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Praise for the novels of #1New York Times bestselling author Susan Wiggs

“Wiggs is one of our best observers of

stories of the heart. She knows how to capture

emotion on virtually every page of every book.”

—Salem Statesman-Journal

“Wiggs’s talent is reflected in her thoroughly

believable characters as well as the way she recognizes

the importance of family by blood or other ties.”

—Library Journal

“Susan Wiggs writes with bright assurance,

humor and compassion.”

—Luanne Rice

THE SUMMER HIDEAWAY

“An emotionally gripping tale centered on family.

Wiggs is back in top form, and Daisy Bellamy’s

many fans will rejoice that her story is next.”

—Booklist

“[A] wonderful getaway to be savored and enjoyed.”

—Bookreporter

LAKESHORE CHRISTMAS

“Wiggs hits all the right notes.”

—Library Journal [starred review]

“Wiggs concocts a terrifically tasty holiday confection

sure to be enjoyed by fans and new readers alike.

A keeper.”

—RT Book Reviews [Top Pick]

FIRESIDE

#1 New York Times Bestseller

A Best Book of 2009—Amazon.com

“Worth a look for the often-hilarious dialogue alone,

the latest installment of her beloved Lakeshore

Chronicles showcases Wiggs’s justly renowned gifts for

storytelling and characterization. A keeper.”

—RT Book Reviews

SNOWFALL AT WILLOW LAKE

A Best Book of 2008—Amazon.com

Reviewer’s Choice finalist—RT Book Reviews RITA® Award finalist

“Wiggs is at the top of her game here,

combining a charming setting with subtly

shaded characters and more than a touch of humor.

This is the kind of book a reader doesn’t want to see

end but can’t help devouring as quickly as possible.”

—RT Book Reviews [Top Pick]

“Wiggs jovially juggles the lives of

numerous colliding characters and adds some

winter-favorite recipes for a festive touch.”

—Publishers Weekly

DOCKSIDE

“Rich with life lessons, nod-along moments and

characters with whom readers can easily relate….

Delightful and wise, Wiggs’s latest shines.”

—Publishers Weekly

“A wonderfully written, beautiful love story

with a few sharp edges and a bunch of marvelously

imperfect characters … sure to leave an indelible

impression on even the most jaded reader.”

—RT Book Reviews [Top Pick]

THE WINTER LODGE

#1 Best Romance of 2007—Amazon.com

A Best Book of 2007—Publishers Weekly Reviewer’s Choice finalist—RT Book Reviews

“With the ease of a master, Wiggs introduces

complicated, flesh-and-blood characters …

a refreshingly honest romance.”

—Publishers Weekly [starred review]

“Empathetic protagonists,

interesting secondary characters,

well-written flashbacks and delicious recipes

add depth to this touching, complex romance.”

—Library Journal

“Emotionally intense.”

—Booklist

SUMMER AT WILLOW LAKE

A Best Book of 2006—Amazon.com

“Wiggs’s storytelling is heartwarming …

clutter free … [for] romance and women’s fiction

readers of any age.”—Publishers Weekly

“Wonderfully evoked characters,

a spellbinding story line and insights

into the human condition will appeal to every reader.”

—Booklist

Marrying Daisy Bellamy

The Lakeshore Chronicles

SUSAN WIGGS

www.mirabooks.co.uk

This book is dedicated to my readers.

When Daisy Bellamy first sneaked into

Summer at Willow Lake years ago, a sullen teenager with a chip on her shoulder, she was meant to just pass through the series. Instead, you kept her in your hearts, book after book, patiently waiting for her story to be told. You’ve helped me stay motivated to write “ Daisy’s story” for years. Many thanks for inspiring me to send this character on her own journey.

Acknowledgments

I owe a very special thank you to the real Andrea and Brian Hubble, and to Kay Fritchman and her furry family for their generous contributions.

When it comes to some books, the author is in need of a literary “pit crew” to keep everything in proper working order right up until the final lap. This book’s pit crew included (but wasn’t limited to) my friends and fellow writers—Anjali Banerjee, Kate Breslin, Sheila Roberts and Elsa Watson; Margaret O’Neill Marbury and Adam Wilson of MIRA Books; Meg Ruley and Annelise Robey of the Jane Rotrosen Agency.

Part One

One

The bridegroom was so handsome, Daisy Bellamy’s heart nearly melted at the sight of him. Please, she thought. Oh, please let’s get it right this time.

He offered her a brief, nervous smile.

“Come on,” she said in a barely audible whisper, “once more with feeling. Say I love you, and mean it. Show me what you’re feeling.”

He was a storybook prince, in his dove-gray swallowtail tux, every hair in place, adoration beaming from every pore. He stared intently into her eyes and, in a voice that broke with sincerity, said, “I love you.”

“Yes,” Daisy whispered back. “Got it,” she added, and lowered the camera away from her face. “That’s what I’m talking about. Good going, Brian.”

