Chapter Seven. Duncan
Duncan had owned the cabin for a few months, but it had only been habitable for the past few weeks. The porch was nearly as large as its interior, and it greeted him with percussive creaks underfoot whenever he climbed the steps.
The cabin sat at an angle facing west instead of head-on toward the water as lakefront properties usually did. Whoever designed it nearly eighty years ago had optimized it for sunset views over Lake Vesper, and the corridor of pines and sugar maples that loomed around it was obviously far older than the cabin itself. Every one of Duncan’s instincts told him that the place had been built to collaborate with nature rather than defy it.
To the west, a few other lonely cabins dotted the shoreline. Most mornings when he sat out there with his mug of tea, he felt like the only soul for miles, save the occasional old-timer in a canoe and a few loudmouthed kingfishers in the cattails. Now, the place was alive with the sounds of music and his family’s laughter and conversation.
A cheap cork dartboard hung from a rusty wreath hook to the right of the front door. Patrick’s first throw went high, his dart sinking into the weathered wooden plaque that hung above the cabin door: DOG STAR COTTAGE it read in rustic block letters.
“Watch it, asshole.” Duncan reached up and tugged the dart free.
Patrick waved a hand toward the sign. “What does that even mean, anyway?”
“I don’t know. The place didn’t come with an owner’s manual.”
Duncan wasn’t sure of the origin of the cabin’s name, but it was one of the things that had made him fall in love with it. There was a grove of flowering dogwoods around the back, at the edge of the forest of taller trees. The porch also faced toward Sirius, the night sky’s brightest star. The Dog Star. Harry had a more whimsical idea—that the place was somehow the inspiration for Keanu Reeves’s band’s name, Dogstar.
A FOR SALE BY OWNER sign for the cabin had lingered for about a year at the top of the gravel access road it shared with his folks’ property. Its four waterfront acres were in a flood plain, and the cabin itself was a structural disaster that no potential buyers wanted to contend with. Duncan had glanced at that damned sign every day for months as he drove to and from the vineyard and Linden, or Vesper Notch, or the dozens of other places in the valley that Brady Brothers Contracting took him. He had watched the letters fade from red to pink to gray, until it was just OWN that remained legible.
He’d told himself that if it hadn’t sold by March, he’d buy it. To flip, maybe. Fix all the mess that was too daunting for the average person, then maybe sell it at a profit to some suburban executive who wanted to pretend he was Ralph Waldo Emerson on the weekends. Maybe turn it into a glamping rental for bougie Philadelphians, or make it a premium lodging option for vineyard tourists once his folks opened the bed-and-breakfast at the end of the year.
Then he saw it up close, and he fell in love the way he always did: fast, hard, and under the most inconvenient circumstances imaginable.
It had been the last day in February, late in the afternoon. He’d turned down the muddy access road on his way back from Linden instead of continuing up to the vineyard, and he’d felt an odd sort of inevitability as the cabin came into view. Like he’d committed to an arranged marriage and was about to see his bride for the first time. When he’d closed the door of his truck behind him, a flock of starlings erupted from their communal roost in the trees behind the cabin. Scared the hell out of him. He was convinced that the resulting rush of adrenaline had amplified everything he felt about the place in those first few moments of exploration.
It was the same way he’d felt the first time he’d seen the stone bank barn at his folks’ place. His eyes had seen a crumbling foundation and decades of water damage. His mind had quickly cataloged the financial and labor investments. But his soul had said—bring it.
What was one more project on top of an already overflowing bucket? The ocean didn’t mind when the sky added a little rain.
Nate had the darts now. His first throw bounced off and fell into one of the moving boxes full of Duncan’s belongings below the dartboard. When Nate went to retrieve the dart, he made a low whistle and pulled out a condom box instead. He held it in the air like he’d discovered an anthropological artifact.
“Holy shit,” Nate said. “This is the biggest box of rubbers I’ve ever seen.”
Mal’s forehead creased in a thoughtful frown. “Who the hell still says rubbers?”
“You get that thing at Costco, Ducky?” Patrick laughed.
“What’s the message you’re trying to convey with this?” Nate said. “I’m imagining one of your dates, coming in for a drink or a movie, seeing that giant box, and thinking, Wow, this guy wants me to know he has a lot of sex—”
Duncan tossed back two fingers of bourbon in one go, hissing through his teeth against the afterburn. “All three of you can go straight to hell.”
