C.J. Carmichael - The Dad Next Door

The little girl was adorable.

Allison gave her a second look. She seemed familiar. But Allison couldn’t have met her before. The red wagon in the driveway had Connecticut plates.

She glanced back at the father. Definitely she hadn’t seen him before. She would have remembered. He was slender and tall and moved with a natural grace that reminded her of John F Kennedy, from the old footage she’d seen on TV.

She watched as he scooped up his daughter onto his shoulders, then paused to talk to the movers for a minute. Next, he went to the garage and pulled out the tricycle. Gently he set the girl onto the seat.

“Give it a try,” he urged her. And then his gaze met Allison’s.

Hard to imagine a more glamorous life than being an accountant, isn’t it? Still, CJ Carmichaelgave up the thrills of income tax forms and double entry bookkeeping when she sold her first book in 1998. She has now written over twenty novels and strongly suggests you look elsewhere for financial planning advice.

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For Laura Shin

In appreciation of all the books we have worked on

together and all that you have taught me.

THE EMPTY SEATS in his station wagon haunted Gavin Gray as he drove up to the biggest house on the crescent. He stopped the car and gazed through the windshield at the classic Cape Cod colonial. The house looked a little tired. Welcome to the club. But it had good bones. Cindy Buchanan, his real-estate agent, beckoned to him from the door.

“You have to see this one. It’s a real family home.”

Cindy was a friendly, plump woman in her midfifties. She’d been showing Gavin houses all day, her patience never wavering. He was sure she’d have felt terrible if she knew how much pain her cheerful words had just brought him.

A family home.

He turned around to face what was left of his family—one little girl strapped into a booster chair in the middle of the backseat. “Tory? Want to see another house?”

Predictably, his daughter offered no opinion, but she scrambled out willingly and held his hand as he led her up the sidewalk to the welcoming front porch.

“It has a huge pie-shaped yard. And it’s the only house on this road that backs onto the lake.” Seeing his concerned frown in reaction to her comment, Cindy added quickly, “But there’s a fence, so it’s perfectly safe.”

He walked through the rooms, hardly noticing the details. But then he stopped cold at the sight of the view from the kitchen windows. It was fabulous.

On Golden Pond had been filmed at Squam Lake and the town had never forgotten its moment of cinematic glory. Gavin had seen signs on the main road guiding tourists to the actual sites used in the movie.

“The house does need a little work.” Cindy ran a hand over a crack in the kitchen wall. “It’s changed owners several times in the past few years. You should have seen it when Old Man McLaughlin was still alive.”

He couldn’t have heard that correctly. “Did you say McLaughlin?”

“That’s right. It was just Adele and her daughter living here in the end. And when Marianne left home…”

He felt as if he’d been submerged in ice water. He couldn’t breathe. Was his heart still beating? “Marianne McLaughlin used to live here?”

“Yes. Do you know her?”

How many times had he asked himself that question? The ultimate answer being that he couldn’t have. But he wasn’t about to share that insight with Cindy Buchanan.

He looked around with sharpened interest, trying to picture the beautiful, remote woman in this place. “I used to, but I haven’t seen her in about six years.”

His breathing returned to normal as he contemplated the significance of what he’d just learned. Could it possibly be this easy? “Do you know where Marianne’s living now?”

“Afraid not. She came back once, to bury her mother in the family plot. I haven’t heard anything about her since then. But maybe someone in town has. How did you say you know her?”

He hadn’t. And he wouldn’t. “We were friends.”

“Quite the beautiful girl.”

True enough. Where looks were concerned, Marianne could not be beat.

Tory came round the corner then, moving so quietly that Cindy didn’t even notice her. His daughter had been wandering upstairs, checking out the bedrooms, but Gavin knew that if he asked her whether she liked what she’d seen, Tory wouldn’t have anything to say. Even when Samantha was alive she’d been reluctant to express an opinion, relying on her twin to do it for her.

He decided to try anyway. “So, what do you think?”

Cindy turned in time to see Tory shrug. The real-estate agent’s thin eyebrows rose in surprise. “Speaking of the devil, your daughter looks remarkably like…”

“I think I’ve seen enough.” He wasn’t interested in taking the conversation in that direction. Besides, he really had seen enough. The house was in need of work, but it was on a quiet street and the link to Marianne was a coincidence that couldn’t be ignored.

“I’d like to make an offer.”

Cindy Buchanan looked surprised but pleased.

ON ALLISON BENNETT’S thirtieth birthday she found a special delivery package on her front porch. It wasn’t a birthday gift, though. The return address was from Abby’s Print Shop in North Conway.

Darn. The wedding invitations.

She’d meant to cancel the order, but there’d been a lot of cancellations to take care of in the past two weeks and she’d dropped the ball on this one.

Breaking off an engagement six weeks before the wedding was a pain in the butt.

Since there was no sending them back at this point, she ripped open the box and pulled out one of the printed cards. They were lovely…. Buff card stock, silver print, very elegant. Avoiding a loose board she’d been meaning to fix, Allison sat on the front porch step to take a closer look.

Allison Moore Bennett and Tyler Paul Jenkins cordially request your presence…

She remembered the afternoon that she and Tyler had ordered these. They’d argued over the wording. Tyler had wanted traditional invitations, while she’d been in favor of something more casual. She read through the rest of it. The ceremony at the chapel on Church Island at three. Canceled. Reception to follow at the Lakeside Inn. Also canceled.

She sighed, and then lifted her head at the sound of heavy footsteps out on the street. New owners were moving into the McLaughlins’ old house today. Two men in baggy jeans and dark T-shirts carried a sofa from the moving van down the ramp and in through the front door. They’d been hard at work for over an hour and now the van was nearly empty.

Allison had been keeping tabs on their progress, though somehow she’d missed the arrival of the family itself. The new owners were already inside, she surmised from the red station wagon parked next to the garage, which was being used as an unloading area for all sorts of things. A lawn mower, a canoe, a mountain bike, a cherry-red tricycle…