The videographer moved in to capture the reaction of the newly minted bride, a flushed and pretty young woman named Andrea Hubble. Using his video camera as an extra appendage, Zach Alger gently coached the couple with a word or two and soon had them talking intimately about their love, their hopes and dreams, their happiness on this glorious day.

Daisy took a candid shot of the couple as they leaned in for another kiss. In the background, a loon beat skyward from Willow Lake, droplets of water sparkling like stars in the glow of early twilight. The beauty of nature added a sheen of romance to the moment. Daisy was good at capturing romance in her camera frame. In life—not so much.

She longed to feel the joy she saw in her clients’ faces, but her own romantic past was a series of mistakes and missed chances. Now here she was, a screwup trying to unscrew her life. She had a small son who didn’t realize his mom was a screwup, a responsible job and an unadmitted yearning for something she couldn’t have—that shining love her camera observed through its very expensive lens.

“I think we’re done here,” Zach said, checking his watch. “And you guys have a big party to go to.”

The bridal couple squeezed each other’s hands, their faces wreathed in smiles. Daisy could feel the excitement coming off them in waves. “Biggest party of our lives,” said Andrea. “I want it to be perfect.”

It won’t be, thought Daisy, keeping her camera at the ready. Some of the best shots happened at random, unplanned moments. The flaws were what made a wedding special and memorable. The glory of imperfection was one of the first things she’d discovered when she’d started working as a wedding photographer. Every event, no matter how carefully planned, had its imperfections. There would always be a groomsman facedown in the punch bowl, a collapsing pavilion tent, somebody’s hair on fire when they leaned too close to the candles, an overweight, fainting auntie, a wailing infant.

These were the things that made life interesting. As a single mother, Daisy had learned to appreciate the unplanned. Some of her life’s sweetest moments came when she least expected them—the clutch of her son’s tiny hands, anchoring her to earth with a power greater than gravity. Some of the most awful moments, too—a train pulling out of the station, leaving her behind, along with her dreams—but she tried not to dwell on that.

She suggested that the newlyweds hold hands and hike across a vast, pristine meadow at the edge of Willow Lake. During the World War II years, the meadow had been the site of a communal Victory Garden. Now it was one of Daisy’s favorite settings, particularly at this golden hour of the day, when time hovered between afternoon and evening.

The meadow was suffused in the last pink and amber of the sun’s rays. This moment, for Andrea and Brian, was perfect. The bride led the way, walking slightly ahead of him with her chin held aloft. The groom’s posture was protective, yet he exuded joy from every angle of his body. The breeze kicked up her gown so that the shadows connected the two of them like a delicate dark web, the unrehearsed drama of the movement coinciding with the firing of the camera shutter.

Checking the viewfinder of her camera, Daisy suspected this might be an iconic shot for this couple.

Except … she zoomed in on a small spot on the horizon.

“Damn,” she muttered.

“What?” Zach asked, leaning to look over her shoulder.

“The Fritchmans’s dog, Jake, got loose again.” There he was in high-resolution glory, silhouetted against the sweeping sky, taking a crap.

“Classic,” Zach remarked, and went back to coiling his cables and organizing his gear for the wedding reception.

Daisy pushed a button to tag the photo for later retouching.

“Ready?” she asked Zach.

“Time to party on,” he said, and they followed the bride and groom along the lakeshore path to the main pavilion of Camp Kioga, where the reception would take place. The couple made a pit stop to freshen up for their grand entrance, and Daisy prepared to document the festivities.

She’d liked the bride from the start, and she had always loved the setting of Camp Kioga. The serene lakeside resort was a historic landmark on Willow Lake, and it belonged to Daisy’s grandparents. Tucked into the wildest corner of Ulster County near the town of Avalon, Camp Kioga had been founded as a retreat for the elite of New York City, a place where the well-heeled could escape the steamy summer heat.

These days, the camp had been transformed into a luxurious resort by Daisy’s cousin Olivia. Last year, the reinvented retreat had been featured as a destination wedding venue on www.Iamthebeholder.com, and bookings were steady.

To Daisy, Camp Kioga was more than a beautiful setting. She had spent some of her life’s most joyous—and most painful—moments here, and the entire landscape had shaped her aesthetic as a photographer.

The firm she’d worked for since finishing college, Wendela’s Wedding Wonders, was a local institution, and Daisy was grateful for the job. The work was steady, the hours crazy and the income adequate, if not lucrative. There would never be a shortage of people wanting to get married. And okay, she did dream of branching out from weddings and portraits, because her deepest love was something she termed narrative nature photography.

At heart, she was a storyteller. Her photos offered intimate glimpses through her lens. She captured the fragile, ephemeral nature of the world around her with pictures that haunted her heart, arousing deep emotions from the simple grace of trees dipping their branches in the water, the abundance of a green-shadowed forest in springtime, the epic shape of granite crags above a gorge. In college, she’d always been under deadline pressure because her subjects would not be rushed—tadpoles transforming themselves, a fawn finding its way through a meadow, the stillness of a heron as it waited in the marshy shallows for its next meal.