“Actually.” Nate looked thoughtful and shook the box. “Based on how full this feels, it’s not getting much use.”
“Open the box, chuckleheads,” Duncan said.
Nate slid the worn cardboard lid loose and peeked inside. “Huh.” He tilted the open end of the box toward the others.
“Huh,” echoed Patrick in an identical voice.
There were adhesive bandages inside. Dozens of them, in varied shapes and sizes. Gauze pads. Medical tape. A mostly empty tube of arthritis ointment for his achy knuckles, and some antibacterial cream.
Mal leaned forward to look in the box, then sat back and folded his hands over his waist. “I don’t think you’re doing sex right, man.”
“Wow, you guys are hilarious.” Duncan snatched the box away, closed it, and tossed it back where it came from. “I use my hands for a living.” He held up his right hand to show three knuckles wrapped in white medical tape. Then he curled down all but the middle finger.
“You know I’m a pharmacist, right?” Patrick said. “I can get you a real nice first-aid kit.”
“That box does the job. I like to recycle.”
Laughter erupted down by the lake, and all the brothers turned to look where the women sat on the edge of the dock. Temperance was there, between Maren and Frankie.
Despite being half a foot taller, Frankie bent sideways to rest her head on Temperance’s shoulder. That’s the way it was with Temperance. In a crowd, she wasn’t usually the most outgoing, or the chattiest, or the quirkiest, but she always seemed to be the social nucleus that others naturally gathered around. Like people could sense that her energy was a safe one to tether to. The solid, tough one, even though her physical presence was small.
Hell. Matchsticks were tiny. Only took one of those to start a wildfire.
Duncan could hear the low tones of her voice, but he couldn’t make out the words. Everyone else laughed again, and he had to suppress the urge to smile along with them. Nobody had ever made him laugh the way Temperance could. Her sense of humor was dialed right in on the same frequency as his.
Abandoned buildings weren’t the only things Duncan Brady tended to lose his heart to. He’d been in love a bunch of times since he was old enough to recognize what the feeling was.
Every time, though—it was with her.
“What’s going on with that?” Mal used his cane to point to the dock.
“Well.” Duncan averted his eyes and schooled his expression into a neutral mask. “I need to sand and pressure-wash the wood before someone else gets splinters in their ass—”
Mal interrupted. “Try again.”
Duncan turned away and raked his fingers through his hair. “I should probably reseal it with some kind of anti-slip coating before anyone falls—”
“You know what I’m asking.”
“Carport needs shoring up, too.” He nodded in the direction of the wooden beams supporting a weathered roof next to the cabin. “That thing’s coming down if anyone walks by it and farts too loud—”
Mal sighed. “You’re a clown, Ducky.”
But Mal was a bloodhound for interpersonal drama, and now that Temperance was under his skin again, Duncan felt flayed wide open. It didn’t take much to shred his patience.
“What?”He took the darts from Nate and hurled one at the board. It sank into one of the outer rings.
Nate and Patrick fell in beside Mal. Identical curiosity crested like high tide in the twins’ faces.
“I have no idea what this is about.” Patrick grinned and rubbed his hands together. “But I’m listening.”
“You’re not here often enough.” Mal’s eyes were still locked on Duncan’s. “If you were, you’d know.”
“Oh. Temperance?” Patrick sounded disappointed. “I’ve known about that for years.”
“Hell.” Duncan launched a dart at the board as hard as he could, then another. The final one wedged into the cabin’s wooden paneling.
“Wait—you guys didn’t know?” Patrick blinked. “I’ve known forever. Seven years ago. Harry’s wedding to Nicola. I saw T.J. sneak out of Duncan’s hotel room. I figured it was one of those, like—open-family-secret kind of things.”
“That doesn’t mean anything,” Mal said. “Maybe she was getting something for someone for the wedding—”
Patrick tipped his chin down and raised his eyebrows. “Oh, she’d definitely gotten something—”
“Don’t,” Duncan warned. He made a fist and popped his knuckles.
“—it was six o’clock in the morning, fellas.”
“I hate all three of you.” Duncan collected his darts from the board and slapped them into Mal’s outstretched hand.
That night was after the reception at Harry’s wedding to his first wife. Temperance had shown up at Duncan’s hotel room door, puffy-eyed and as broken as he’d ever seen her. He let her in—why the hell wouldn’t he?—and she’d been the one to initiate it, kissing him with an eager, open mouth. The fingers of one hand had twisted in his hair, the other greedily plunging into the elastic of his boxers.
