Christmas Eve at Friday Harbor (Friday Harbor #1)(2)

Mark gave him a speaking glance. Their youngest brother’s marriage was like a virus-ridden computer—you couldn’t open it in safe mode, and it ran programs that seemed harmless but performed all kinds of malicious functions.

“Would you leave your kid to them?” he asked.

Slowly, Sam shook his head. “I guess not.”

“So you and I are all Holly’s got.”

Sam gave him a wary look. “You’re the one who’s signing on for this, not me. There’s a reason Vick didn’t name me as her guardian. I’m not good with kids.”

“You’re still Holly’s uncle.”

“Yes, uncle. My responsibilities are limited to making jokes about body functions and drinking too much beer at family cookouts. I’m not the dad type.”

“Neither am I,” Mark said grimly. “But we have to try. Unless you want to sign her up for foster care.”

Scowling, Sam rubbed his face with both hands. “What is Shelby’s take on this?”

Mark shook his head at the mention of his girlfriend, an interior decorator he had met when she had been decorating the high-end house of a friend on Griffin Bay. “I’ve only been going out with her a couple of months. She’ll either deal with it or bail—that’s up to her. But I’m not going to ask her for help. This is my responsibility. And yours.”

“Maybe I could babysit sometime. But don’t count on much help; I’ve sunk everything I have into the vineyard.”

“Exactly what I told you not to do, genius.”

Sam’s eyes, the same blue-green as his own, narrowed. “If I listened to your advice, I’d be making your mistakes instead of my own.” He paused. “Where does Vick keep the booze?”

“Pantry.” Mark went to a cabinet, found two glasses, and filled them with ice.

Sam rummaged through the pantry. “It feels weird, drinking her liquor when she’s…gone.”

“She’d be the first to tell us to go ahead.”

“Probably right.” Sam came to the table with a bottle of whiskey. “Did she have life insurance?”

Mark shook his head. “She let it lapse.”

Sam shot him a look of concern. “Guess you’re going to put the house up for sale?”

“Yeah. I doubt we’ll get much for it in this market.” Mark pushed a glass over to him. “Don’t hold back,” he said.

“Don’t worry.” Sam didn’t stop pouring until both glasses were liberally filled.

They resumed their seats across from each other, raised their whiskey in a silent toast, and drank. It was good liquor, sliding smoothly down Mark’s throat, sending a rush of mellow fire into his chest.

He found unexpected comfort in his brother’s presence. It seemed their cantankerous childhood history—the fights, the small betrayals—would no longer get in their way. They were adults now, with a potential for friendship that had never existed while their parents had still been alive.

With Alex, however, you could never get close enough to like or dislike him. Alex and his wife, Darcy, had come to the funeral, stayed at the reception for about fifteen minutes, and then left with hardly a word to anyone.

“They’ve gone already?” Mark had asked incredulously upon discovering their absence.

“If you wanted them to stay longer,” Sam had said, “you should have held the funeral reception at Nordstrom.”

No doubt people wondered how three brothers could reside on an island with approximately seven thousand residents and have so little to do with one another. Alex lived with Darcy in Roche Harbor on the north side. When he wasn’t busy with his condo development, he was taking his wife to social events in Seattle. Mark, for his part, kept busy with a small coffee-roasting business he’d established in Friday Harbor. And Sam, who was always in his vineyard, tending and cosseting his vines, felt a deeper connection to nature than to people.

The only thing they all had in common was their love of San Juan Island. It was part of an archipelago that consisted of approximately two hundred islands, some of them encompassed by the Washington mainland counties of Whatcom and Skagit. The Nolans had spent their childhood in the rain shadow of the Olympic Mountains, a place sheltered from much of the grayness of the rest of the Pacific Northwest.

The Nolans had grown up breathing in humid ocean air, their bare feet constantly coated with the silt of exposed mudflats. They had been gifted with damp lavender mornings, dry blue days, and the most beautiful sunsets on earth. Nothing could compare to the sight of nimble sandpipers chasing the waves. Or of bald eagles swooping low and fast in pursuit of prey. Or of the dance of orcas, their sleek forms diving, spy-hopping, and cutting through the Salish Sea as they fed on the rich pulse of salmon runs.

The brothers had rambled over every inch of the island, up and down wind-bitten slopes above the seacoast, among somber columns of timber forests, and across meadows thick with orchard grasses and wild-flowers with alluring names…Chocolate Lily, Shooting Star, Sea Blush. No mix of water, sand, and sky had ever been as perfectly proportioned.

Although they had gone off to college and tried living in other places, the island had always lured them back. Even Alex, with all his hard-shelled ambitions, had come back. It was the kind of life in which you knew the local farmers who grew most of the produce you ate, and the guy who made the soap you washed with, and you were on a first-name basis with the owners of the restaurants you went to. You could hitchhike safely, with friendly islanders giving one another a lift when they needed it.