looked at Seth, Cam?”
    The wind was getting into his bones. That was why he suddenly wanted to shudder. “Sure I looked at him.” Cam turned, headed for the house.
    “Take a closer look,” Phillip murmured.
    W HEN CAM WALKED into the kitchen twenty minutes later, warm and dry in a sweater and jeans, Ethan had coffee hot and whiskey ready.
    It was a big, family-style kitchen with a long wooden table in the center. The white countertops showed a bit of age, the wear and tear of use. There’d been talk a few years back of replacing the aging stove. Then Stella had gotten sick, and that had been the end of that.
    There was a big, shallow bowl on the table that Ethan had made in his junior year in high school wood shop. It had sat there since the day he’d brought it home, and was often filled with letters and notes and household flotsam rather than the fruit it had been designed for. Three wide, curtainless windows ranged along the back wall, opening the room up to the yard and the water beyond it.
    The cabinet doors were glass-fronted, and the dishes inside plain white stoneware, meticulously arranged. As would be, Cam thought, the contents of all the drawers. Stella had insisted on that. When she wanted a spoon, by God, she didn’t want to search for one.
    But the refrigerator was covered with photos and newspaper clippings, notes, postcards, children’s drawings, all haphazardly affixed with multicolored magnets.
    It gave his heart a hitch to step into that room and know his parents wouldn’t ever again be there.
    “Coffee’s strong,” Ethan commented. “So’s the whiskey. Take your choice.”
    “I’ll have both.” Cam poured a mug, added a shot ofJohnnie Walker to the coffee, then sat. “You want to take a swing at me, too?”
    “I did. May again.” Ethan decided he wanted his whiskey alone and neat. And poured a double. “Don’t much feel like it now.” He stood by the window, looking out, the untouched whiskey in his hand. “Maybe I still think you should have been here more