“Don’t talk,”she’d whispered against his lips, a tiny hitch of desperation in her voice.
At first, Duncan had been overwhelmed with joy and love and lust—and that finally, finally, she’d come back to him. It wasn’t until they were naked and tangled that he’d noticed how desolate she was. The salt of her tears had stung his face.
Hours later, she’d asked him to simply hold her, and she’d cried herself to sleep on his chest after refusing to tell him why she was so upset. Duncan’s deepest insecurities took him to dark places. He’d imagined she was mourning Harry marrying someone else. Using his body to soothe her pain. “Don’t talk,” chanted over and over in his head, and he’d convinced himself it was because she’d wanted to imagine herself with Harry.
Christ, he was an idiot.
It had been a special kind of hell, and the first of dozens over the years where she’d come to him. Every time he’d start to cool off, she’d come around and start kicking at the embers.
Down at the dock, more laughter. Maren whooped, Mercy clapped her hands, and Frankie’s loud, musical laugh danced over the rest. Duncan needed a misdirection fast, and she’d just delivered it to him, wrapped up in an olive-green bikini string bow.
He turned his attention to Mal. “Speaking of being here more than usual lately…”
It took a second for the words to sink in, but when they did, Patrick glanced at Frankie, snapped his fingers, and pointed at Mal, wide-eyed. Nate’s eyebrows shot skyward. “Holy shit, you’re right.”
With his pipe in one hand, Mal took a dart from Duncan and fired it at the board with a tight back-and-forth snap of his forearm. “I write better here.”
“It’s not even your turn, man.” Patrick grabbed the dart from the cork and kept it.
Again in the distance was Frankie’s lilting laugh.
Mal grumbled.
Dryly, Duncan said, “Must be the fresh country air.”
Mal shot two more darts rapid-fire at the board. They sank effortlessly into the bull’s-eye ring, each close enough to the other that the flights touched. “I’m trying to be here more for Charlotte’s sake. So she can have a better relationship with her family.”
“Of course,” Nate said. “And it has nothing to do with Frankie Moreau.”
“Not interested.” Mal pretended to check his watch, but his wrist was bare.
“Patrick, check his pulse,” Duncan said.
“I said, I’m not interested”—Mal took a bracing breath and lowered his voice—“in some Hallmark-y three-brides-for-three-brothers crap—”
Patrick looked offended. “The hell’s wrong with Hallmark, man?”
“Temperance and I are never happening,” Duncan said to Mal, “so if you want to try it with the sublime Miss Moreau—”
“Goddamn it.” Mal glanced to where the kids played kickball with Dad in the stretch of grass near the path to the vineyard. “Don’t say shit like this where Charlotte could hear you.”
“Charlie’s lonely, Mal.”
“I’m aware. But there are worse things than loneliness.” Mal took a long pull from his pipe, followed by a slow exhale of cherry-scented smoke. “Loneliness hurts, but it’s less likely to do damage. I’m not risking her heart with someone who might do what her mother did.”
PATRICKleft to join Mercy in the lake, Mal disappeared to parts unknown to recharge his social battery, and Duncan went inside with Nate to prep dinner.
The little kitchen smelled like sliced cucumber and watermelon, and a tinge of woodsmoke and hot sugar from scorched marshmallows through the open screen. Out the window, late-afternoon sun glazed the water with a candy-bright patina. Temperance wasn’t out at the dock anymore—he’d barely have to glance at a crowd to be able to tell she wasn’t in it. He’d had a lot of practice. He wasn’t ever not looking for her.
Nate stood beside him at the counter, chunking fresh pineapple for Dad’s grilled chicken skewers. “I can’t believe I didn’t notice sooner.”
Duncan was up to his elbows in bubbly dishwater. He tipped his head up and sighed. Cobwebs splayed over a water stain on the ceiling that looked like a staring eyeball. He needed to make sure that leak was managed—
“You know,” Nate continued, “I used to think all the time about what Maren’s life would have been like if I hadn’t come along.”
“Man, you two have a fantastic life.”
“We do now. But it was rough at the beginning. I hated myself for what she had to endure from her parents because of me. But I was too much of a coward to risk losing her. So, I let her.”
