"Not that I can recall. Dad kept her so alive for me. I don't even know how much of what I know about her is memory and how much of it is what he told me." She arranged the flowers and ran a hand over the rough top of the stone at the head of her parents' graves. "I'm fine," she told them quietly, then went to leave a spray of mums for Isobel Dolan.

Lucy walked away from the memorial park with a sense of finality, much like the one she'd felt when they'd left Dolan's. She'd probably come back someday, but she no longer needed to.

Before they went to pick up Crockett, Boone talked her into showing him the high school where she'd graduated nineteenth in her cla.s.s, the swimming pool where she'd learned to swim-though never very well-and the house with a tower room and two stained gla.s.s windows that she used to dream of living in.

"Living in an apartment above the restaurant was okay," she said, leaning out the car window and smiling at the big gray house and the white fence that surrounded it. "We had plenty of room for privacy and there was even a patio so we could sit outside, but it wasn't like having a real porch. We didn't even have a kitchen table or island, because we never ate or entertained up there. It wasn't that I was ashamed of our apartment. I just wanted to be like everyone else." She drew her head back inside the car and grinned ruefully at Boone.

He smiled back. "What everyone between the ages of ten and eighteen or so wants, I think."

She closed her eyes, wandering into the past. "My girlfriends loved Dad. He was the ultimate charmer. And they liked the restaurant because it was elegant in a family kind of way-we used to do our homework around the fireplace and the wait-staff would serve us milk and cookies. But I loved my friends' houses, their family rooms with clutter and dog hair and nosy little brothers. Andy was like a brother to me, but he had his own home, his own family." She sniffed, embarra.s.sed by the tears that pushed at the backs of her eyes. "They all had mothers."

He nodded, the pain slipping across his features quickly enough she almost thought she imagined it. But she knew better. She'd never had a single feeling of loss that he hadn't experienced himself. In her whole life, she'd never felt as close to anyone as she was to the man beside her in the car.

"I still miss her," she said. "Dad, too, but in a different way because he didn't die young the way she did." She laughed, though it caught in her throat. She was a little embarra.s.sed by her own sentimentality. "It's as though she's the music in my heart. She called me Lucy Goosy once in a while, not often, and I can still hear her saying it. And sometimes I smell something that helps fill the hole that was made by her absence. Lavender-scented soap or those pomanders made from oranges and cloves."

Before she knew it was coming, without so much as a tingle on her eyelids, the storm of weeping took over her senses. Boone's arms came around her and she sobbed into his shoulder, her fingers clutching the soft cotton of his shirt.

"Shh," he whispered, his fingers tunneling gently through her hair. "It'll be okay. Really it will."

Just as she had never cried this hard or this long over the loss of her parents, she'd also never felt this depth of comfort. No one's voice besides Boone's had ever soothed her very soul. No other arms had made her feel safe, as though everything would indeed be all right.

The unmistakable sounds of a basketball game in progress reached them as they approached the doors to the school gymnasium across the street from the church where Crockett served. They stepped inside to see a three-on-two shirts-and-skins compet.i.tion. The trash talk was loud and colorful. Lucy, a self-proclaimed prude when it came to language, felt a blush climb up her cheeks.

"Yo!" Boone yelled, and caught the no-look pa.s.s from Crockett. Boone dribbled onto the court, tossed the basketball into the waiting hands of a kid poised just outside the three-point line, and leaned past the opposition to shake hands with the sweating priest. "Why are you so wet? Are you ready to go to the beach?"

"Will be as soon as we take care of these limp-these young men here. It shouldn't take us long. You up for it?"

"Oh, h.e.l.l, yeah."

"He's pretty old, Father," commented a young black man whose vertical jump ended somewhere around Boone's chin. "Ain'tcha worried he might croak on you?"

"Don't say 'ain't,' Anton." Crockett slapped the ball right out of the boy's hands. "Got it, Boone?"

"Yup." Boone dribbled outside the key to give his own best effort from the three-point line.