Photography was where she’d found her artist’s voice and a passion for the work. The fascination had begun with the gift of a Kodak camera on her eighth birthday. She had captured a shot of her grandma Bellamy learning to Hula hoop that day, experiencing a moment of such satisfaction that it felt like a benediction. It was a moment that would never again be repeated; she had frozen it forever in time and memory, and despite the fact that it featured her own grandmother, there was something universal in the shot that anyone could understand.

That was the moment she’d discovered the power of photography. She often wished for more time to produce fine art with her camera, but even fine artists—and their small sons—had to eat. For a single mom, steady work trumped high art every time. And the photo snobs seemed determined to overlook a key fact. In the midst of a wedding, opportunities abounded for finding a transcendent moment. A good photographer simply knew where to look for them and how to capture them. At a wedding, you could find people at their most real. The same story played out in endless ways and infinite variety, and for Daisy, it held a kind of fascination.

She was intrigued by the mysterious alchemy that drew a couple together and compelled them to embark on a journey through life together. A camera, properly wielded, could tell the story, over and over again in all its manifestations.

Perhaps this was because Daisy longed to understand it for herself. Perhaps if she became the world’s foremost expert at capturing life’s happiest moments, she would figure out a way to find her own.

The wedding wasn’t perfect. In the middle of the toast, Andrea Hubble’s mother became tongue-tied and dissolved into tears. The bar ran out of champagne in the first hour, and the DJ blew a speaker. One of the bridesmaids broke out in hives from something she ate, and the five-year-old ring bearer went missing, only to be found fast asleep under a banquet table.

Daisy knew that within hours, none of this would matter. As the DJ broke down his set and workers disassembled the tables, the blissfully happy couple headed off in the night for the Summer Hideaway, the resort’s most secluded cabin. Her final shot, lit by the moon and her favorite off-camera strobe flash, showed them walking down the path toward the cabin, the groom lifting his arm and twirling the bride beneath it. No question the night would go well for them, Daisy thought, putting away her things with a restless sigh.

The wedding guests occupied Camp Kioga’s other lodgings—old-school bunkhouses, A-frame cabins or luxurious rooms in the main lodge.

In the work van on the way home, Zach cracked open a can of Utica Club purloined from the bar and held it out to Daisy.

She shook her head. “No, thanks. It’s all yours.” Contrary to her demographic—recent college grad—she wasn’t much for drinking. Truth be told, drinking had never done her any favors. In fact, the reason she’d become a mom at nineteen had everything to do with drinking. If Charlie ever asked her where babies come from, she would have to find a way to explain that he’d come from an abundance of Everclear punch and a weekend of supremely bad judgment.

“Here’s to you, then,” said Zach. “And to Mr. and Mrs. Happily Ever After. May they stay together long enough to pay off the wedding.”

“Don’t be such a cynic,” she chided him. In his own way, Zach Alger had had a rough go of things, too. They made a good team, though. He was more than an assistant and videographer to her. He was one of her favorite—though reluctant—subjects to photograph, with strong, angular features and unusual Nordic coloring, so pale he was sometimes mistaken for an albino. He was totally self-conscious about his white-blond hair, the kind that seemed to absorb color from other sources. Daisy had always thought it was cool. Some of the images she’d shot of him had been picked up commercially. Apparently his look—the pale coloring and wintry eyes—was popular in Japan and South Korea. Somewhere in the Far East, his face was selling men’s cologne and cell phone minutes.

Not enough to pay the bills for either of them, however. He was just out of college, too, skilled at high-tech media. What she liked most about Zach was that he was a good friend—nonjudgmental, easy to talk to.

“I’m just saying—”

“Don’t worry about it,” she said. “You’re such a worrier.”

“Right, like you’re not.”

He had her there. Daisy didn’t see any way around being a worrier, though. Having a kid tended to do that to a person.

“Maybe if we pool all our worries,” she suggested, “we’ll generate enough energy to fuel the van.”

“I only need enough to make it to the end of the month.” Zach guzzled the beer, belched and fell quiet, staring out the window at the utter nothingness that was the town of Avalon late at night. The locals joked that the sidewalks rolled up by nine, but that was an exaggeration. It was more like eight.

She and Zach didn’t need to fill the silence with chitchat. They’d known each other since high school, and they’d both endured their share of trials. While she became a teenage mom, Zach had been dealing with his dad’s financial meltdown and subsequent incarceration on corruption charges. Not exactly a recipe for serenity.

