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healing as well is too much.”
    That stopped her. “I didn’t mean to drag you into—that is, you’ve got your own patients to concern you—”
    “And they aren’t my patients now? Or you, for that matter?”
    “I wasn’t aware that I required a doctor’s care.” The coolness in her voice made her want to kick herself. Rob would think she was being a jerk.
    “You’re not under a doctor’s care. You’re under my care.”
    “There’s a difference?”
    “Yeah, there’s a difference.” He looked at her, his face stern. “I need to do some errands. I’ll be back tonight to check on them around six. And I’ll be bringing dinner and a bottle of wine with me. Now do you get what the difference is?”
    Her stiffness melted away. “I get it,” she said softly. “Six would be lovely.”
    His expression relaxed, and a hint of that boyish smile appeared at the corners of his mouth. “Good. If they start to feel feverish, or if the father seems more disoriented or confused, call me. Try to get some food—something light—and liquids into them. I’ll leave you some painkillers, too. He might need them. Don’t give the boy any. If he wakes and seems uncomfortable, call me.” Rob briskly went to retrieve his medical bag, left her a couple of pills in an envelope, and shrugged on his jacket.
    “Some rest for you might not be a bad idea, too. It’s barely ten in the morning and you’ve already had a full day,” he said at the door.
    “Yes, Dr. Mowbray, sir.” Garland made a face at him.
    He snorted, and half-opened the door. “Oh, and by the way...Garland?”
    “Yes?”
    “Welcome to Mattaquason.” He grinned at her, and left.

 
    Chapter 3
     
    A fter Rob left, Garland wandered into the great room and began to slowly tidy up. What a strange morning it had been, finding Alasdair and Conn like that. And meeting Rob Mowbray again. She’d thought her new life would be quiet, a little lonely perhaps at first. Instead, she had two amnesiac houseguests and a date with the cutest guy in town. Welcome to Mattaquason indeed. If this was what the first twenty-four hours in town had brought her, what would next month be like?
    She folded the blanket and plumped the cushions on the couch into fullness. Two people, father and son, wash up on a beach in early spring with no clothes and no memory of how they got there. She made a mental inventory of their injuries—the bruises, the blackened eyes—while trying not to think of the appalling brutality of the cuts. Ritualistic, Rob had called them. Who could have hurt a small child in such a deliberately cruel way? Had this Alasdair run afoul of some gang? Organized crime was everywhere, even on Cape Cod. Smuggling, drugs…all these existed under the wholesome, summer-paradise façade that Cape Cod liked to show the world.
    One of her art teachers had maintained that it was possible to read personality in faces. She thought about Alasdair’s, stern and unsmiling and haggard, and under it all, chiseled and beautiful. No, with a face like that, he wasn’t a criminal any more than Rob was. Nor could she imagine that he would be involved with anything that might endanger his son—not if his anxiety over him just now was any indication.
    She went to the kitchen, got the dustpan and brush from the closet, and went back into the great room to sweep up the sand they’d tracked in from the beach. Then there was Captain Howe. He’d been nervous, troubled, almost as if he’d known something about her castaways and didn’t want to have to deal with them. But how could he? Or—or was there something not quite above-board going on in the Mattaquason police department? Was that why the 911 people had been so incoherent? But how could they—
    A thud-thud-a-thud-thud sounded on the front door, followed by a muffled, “Hey, Garland! You home?”
    Garland knew that knock. She dropped the dustpan and hurried to the door.
    “There you are!” Her friend Kathy enveloped her