Swoosh! Nothing but net.

Hot d.a.m.n, he didn't know he had it in him.

Crockett beamed at him. "Not bad for an old guy."

"We let him," jeered a kid whose shorts were hanging down around his ankles, "on account of he's your company, Father."

"Let me?" Boone cut in, then stole the ball. "Old guy?" He wondered how these guys could run without losing their pants altogether. Of course, if they did lose them, it would give a much-needed advantage to the geezer group.

They all kept their pants on, though just barely, and, unlike him, they weren't winded after two trips up and down the length of the basketball court.

"Are we ahead?" He hoped he didn't hyperventilate in front of Lucy and everybody. That would be so d.a.m.n embarra.s.sing, but his lungs were rattling with every breath.

"Almost." Crockett, whose vertical jump was marginally higher and a whole lot more graceful than Boone's, rebounded neatly and pa.s.sed to him. "Bring us home so we can get out of here without being completely humiliated."

"I can't usually do this more than once." Boone dribbled toward the corner of the key. "Don't run over me," he warned the kid who was guarding him. "I'm old and I'm the Big Daddy there's best friend and that's my girlfriend over in the bleachers. I don't want to look bad in front of her."

"Not to mention you could show up in the comics." Crockett hipped in front of the kid so Boone had a clear shot. "And he's not a good enough artist to make you come out pretty, Moses."

Boone made the shot. Nothing but net again. Better quit while he was ahead.

"We're done." Crockett echoed his thoughts. "See you guys next week. Don't forget to go to ma.s.s. I'll be gone, but Sister Joseph will be watching."

"She's a whole lot scarier than you, Father," one of the boys mumbled, hiking his pants up.

Crockett pulled Lucy into a hug and spoke over her shoulder. "And don't forget it. Also remember that the old guys just beat you. It was a good lesson in humility."

"More like that one's a ringer." The one called Moses jerked a thumb in Boone's direction.

"Let me grab a shower." Crockett locked the gymnasium doors when they left "Then I'll be ready to go."

A few hours later, Lucy pulled the rental car into the carport of a large stucco house on a relatively uncrowded stretch of beach. "This," she said, getting out and gazing around, "is a whole lot different from a two-star motel. Are you sure we can be here, Crockett? I don't have enough money to bail you guys out if we're breaking and entering. Even if I wanted to bail you out, I mean."

"I'm sure." The priest, wearing decidedly secular and very old Notre Dame shorts and a ragged T-shirt, bounced his fingers on the keypad of the door lock. "It belongs to my dad."

"Whoa." Boone spoke from where he was getting things out of the trunk of the car. "When did he move down here?"

"He didn't, but he bought this house. A one-up on my mother, I suppose. You know, a way to show that he's so devoted to spending time with their son that he's willing to buy a vacation home for that purpose."

"Hmm." There was no reason to state the obvious, that such devotion was a long and too-late time coming. Boone stepped inside behind Lucy. "Nice place."

"It is. There are four bedrooms upstairs and they all have their own baths. I always sleep in the green one. Take what you want from the others, though I don't recommend the master suite. Someone went a little overboard with brocade and velvet-nightmare stuff."

It was a little uncomfortable being with a priest and a girl you had a fairly complicated relationship with. Were he and Lucy to the sharing-a-room point yet? Even if they were, would she want to do that when Crockett was there? More importantly, would she want to do...other things when Crockett was there?

"You can take my stuff upstairs and give me whichever room has the toilet seat down in the bathroom." Lucy answered the uppermost question in his mind. "I'm checking out the food situation and making a list, because I want to cook in this glorious kitchen."

"Is she always this bossy?" Crockett asked, heading toward the stairway that was in the dining room.

Boone nodded. "Usually."

"Good. I like that in a woman."

"I didn't think you were allowed to like anything in a woman."

"I'm a priest. I'm not dead."

There was something in the testy response that made Boone say, "You okay?"