Yet somehow they had each muddled through, a little worse for the wear but still standing. Zach was methodically working his way through a mountain of student debt. And Daisy had made a series of bad choices. She felt as if she were living life backward, starting with having a kid while still a teenager. Then came school and work, and all that was swinging into balance, but one thing eluded her. It was the thing they photographed nearly every weekend, toasted and celebrated by her ever-changing array of clients. Love and marriage. These things shouldn’t matter so much. She wished she could believe her life was just fine, but she’d be kidding her self.

It was a challenge to avoid looking back and secondguessing herself. She could have had a shot at marriage. A surprise Christmas Eve proposal had come at her out of the blue and sent her reeling. Even now, months later, the very thought of it made her hyperventilate. Thinking back about a night that might have changed her life, she flexed her hands on the steering wheel. Did I make the right choice? Or did I run away from the one thing that could have saved me?

“So, is Charlie with his dad tonight?” Zach asked, breaking the silence.

“Yep. They’re the dynamic duo.” She slowed the van to avoid a small family of raccoons. The largest of the three paused, turning glittery eyes to the headlamps before herding the two small ones into the ditch.

Charlie’s father, Logan O’Donnell, had been as messed up and careless as Daisy herself was, back in the teen years. But like Daisy, Logan had been transformed by parenthood. And when she needed him to take Charlie for the night, he gladly stepped up.

“And what about you and Logan?” Zach pried.

She sniffed. “If there’s anything to report, you’ll be the first to know.” Things between her and Logan were complicated. That was the only word she could think of to describe the situation. Complicated.

“But—”

“But nothing.” She turned a corner and emerged onto the town square. At this hour, no one was around. Zach lived in a small vintage walk-up over the Sky River Bakery. As teenagers, they had both had jobs there. Now a new generation of kids managed the giant mixers and proofing machines in the wee hours of the morning. Hard to believe, but Daisy and Zach weren’t the kids anymore.

She swung into a parking spot. “I’ll be in the studio by ten tomorrow,” she said. “I promised Andrea a sneak peek by next Saturday.”

“Geez,” he groaned. “Do you know how many hours I shot?”

“Actually, I do. It’s only a sneak peek. I like this bride, Zach. I want to make her happy.”

“Isn’t that the groom’s job?”

“She has four younger sisters.”

“I know. They couldn’t stay away from the camera.” He shouldered open the passenger-side door and stepped down. The glow of the streetlights turned his hair to amber.

“Maybe they couldn’t stay away from you,” she suggested.

“Yeah, right.” He was probably blushing, but in this light, she couldn’t tell. Zach had never been much for dating. Though he’d never admit it, he’d been carrying a torch for Daisy’s stepsister, Sonnet, since preschool.

“‘Night, Zach,” she said.

“See you tomorrow. Don’t stay up too late.”

He knew her well. She was usually pretty wired after an event and couldn’t resist loading the raw files. She liked to post a single, perfect teaser shot on her blog to give the bride a taste of things to come.

Her own place was an unassuming small house on Oak Street. She took her time letting herself in. One of the worst things about raising Charlie with a guy she didn’t live with was that she missed her son like mad when he was with his father.

She locked the door behind her, and the all-pervasive silence took her breath away. She’d never been very good with all-pervasive silence. It made her think too hard, and when she thought too hard, she worried. And when she worried, she made herself insane. And when she went insane, that made her a bad mom. It was a cycle that refused to end.

Maybe she should get a dog. Yes, a friendly, bouncy dog to greet her at the door with swirls and yips of delight. A funny, nonjudgmental dog that would completely distract her from the things she didn’t want to think about.

“A dog,” she said, trying out the concept aloud. “Genius.”

Wandering into the study nook, she took out a small deck of memory cards from the wedding and watched the images load, one by one. Some were familiar, shots she took at every wedding, because they were expected—the first dance, with the couple silhouetted dramatically against the night sky, the parents of the bride and groom sharing a toast. Others were unique, a pose or a look she’d never seen before. She’d caught the bride’s grandmother cross-eyed as she slurped down an oyster, the groom’s uncle making a rapturous face during a song, one of the bridesmaids visibly ducking to avoid catching the bouquet. And then there was one shot, the one she’d expected, that turned out to be transcendent.

It was the last-minute frame of the bride and groom hiking across the meadow, hand in hand. It told a story, it said who they were, it expressed them as a couple. Two together, linked by a handclasp that looked eternal.

Minus Jake, she reminded herself, opening the editing program. The pooping dog in the background would have to go. As she busily cleaned up the photo, she studied the gleam of light on the bending fronds of grass, the distorted reflection of the couple in the water, the unfurling emotion in the bride and the joy shining from the groom.

The shot was good. Better than good. Entry-in-a-photo-competition good, that’s what it was, she thought.

As the notion crossed her mind, her gaze flicked to a folder in the tray on the desk. That was where she was supposed to file her entries to the photo exhibit contest for the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The top entries each year would be placed on exhibit in the MoMA’s Emerging Artists section. The competition was the fiercest in the industry, because being selected would open doors and launch careers. Daisy was dying to submit her work.

