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grandparents had sided with his father against them.
    At least, that was what his mom had always said. To contact them and maybe find out otherwise had always seemed disloyal. So Colin had avoided it.
    Given the choice, he would still rather avoid it. No doubt about it, he didn’t see how this reunion could possibly be pleasant, for any of them. They had a lot of old, bad feelings to deal with.
    “Where to?” Mack asked.
    “I booked a hotel for us,” Colin said. “But first, I need to meet my grandparents at a restaurant in town.”
    “Okay. You mind if I tag along?”
    “Mind? Hell no.” Colin was just grateful that Mack was willing to be a buffer for him.
    Colin dug the address out of his wallet, and they flagged a cab. The driver was an old-timer and Mack shot the breeze with him, especially once the old-timer saw Colin’s golf clubs. Colin signed his autograph, but didn’t say much otherwise. It wasn’t like him, but he was starting to feel kind of distracted and crappy.
    Honestly, would he even recognize his grandparents? All those years with no contact had dulled his memory. Yes, his grandmother had tried to get in touch with him and maybe he shouldn’t have ignored her. But when he was young and vulnerable, he’d always thought that his grandparents could have picked up a phone or hopped on a plane to see him, and they hadn’t. So he was determined not to feel guilty if he couldn’t identify them right away.
    He and Mack finally found the restaurant—they were late because of the diversion and the holdup at the airport—and the server at the counter told them they’d missed Jamie and Jessie by a half hour.
    “They left me?” Colin asked, incredulous. “They couldn’t just eat dinner and wait an extra few minutes to see their grandson?”
    The server looked apologetic. She gave them a slip of paper that Jessie had left, with their home address and telephone number written in neat script.
    Colin’s forehead was throbbing. He knew he might be overreacting, but given their history, it was understandable. He stared at her address in disbelief. His grandmother expected him to stay with them, it appeared.
    Or maybe Daisie Lee had given her that impression. Colin hadn’t really talked with his grandmother about the sleeping arrangements—he’d just exchanged that one email about his estimated time of arrival, because frankly, it was all the contact he’d been able to take for the moment. He was filled with resentment, it seemed, and this wasn’t like him. He hated feeling this way.
    He was also sobering up.
    “Are you going to phone them?” Mack asked.
    “Not yet.” Colin needed to calm down first. He was a mellow guy, laid-back. That was his reputation. That was what kept him sane.
    “Let’s sit here, get a drink first,” Colin said. There was a pub attached to the restaurant, so they headed over to check it out. A three-person group was performing. Guitar, vocals, drums. Celtic music—they were pretty good.
    Colin and Mack found chairs at a table. Before Colin knew it, two local women gravitated toward them. Mack talked with them—Colin was too busy getting his mind comfortably numb again to interact much. One song flowed into another. One beer flowed into another.
    Somewhere along the line Colin noticed that one of the women was sitting on Mack’s lap. By now, there was lots of laughter. He kept forgetting the names of the people they were talking to—the faces started to blend. Mack was getting friendlier with the two women... Bonnie and Clyde...that was what Mack was calling them. Colin was clear that Bonnie was the tall redhead currently sitting in Mack’s lap, and the other woman wasn’t really named Clyde, but Clara or Cassandra...something along those lines. Still, Mack coined them Bonnie and Clyde, which the two ladies thought was hilarious.
    Mack was wearing his cowboy boots, and the more he drank, the more pronounced his Texas drawl became. Bonnie especially seemed to like