Rainshadow Road (Friday Harbor #2)(69)

“The null point of any thermodynamic temperature scale,” Sam said.

“That’s right.” Her father practically beamed at him. “Contrary to our assumptions, most of the comet’s rocky matter had been formed inside the solar system at extreme high temperatures. So comets are formed in conditions of severe heat and ice.”

“Fascinating,” Sam said, and it was obvious that he actually meant it.

As the men continued to talk, Lucy’s mother leaned close to whisper to her. “He is wonderful. So good-looking and charming, and your father loves him. You have to hold on to this one, sweetheart.”

“There’s nothing to hold on to,” Lucy whispered back. “I told you. He’s a lifelong bachelor.”

It was obvious that her mother relished the challenge. “You can change his mind. A man like him shouldn’t stay single. It would be a crime.”

“I’m not going to torture a perfectly nice man by trying to change him.”

“Lucy,” came her mother’s impatient whisper, “what do you think marriage is for?”

After dinner they went to the house at Rainshadow for coffee. That hadn’t been the original plan, but after hearing Sam’s description of the vineyard and the renovated Victorian house, Lucy’s mother had all but demanded to see it. Mark and Holly were away for the weekend, having gone with Maggie to visit her parents in Bellingham. Obligingly Sam asked Cherise if she wanted the twenty-five-cent tour.

“I’ll stay in the kitchen and make some coffee,” Lucy said. “Mom, don’t interrogate Sam while he’s showing you the house.”

Her mother gave her a look of wide-eyed surprise. “I never interrogate anyone.”

“You should probably know that I only take preapproved questions,” Sam said. “But for you, Cherise, I’ll allow some latitude.”

Her mother giggled.

“I’ll help Lucy with the coffee,” her father said. “Discussions of home renovation are lost on me—I don’t know a pediment from a pergola.”

After Lucy ran a cupful of beans through the electric grinder, she measured the coffee into the machine, while her father filled a pitcher at the sink. “So what do you think of Sam?” Lucy asked.

“I like him. A smart fellow. He appears to be healthy and self-supporting, and he laughed at my Heisenberg joke. I can’t help but wonder why a man with such a good brain would waste it on tending a vineyard.”

“It’s not a waste.”

“Thousands of people all over the world make wine. There’s no point in coming up with yet another one, when there are already so many being produced.”

“That’s like saying no one should produce any more art, because we already have so much out there.”

“Art—or wine—doesn’t benefit people the way science does.”

“Sam would say the opposite.” She watched her father pour water into the coffeemaker.

The appliance clicked and steamed as it began to percolate.

“A more significant question,” her father remarked, “is what you think of him.”

“I like him too. But there’s no chance of the relationship getting serious. He and I both have future plans that don’t include each other.”

Her father shrugged. “If you enjoy his company, there’s no harm in spending time with him.”

They were quiet for a moment, listening to the placid sputter of the coffeemaker.

“You’re going to see Alice and Kevin tomorrow?” Lucy asked.

Her father nodded, his smile turning grim. “You know that that marriage—if it happens—doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell.”

“You can’t be a hundred percent certain,” Lucy said, even though she privately agreed. “People surprise you.”

“Yes, they do,” he admitted. “At my age, however, not often. Where are the coffee mugs?”

Together they opened a couple of cabinets until they found them.

“Your mother and I have been talking recently,” Phillip said, and stunned her by adding, “I gather she’s told you that I’d been married once before.”

“Yes,” Lucy managed to say. “That was kind of a shocker.”

“All this business with you and Alice and Kevin has stirred up some issues your mother and I haven’t faced in quite a while.”

“Is that bad?” Lucy asked gingerly.

“I don’t know. I’ve never been convinced that everything in a relationship needs to be talked about. Some things can’t be fixed by a conversation.”

“I’m guessing these issues have to do with … her?” For some reason the words “your first wife” were too jarring for Lucy to say.

“Yes. I love your mother. I would never make comparisons. The other relationship was…” A pause, fraught with a kind of pensive strain she had never seen from him before. “It was in its own category.”

“What was her name?” Lucy asked softly.

His lips parted as if to answer, but he shook his head and stayed silent.

What kind of woman had she had been, Lucy wondered, that decades after her death, he couldn’t speak her name?

“That intensity of emotion…” he said after a while, as if to himself. “That sense of two people being so right for each other, they’re halves of a whole. It was … extraordinary.”