Crockett turned enough to meet his gaze, and Boone was surprised at the turmoil in his friend's expression. He felt Crockett's pain as certainly as he had when they were joined-at-the-hip adolescents. "Can I help?"

"Counsel the counselor?" Crockett asked dryly. "Nah, I'm fine, Boone, but thanks." He gestured. "Give Lucy the blue room. It's girly."

"Speaking of girls, Kelly said h.e.l.lo." Boone set Lucy's suitcase on the end of the white wicker bed. Crockett was right-it was girly and she would like it.

"Did she? Tell her hey back." Crockett's answer was polite, his face impa.s.sive.

Boone rolled his eyes. Whatever had happened between his sister and his best friend was years old-it needed to go away. Kelly had still been in high school when she'd had her painful and unrequited crush on Crockett, who had been horrified by the turn of events.

"It would be like doing the nasty with my sister," he'd told Boone at one point. "That would be something you'd have to beat the h.e.l.l out of me for and we both know I can kick your a.s.s from here to kingdom come."

They'd laughed, but it hadn't been quite comfortable. Kelly's infatuation had thrown a cog into the smooth wheel of the relationship the three of them shared, one that Boone and Crockett got past fairly quickly, but Kelly did not. Boone thought of saying something now, of suggesting Crockett make his peace with Kelly, but then Crockett opened the door of the room beside Lucy's. "If you take the yellow room, you and Lucy can sneak back and forth and I'll never hear a thing."

The moment pa.s.sed.

Lucy loved the kitchen at Tea on Twilight, but she had to admit it was technologically inferior to this one by a couple of decades and thousands of dollars.

"There's not a squeaky cupboard door in the place," she marveled when the men came into the room, "and if there's a junk drawer, I haven't found it."

"What kind of kitchen doesn't have a junk drawer?" Boone looked up at the complicated ceiling structure with its hanging pot racks and skylights.

"One like this." Crockett went to the coffeepot and filled three cups with the fresh-ground brew Lucy had just made. "I tried to establish a junky little area in the pantry one time when I was here, but when I came back, it was gone."

"You made that up," Lucy accused, opening one of the doors to the refrigerator. "Fresh shrimp and strip steak? Someone knew we were coming, right?"

"I called ahead," said Crockett, "and I did make it up, but I want you to be comfortable here. However, fresh meat and produce aside, Boone and I thought we'd take you out to dinner tonight-" he arrowed a sharp "go-along-with-me" glance at Boone, "-in the hope that you will cook for us tomorrow."

"Oh, is that what you thought?" She eyed them across the counter, her gaze moving from laughing Irish blue eyes to fathomless dark brown ones.

She really wanted to lose herself in the brown ones. The hairs on her arms stood up just thinking about it.

"How about we go out tomorrow?" she said. "I'll cook tonight. Breakfast tomorrow is up to you, Crockett, and Boone can do lunch. Sound fair?"

By the time they sat at the table on the deck with grilled steak, shrimp scampi, and a bottle of wine Lucy was certain hadn't come from the cheaper end of the aisle at the supermarket, she was feeling at least a modic.u.m of the comfort Crockett had mentioned.

"Have you decided what you're going to do about the strips?" Crockett asked Boone, scooping rice onto his plate and pa.s.sing the bowl.

Lucy looked up in surprise. The comic strips? Boone had mentioned ending "Elmer and Myrtle" once, but had never brought it up again. He wouldn't, would he? It would be like sending Sims and Gert to the old folks' home.

"Not really. Micah's doing more of the writing than he wants to. He still has a family and a paper to run, not to mention poker on Thursday nights-the dude has his priorities. I need to hire an a.s.sistant to work with me in Chicago, but I'm reluctant..."

"Maybe it's time to move on," Crockett suggested.

Boone's eyes gazed toward the Atlantic's crashing waves. He seemed a million miles away. "Maybe it is." He sighed. "Of course, after eating this dinner, I won't be able to move at all."