“Nobody lets the Madigan women do anything,” Duncan said.
“Solid point,” Nate said. “Listen. When Maren and I first started out, I had to balance protecting her with supporting her as she tried to let her parents back in. When she was pregnant with Alice, we knew when they’d be in Philly for that foundation fundraiser thing they do every year, so we invited them to dinner that weekend. Maren bought onesies that looked like scrubs, and she folded them in a rectangle to look like napkins to set next to the plates.” Nate stopped chopping and hung his head for a moment.
“They didn’t show. Few days later in the mail, we got a gift certificate to some high-end baby boutique in Philly. The reality was that they weren’t going to change their minds about us, and by then, Maren realized that the thing that hurt her the most was thinking she could solve the Corbin and Laine problem if she just tried enough different things. So, she finally let it go. But I couldn’t make that choice for her, and I couldn’t ask her to choose, either, you know?” Out the window, Nate watched Harry bounce baby Leo on his hip while Maren played kickball with the older kids. “You can fight for someone, but you have to be sure they’re ready to be fought for.”
Duncan didn’t respond. He rinsed suds off a pan in the sink, and the water pressure blipped in and out. Pipes thudded in the walls.
“You know—” Nate wasn’t done. “I think it’s bullshit, the notion that two people who worked when they were younger can’t work as adults. Some people really do just… fit. They have to get out of their own way to come together long enough to figure it out, though.”
“You’re just bursting at the fucking seams with folksy wisdom, aren’t you?” Duncan finally said.
Nate chuckled. “Maren would disagree.”
Duncan rolled his shoulders and hesitated. You couldn’t un-ring a bell once it was hit. Sheer curtains at the window above the sink lifted in a warm breeze. Two white flags.
Hell with it.
Finally, Duncan said, “I’ve got a bit of a Corbin and Laine problem of my own.”
“Well, you don’t fall in love with your brother’s wife’s little sister and expect smooth sailing, Ducky.”
Duncan grunted.
“They offer you money to stay away?” Nate kept his expression neutral and didn’t look up from the cutting board. When Duncan didn’t respond, he added, “They offered me five grand.”
“No shit?”
“No shit.”
Duncan took a big breath. “Ten grand.”
Nate laughed. “They must have been way more afraid of you.”
“Eh,” Duncan said. “Either that, or inflation.”
Again, Nate laughed.
“You didn’t take it, though, did you?” Duncan said. “You didn’t take the money.”
“Wait—” Nate lay down his knife and leaned away. “You did?”
Duncan kept his eyes on the sink.
“Ahh, I see now.” Nate started chopping fruit again. “Thus, the Madigan problem.”
“You’re a better man than I am,” said Duncan.
Add it to the list of ways he envied his older brothers. If he were more like Nate, he’d have told Corbin Madigan to fuck off into space. If he were Harry, he’d have never made the mistakes he’d made with Temperance in the first place—but if he had, he’d have worked things out with her thoughtfully and thoroughly, and they’d be celebrating a double-digit wedding anniversary with a brood of baby Bradys by now.
But he wasn’t like them. He was an idiot.
“Hell. I was much older than you, Ducky. If I’d been eighteen and hotheaded and emotional—I’d have taken the fucking money, too. Ten grand is Monopoly dollars to the Madigans.”
Duncan’s low huh was humorless. “The money itself isn’t really the problem.”
“Then what—” Again, Nate froze. “Oh, shit. Temperance doesn’t know.”
“Nope.”
“What’d you do with it?”
Duncan pulled the plug on the sink and dried his hands. “Did what investors call a buy-and-hold, even though I didn’t realize what I was doing at the time. I found the first name in an alphabetical list that I recognized and put the whole ten grand in it. Then I just—left it. Never touched it until about six months ago.”
Nate made a low whistle.
Duncan flipped the towel over his shoulder. “I’ve been trying to give the ten grand back to them since the fall, but they won’t return my calls. I’ve even tried sending checks to their goddamned foundation, but they never clear—” He cut off when the cabin’s screen door opened. The way it squealed sounded like Rowan’s demon donkey. Quieter, he said, “I can’t do anything about Temperance until I get square with her parents. But they’re not letting me. It’s like they know—”
“Where’s my pineapple?” Dad shouted from the little living room. The creaky door banged closed.
“Hey.” Duncan put a hand on Nate’s arm. “Later—tell me more about that annual fundraiser.”