However, the tray was woefully empty, the file folder like a barely cracked-open door showing only blankness inside. All the good intentions in the world, all the lofty ambitions, could not give Daisy the one thing she needed to complete the project and submit her materials. The gift of time. Sometimes she caught herself wondering when her life was going to finally be her life.

Pushing aside the frustration, she refocused on the bridal photo and quickly posted it on Wendela’s company blog, titling the entry, “Andrea and Brian sneak peek.” Sitting back and gazing at the shot, Daisy indulged in a private cry. She didn’t want people to know the sight of happy couples made her cry. She didn’t want anyone to see her need, her desire, her knife-sharp longing. Alone in the small hours of the night, she cried. And then she shut down her computer.

By then it was one o’clock in the morning, and she needed to get to bed. As she went around turning off the lights, she noticed a few envelopes on the floor below the mail slot of the front door. She bent down and went through the small stack. Fliers and junk mail. Solicitations, notices about neighborhood meetings. Coupons she would never use. And … a cream-colored envelope, addressed in a very familiar hand.

Her heart skipped a beat. She ripped open the thick envelope.

You are hereby invited to the commissioning of Julian Maurice Gastineaux as a Second Lieutenant in the United States Air Force ROTC, Detachment 520 at Cornell University on Saturday 14, May at 1300 hrs in the Statler Auditorium.

On the back, scrawled in that same familiar bold script, was the message, “Hope you’ll come. Really need to talk to you. J.” So much for sleep.

It was nuts, realizing a simple name on a piece of paper could send her spiraling through a past filled with what-ifs and paths not taken. Because Julian Gastineaux, soon to be Second Lieutenant Julian Gastineaux, was her own personal path not taken.

Two

Camp Kioga, Ulster County, New York Five years earlier

The summer before her senior year of high school, the last thing Daisy wanted to do was stay in a musty lakeside cabin with her dad and little brother. She had to, though. They were making her do it.

Although neither of her parents said much to her and Max, their family was in the process of breaking up. Her mom and dad couldn’t keep up the pretense of being a happy couple, even though they’d been trying for years. Her dad’s solution was to retreat from their Upper East Side home to the Bellamy family compound—historic Camp Kioga on Willow Lake—and act like everything was dandy.

Well, nothing was dandy and Daisy was determined to prove it. She’d packed her bag with a summer’s worth of hair products, an iPod, an SLR camera and a goodly supply of pot and cigarettes.

Though determined to ignore the mesmerizing beauty of the lakeside camp, she felt herself being unsettled by the deep isolation, the pervasive quiet, the haunting views.

The last thing she was expecting, out here in the middle of nowhere, was to meet someone. Turned out a boy her age had also been sentenced to summer camp, though for entirely different reasons.

When he first walked into the main pavilion at the dinner hour, she felt a funny kind of heat swirl through her and thought maybe the summer was not going to be so boring after all.

He looked like every dangerous thing grown-ups warned her about. He had a tall, lean, powerful body and a way of carrying himself that exuded confidence, maybe even arrogance. He was of mixed race, with tattoos marking his café au lait skin, pierced ears and long dreadlocks.

He sauntered over to the buffet table where she was standing, as if drawn to the invisible heat coursing through her.

“Just so you know,” said the tall kid, “this is the last place I wanted to spend the summer.”

“Just so you know,” Daisy said, making herself sound as cool as he did, “it wasn’t my choice, either. What’re you doing here, anyway?”

“It was either this—working on this dump with my brother, Connor—or a stint in juvey,” he said easily.

Juvey. He tossed off the word, clearly assuming she was familiar with the concept. She wasn’t, though. Juvenile detention was something that happened to kids from the ghetto or barrio.

“You’re Connor’s brother?”

“Yep.”

“You don’t look like brothers.” Connor was all clean-cut and WASPy, a lumberjack from the wilds of the North, while Julian looked dark … and dangerous, alternative’s alternative.

“Half brothers,” he said nonchalantly. “Different dads. Connor doesn’t want me here, but our mom made him look after me.”

Connor Davis was the contractor in charge of renovating Camp Kioga to get it ready for the fiftieth anniversary of Daisy’s grandparents. Everyone was supposed to be pitching in on the project, but she hadn’t expected to encounter someone like this. Even before learning his name, she sensed something fundamental about this boy. In the deepest, most mysterious way imaginable, he was destined to be important to her.

His name was Julian Gastineaux, and like her, he was between his junior and senior years of high school, but other than that, they had nothing in common. She was from New York City’s Upper East Side, the product of a privileged but unhappy family and a tony prep school. He was from a crappy area of Chino, California, downwind of the cattle lots.