He was, though. When Crockett offered to load the dishwasher, Boone grabbed Lucy's hand. "Come on. Let's. .h.i.t the beach before he changes his mind."

"I've got calls to make anyway." Crockett held up his cell phone. "Take your time."

"Your bookie again?" Boone shook his head. "You oughta be ashamed."

"And you oughta be locked up. Lucy, take him away."

"Come on, doofus." Lucy laughed as she pulled Boone out of the house and down to the water. "Oh, isn't it beautiful?" Her voice bounced up and down with the roar of the waves, making her laugh again.

"It is."

They walked along, stepping into the water now and then, pointing at far-off sailboats and the swirling colors of the evening sky.

"What did Crockett mean when he said it was time for you to move on?" she asked, giving up the whole notion of minding her own business. "Are you still thinking of retiring 'Elmer and Myrtle'?"

"No. It would be easier if I was. Crockett was just telling me to fish or cut bait with the new strip. It's a good one and my syndicate has indicated they would buy it. Lots of the papers that publish 'Elmer and Myrtle' would probably take on 'Eight Hours Work,' too, but it's more than I want to do. That being said, the idea of just turning it over to someone for them to choose who writes and draws it is a lot like giving away a pet after you've already housebroken it and let it sleep on your bed."

"Then don't give it up. Just hire the a.s.sistant you were talking about, and if you ever want it back, it will be there. Shedding on the sheets and chewing your shoes." You've already had to give up too much. She stepped into the water, holding up her long skirt. "Think about what you want to be doing with your life in ten years." She didn't meet his eyes, afraid of what he would say. Or wouldn't.

His arms came around her, pulling her full-length against him. His cheek sandpapered against hers, and she smiled at the sensation.

But he didn't answer.

Boone crawled between the sheets in the yellow room, thinking of the suggestion Lucy had made a couple of hours before. Think about what you want to be doing with your life in ten years. He'd be nearly forty-seven. Would he still be living on memories and regrets over things lost? Dancing on the edges of relationships because he knew beyond all doubt if he moved to the center, there was no going back?

"Probably," he muttered aloud, pulling the sheet over his bare shoulder and closing his eyes to listen to the sound of the ocean. It was like Lake Michigan on steroids. He fell asleep almost instantly, soothed by the raucous lullaby, wondering somewhere in the back of his mind what Lucy wore to bed.

He didn't know what woke him before dawn. He put on the shorts and T-shirt he'd worn the night before and stepped out onto the deck. Even now, the beach wasn't deserted. A few joggers ran close to water's edge, walkers with dogs sauntered at a safe distance. A runner with a familiar gait was directly behind the house. Boone walked toward the water and fell into step beside him.

"Far be it from me to criticize anyone for running from their problems," Boone said dryly, "but doing it in the middle of the night is just crazy."

Crockett's sidelong glance was half irritation, half amus.e.m.e.nt. "You should know. I seem to remember a few three a.m. runs with you."

"You listened. It was a big help."

"I wasn't listening. I was winded and couldn't talk."

"Bulls.h.i.t."

They ran for a long time, breaking the silence only with heavy breathing and the occasional grunt when the sand was too wet and sucked at their feet. "I'm at the same place you are." Crockett's voice sounded hollow in the night. "In a way, at least. At a crossroads, not having the slightest idea which way to go."

"You thinking of leaving the priesthood?" It had been difficult to become accustomed to Crockett as a clergyman-now it was hard to imagine him not being one.

"I don't know. Sometimes I feel like it's leaving me." Crockett shook his head, drops of perspiration flying from his dark hair. "I'll be fine. What should happen will happen. What about you, though? When are you going back to Chicago?"

"Two weeks, if the guy living in my apartment finds a place to live. I haven't pushed him."

"Living in the big city losing its charm?"

"No." Living alone is. He left the thought unspoken, but an eye roll from Crockett made him realize he might as well have said it aloud.