My Sister's Grave (Tracy Crosswhite, #1)(30)

“Are you making a lemon meringue pie?”

He muted the volume on the TV. “Don’t make fun. It was my mother’s recipe and it happens to be my favorite. And if I can ever get the damn egg whites to fluff, you’ll know why.”

“You’re using the wrong bowl.”

Dan gave her a skeptical look. “How could there be a wrong bowl?”

She stepped to his side of the counter. “Where do you keep your bowls?”

He pointed to a lower cabinet. Tracy found a copper bowl, transferred the egg whites into it, and took the whisk. In no time at all, she whisked the egg whites into foam. “Mrs. Allen would be appalled. Don’t you remember anything from chemistry class?”

“Isn’t that the class I cheated off of you in?”

“You cheated off me in every class.”

“And look how well it’s done for me. I can’t even beat egg whites.”

“It has to do with one of the proteins in the egg whites reacting with the copper of the bowl’s surface. A silver-plated bowl will do the same thing.” She poured in the sugar Dan had in a measuring cup to finish the meringue, spooned it on top of the filling, and slid the pie into the oven, setting the timer. “Didn’t you promise me a glass of wine?”

He poured two glasses, handed her one, and raised his. “To old friends.”

“Speak for yourself.”

“We’re the same age,” he said.

“Haven’t you heard? Forty is the new twenty.”

“The memo hasn’t reached my back and knees. Fine.” He raised his glass again. “To good friends.”

“That’s more like it.”

She moved to the other side of the counter and sat beneath an incandescent light, watching as he turned the onions he’d added to the grill. She smelled their sweet scent. “Can I ask you something?”

“I’m an open book.”

“It’s just you here.”

“Just me and the boys,” he said. The two dogs sat at the edge of the tile between the rooms, watching as Dan walked to the fridge.

“So why did you go to the trouble?”

He opened the fridge. “You mean the remodel?”

“Everything. The remodel, the furnishings, two dogs. It must have been a lot of effort.”

He grabbed a jar of pickles and a tomato and set them on a plastic cutting board. “It was. That’s why I did it. I went through the ‘woe is me’ period, Tracy. Finding out your wife is cheating on you isn’t exactly confidence building. I felt sorry for myself for a while. Then I got angry with the world, with her, with my ex-partner for sleeping with her.” He fished out a pickle and sliced it as he continued talking. “When Mom died that put me into an even deeper funk. One morning I woke up and decided I was tired of looking at the same damn walls. I went into the toolshed, got Dad’s sledgehammer, and started knocking them down. The more I knocked down, the better I felt. Once the walls were down, the only thing I could do was rebuild.”

“So this was your diversion.”

He washed the tomato at the sink and began to cut it with precise strokes. “All I know is, the more I rebuilt, the more I realized that just because things hadn’t worked out as I’d planned didn’t mean things couldn’t work out at all. I wanted a home. I wanted a family. Getting another wife was not on the horizon, and frankly, I wasn’t looking. So I went and got Rex and Sherlock and we created a home.” The two dogs whined at the mention of their names.

“How’d you start?”

“One swing of the hammer at a time.”

“Do you ever talk to your ex?”

“Every once in a while she’ll call. Things with my partner didn’t work out.”

“She wants you back.”

He used a spatula to transfer the burgers to a plate. “I think she was fishing about the possibility at first. What she probably really misses is the country-club lifestyle. She figured out pretty quick that the guy she married didn’t exist anymore.”

Tracy smiled. “I think the finished product looks pretty good, Dan.”

He stopped transferring the sliced tomatoes and pickles from the cutting board to a plate. “Oh no.”

“What?”

“Did that sound like a middle-aged man fishing for a compliment?”

She threw a crumpled napkin at him.

Dan had set the table while she was in the shower. He placed the plate of hamburgers on it beside a tossed green salad. “This okay?” he asked.

“Fishing for another compliment?”

“You know it.”

“It’s perfect.”

As Tracy made up her burger with condiments, Dan said, “Okay, my turn. Do you still compete in those shooting tournaments?”

“I don’t really have a lot of free time.”

“But you were so good.”

“Too many painful memories. The last time I saw Sarah was the 1993 Championship in Olympia.”

“Is that why you also never come back to Cedar Grove? Because the memories are too painful?”

“Some,” she said.

“And yet you’re about to dig up those memories all over again.”

“Not dig them up, Dan. Hopefully bury them for good.”