Like moths around a candle flame, they danced around each other through dinner; later they were assigned cleanup duty. She didn’t raise her normal objection to the manual labor. An intimate camaraderie sprang up between them as they worked. She found herself fascinated by the ropy strength of his forearms and the sturdy breadth of his hands. As they were hanging up their dish towels, their shoulders brushed, and the brief encounter was electrifying in a way she’d never felt with a guy before. She’d known her share of guys, but this was different. She felt a weird kind of recognition that both confused and excited her.

“There’s a fire pit down by the lake,” she said, searching his strange, whiskey-colored eyes to see if he sensed anything, but she couldn’t tell. They were too new to one another. “Maybe we could go down there and have a fire.”

“Yeah, we could hold hands and sing ‘Kumbaya’”

“A couple of nights without TV or internet, and you’ll be begging for ‘Kumbaya’”

“Right.” His cocky smile quickly and easily gave way to sweetness. Daisy wondered if he realized that.

She found her dad as he was leaving the dining room. “Can we go make a fire on the beach?” Daisy asked.

“You and Julian?” His suspicious eyes flicked from her to the tall kid.

“Duh. Yeah, Dad. Me and Julian.” She tried to maintain her attitude. She didn’t want him to think she was actually starting to like it here, stuck in this rustic Catskills camp while all her friends were partying on the beaches of the Hamptons.

To her surprise, Julian spoke up: “I promise I’ll be on my best behavior, sir.”

It was gratifying to see her dad’s eyebrows lift in surprise. Hearing the word sir come from the mouth of the Dreadlocked One was clearly unexpected.

“He will,” Connor Davis said, joining them and passing a look to his brother. The stare he fixed on Julian showed exactly which brother was in charge.

“I guess it’s all right,” her dad said. He could probably tell Connor would kick Julian’s ass if the kid stepped out of line. “I might come out to check on you later.”

“Sure, Dad,” Daisy said, forcing brightness into her tone. “That’d be great.”

She and Julian were both pretty lame at making a fire, but she didn’t really care. They used a box of kitchen matches down to the final one before the pile of twigs finally caught. When the breeze wafted smoke right at her, she happily wedged herself snugly against Julian. He didn’t put the moves on her, but he didn’t move away, either. In fact, simply being near him felt amazing, not like making out with guys from school, under the bleachers at the athletic field, or at the Brownstones at Columbia, where she lied about her age in order to get into a college party.

Once the flames were dancing nicely in the fire pit, she saw him studying the reflection on the black surface of the lake.

“I was here once before,” he said. “When I was eight.”

“Seriously? You came to summer camp?”

He laughed a little. “It’s not like I had a choice. Connor was a counselor here that year, and he was stuck watching me that summer.”

She waited for a further explanation, but he stayed silent. “Because …” she prompted.

His smile faded. “Because there was no one else.”

The loneliness of his words, the thought of a child having no one but a half brother, struck her in a tender place. She decided not to press him for details, but man. She wanted to know more about this guy. “So what’s your story now?”

“My mother’s an out-of-work performer—sings, dances, acts,” he said.

What, did he think she was going to let him off the hook? “That’s your mother’s story. I was wondering about yours.”

“I got in trouble with the law in May,” he said.

Now that, she thought, was interesting. Fascinating. Dangerous. She leaned forward, pressing even closer.

“So what was the incident? Did you steal a car? Deal drugs?” The minute she said the words, she wanted to die. She was an idiot. He’d think she was racial profiling him.

“I raped a girl,” he informed her. “Maybe I raped three.”

“Okay,” she said, “I deserved that. And I know you’re lying.” She looped her arms around her drawn-up knees.

He was quiet for a bit, as if trying to make up his mind whether or not to be ticked off. “Let’s see. They caught me using the high dive at a public pool after dark, skateboarding down a spiral parking lot ramp … stuff like that. A couple of weeks ago, I got caught bungee jumping off a highway bridge with a homemade bungee cord. The judge ordered a change of scenery for me this summer, said I had to do something productive. Trust me, helping renovate a summer camp in the Catskills is the last thing I want to do.”

The image she had of him did a quick one-eighty. “Why would you go bungee jumping off a bridge?”

“Why wouldn’t you?” he asked.

“Oh, let me see. You could break every bone in your body. Wind up paralyzed. Brain dead. Or plain dead.”

“People wind up dead every day.”

“Yeah, but jumping off bridges tends to hasten the process.” She shuddered.

“It was awesome. I’d do it again in a heartbeat. I’ve always liked flying.”

He’d given her the perfect opening. She reached into her pocket and took out an eyeglasses case, flipping it open to reveal a fat, misshapen joint. “Then you’ll like this.”

With the glowing end of a twig, she lit up and inhaled.

“This is my kind of flying.” Hoping she’d succeeded in shocking him, she held it out to Julian.

“I’ll pass,” he said.

What? Pass? Who passed on a hit from a joint?

He must have read her mind, because he grinned. “I need to watch myself. See, the judge in California gave my mother a choice—I had to leave town for the summer or do time in juvenile detention. By coming here, I get the bungee-jumping incident wiped off my record.”

“Fair enough,” she conceded, but kept holding out the joint. “You won’t get caught.”

“I don’t partake.”

Ridiculous. What was he, some kind of Boy Scout? His reticence bothered her, made her feel judged by him. “Come on. It’s really good weed. We’re out in the middle of nowhere.”

“I’m not worried about that,” he said. “Just don’t like getting high.”

“Whatever.” Feeling slightly ridiculous, she added a twig to the fire, watched it burn. “A girl’s got to find her fun where she can.”

“So are you having fun?” he asked.

She squinted at him through the smoke, wondering if she’d ever asked herself that question. “So far, this whole summer has been … weird. It’s supposed to be a lot more fun. I mean, think about it. It’s our last summer as regular kids. By this time next year, we’ll be working and getting ready for college.”

“College.” Leaning back on his elbows, he gazed up at the stars. “That’s a good one.”

“Aren’t you planning to go to college?”

He laughed.

“What?” She let the joint smolder between her fingers, not caring if it went out.

“No one’s ever asked me that before.”

She found that hard to believe. “Teachers and advisers haven’t been hounding you since ninth grade?”

He laughed again. “At my school, they figure they’re doing a good job if a kid makes it through without dropping out, having a baby or being sent up.”

She tried to imagine such a world. “Up where?”

“Sent up means doing time at juvenile hall or worse, prison.”

“You should change schools.”

Again, that joyless laughter. “It’s not like I get to choose. I go to my closest public school.”

She was skeptical. “And your school doesn’t prepare you for college.”

He shrugged. “Most guys get some crappy job at a car wash and play the lottery and hope for the best.”

“You don’t seem like most guys.” She paused, studying the bemused expression on his face. “What? Why are you looking at me like that?”

“I’m nobody special.”

She didn’t believe that for a second. “Look, I’m not saying college is, like, nirvana or something, but it sure as hell beats working at a car wash.”

“College costs all kinds of dough I don’t have.”

“That’s what scholarships are for.” She flashed on the year-end assembly that had taken place a few weeks earlier. She would have skipped out, except the alumni magazine had needed her to take pictures. Some military guys had given a presentation on how to get paid to go to school. She’d zoned out during the presentation, but the topic had stuck with her. “Then get into the ROTC. Reserve Officer Training Corps. The military picks up the cost of your schooling. Earn while you learn, that’s what they said.”

“Yeah, but there’s a catch. There’s always a catch. They send you to war.”

“They’d probably let you do more than bungee jumping.”

“What are you, a recruiter for these guys?”

“Just telling you what I know.” She didn’t really care whether or not this kid went to college. For that matter, she didn’t really care whether or not she got into college. Pot tended to make her chatty. She put the now-cold joint into a Ziploc bag to save for later. Maybe to save for somebody who wanted to get high with her. The trouble was, she really only felt like hanging out with Julian. There was something about him. “It must be weird to go to a high school where no one helps you get into college,” she said. “But just because no one’s helping you doesn’t mean you can’t help yourself.”

“Sure.” He tossed another dry branch on the fire. “Thanks for the public service announcement.”

“You’ve got a chip on your shoulder,” she said.

“And you’ve got your head in the clouds.”

Daisy laughed aloud, tilting back her head as she imagined the notes of her voice floating upward with the sparks and smoke from the fire. She felt wonderful around him, and it wasn’t the pot. She liked him. She really, really liked this guy. He was different and special and kind of mysterious. He didn’t touch her, though she wanted him to. He didn’t kiss her, though she wanted that, too. He simply sat back and offered a subtle, slightly lopsided smile.

Those eyes, she thought, feeling a peculiar warmth shudder through her. She looked into them and thought, Hello, other half of my soul. It’s good to finally meet you.

Present Day

Daisy pondered her history with Julian far more than she should, especially at times like this, the middle of the night, when she was all by herself, her body aching for a human touch. If her life had followed a movie script, everything would have been simple after that first unlikely, electrifying meeting. The music would swell, the birds would sing, and that would be that. Go directly to happily ever after. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. Just go.

It was a lot of baggage to lay on the first meeting of two teenagers, she acknowledged. The wilderness camp had been the ideal setup for a summer romance—two star-crossed kids, attracted to each other against all common sense … forced apart at summer’s end by families who didn’t understand them. Perfect.

Except things hadn’t played out that way. Instead, Daisy and Julian had done the impossible. Resisting the heady rush of revved up hormones, they had spent the summer in an agony of yearning, and by some miracle they hadn’t hooked up. It wasn’t really a miracle, but Julian’s self-restraint. He’d made a vow to his brother to stay out of trouble, and it hadn’t taken her long to realize he was a man of his word. At summer’s end, they had gone their separate ways, resigning themselves to circumstances.

She should have realized they never had a chance to be more to each other than a summer memory. Back in Manhattan that fall, Daisy went a little nuts at the start of her senior year in high school. She’d made an incredibly bad decision that had resulted in an incredibly precious gift—Charlie, born the summer after graduation. But just because she’d had a baby didn’t mean she could forget Julian. She never had. She kept waiting and hoping their time would come. But she had a kid, and Julian had a dream of his own to follow.

She tried to read between the lines of the invitation to his commissioning ceremony, a futile endeavor, since it was printed, like all the others had been. The words on the back could be interpreted in a variety of ways. Did he really want to see her, or was he simply being polite?

She didn’t know, because she was in a weird place with him, like always. Despite a mutual, undeniable attraction, she tried to stay resigned to the fact that she and Julian were destined to go their own ways. He was a graduating senior at Cornell, focusing on school and on his ROTC program, as well he should. She lived in Avalon now, a place that had seemed as bleak as Siberia when she’d first seen it that first summer at Camp Kioga. These days, she called it home because it was close to family, the best place to raise Charlie.

There didn’t seem to be any way for her and Julian to be together without one of them sacrificing everything. Some things, she told herself often, simply weren’t meant to be. Still, she couldn’t help but dream, and in the deepest, most sleepless hours of the night, she caught herself wondering if her time would ever come, if she’d ever experience the searing joy of love her camera captured, wedding after wedding.

A small inner voice reminded her that she’d had her chance, not so long ago. There had been a ring, a proposal … but she’d been too scared and confused to even consider it. She’d opted instead for a year of studying abroad with Charlie, which ultimately proved to her how very much she needed her family.

Oh, Daisy, she thought. Figure out your own heart. How hard could it be?

Torn and restless, she set down the invitation and walked away, her chest already squeezing tight with emotion. Julian had always had that effect on her, from the first moment they’d met as teenagers.

Yet in spite of the diverging paths their lives took, their connection persisted. During their college years—she at SUNY New Paltz, he at Cornell—they managed to see each other on rare occasions. Whenever their school holidays synched up and didn’t bump up against his ROTC training and duties, they stole time together. And on each occasion, the yearning that had begun all those summers ago flared, more intense than ever. It seemed to grow despite all the life events that intervened. They continued to seek each other out, but it was never enough. She didn’t understand it, tried to rationalize it away, because being with a guy like Julian seemed so impossible. Their lives kept leading them away from each other. He had the ROTC and Cornell, and she had Charlie, work and … Charlie’s dad. No wonder things had never worked out for her and Julian.

Sometimes when Daisy fantasized about being with Julian, she tried to imagine him and Charlie together, like father and son.

But the painful fact was, Julian seemed adamant about not taking on that role. He was nice enough to Charlie, yet she could see Julian keeping his distance. She recalled a time when Charlie had slipped and called Julian “Daddy.” Julian had winced visibly and said, “I’m not your daddy, boy.”

Little had he known the remark would give rise to a nickname. From that day onward, Charlie had dubbed Julian “Daddy-boy.”

When you were a single mom, Daisy reminded herself, your life was dictated by the needs of your child. Charlie needed a dad, not a daddy-boy.

Against all expectations, Logan was a pretty great dad. Like Daisy, he’d earned his degree from SUNY New Paltz and settled in Avalon. He had bought an insurance agency from a guy who was retiring. Business was brisk. Despite hard economic times, people still needed to cover their asses in case something happened. Daisy didn’t know whether or not he felt passionate about his career, but he was totally devoted to Charlie. So far, their unconventional arrangement was working out.

Sometimes she caught herself wondering if this was really supposed to be her life.

She sighed, picked up the invitation once more, and turned the reply card over and over in her hands. The commissioning ceremony sounded important. It was important. Everything Julian had done since high school was important. With no money, nothing but brains and ambition, he had done exactly as she’d suggested that summer. He had qualified for ROTC to finance college. It was the only time she’d given advice and it had actually worked out. In exchange for his Ivy League education, he owed the next four years of his life to the air force, longer if he later qualified for pilot training.

This service incursion meant he might be sent anywhere in the world.

Anywhere but here, she thought, thinking about the place she called home—impossibly small, impossibly quaint Avalon, of absolute zero strategic value to the military.

She double-checked the date of the event.

Yes, she was free that day. Wendela’s Wedding Wonders employed several photographers and technicians, and Daisy wasn’t scheduled for anything that weekend. She could ask Logan to watch Charlie, and she could go to the event in Ithaca, camera in hand, to document this most auspicious moment.

She wanted to go. She needed to go. She needed to find some serious private time with Julian. After years of yearning for him, years of stumbling toward each other, only to be pulled apart by circumstances, she finally saw her chance.

Once and for all, she would do what she should have done long ago.

It was time to get real with Julian, with herself. She would have to be completely honest. Finally, after all this time, she was going to tell him exactly how she felt. Judging by his cryptic note on the back, she suspected he might be thinking the same thing.