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“Sorry I’m late,” he said, his gaze staying firmly on my face. “I got held up.”

“There’s plenty left,” Tammy assured him. “Sit down and eat before Ricky decides he’s entitled to your share.”

“I heard that,” Ricky said.

“You were supposed to.”

Tammy indicated the empty chair beside me. It was the only place left, and there was no reason to make a production of finding another one. Josiah sat down, close enough that I could feel the warmth of him beside me, and reached for a plate.

“Max,” he said.

“Sheriff.”

I was surprised at how calm and collected my voice sounded when inside my chest, my heart was galloping as I fought a sudden magnetic pull to shift my chair a bit closer to him. I managed to win the battle not to, but still. My body was in cahoots with my wayward heart and well-meaning but traitorous friends.

“Hope I’m not interrupting,” he said.

“Not at all,” Tammy replied. “We were just discussing the festival tonight.”

“Then you’re all going?”

“Wouldn’t miss it,” Ricky said. “I’ve earned a night off.”

“You volunteered to work the festival booth,” I reminded him.

“And I did excellent work yesterday. I deserve a reward.”

“Is that what we’re calling it?”

“It’s a style,” he said, and Tammy laughed.

Josiah smiled, and for one unwelcome moment I remembered exactly how that smile used to feel when it was meant for me. I looked down at my plate and concentrated on serving myself while attempting to ignore that old, soul-warming feeling as it washed over me.

The conversation settled around the table again. Tammy asked about security for the evening, and Josiah explained that the department would have people near the bandstand and along the busiest paths. He spoke about the arrangements without turning dinner into a briefing, answering questions and checking that everyone knew where to go if there was trouble. It was easy to see why the town had elected him sheriff. He was competent, calm, and attentive to the people around him.

I’d always known those things about him. They hadn’t made his leaving any easier to understand.

“Have you had anything to eat today?” Tammy asked him.

“A sandwich earlier.”

“That doesn’t count as a meal.”

“It was a fairly substantial sandwich.”

Tammy gave him the same look she used on Ricky when he claimed a handful of chips qualified as lunch. She passed him the serving dish and made sure his plate held a proper helping.

“Thank you,” Josiah said, with the patient affection of someone who’d been on the receiving end of Tammy’s hospitality before.

I couldn’t help noticing how naturally he fitted into the room. He knew when to listen, and when to offer a dry comment that made Ricky laugh. He’d been part of our lives once. He knew the rhythms of our conversations and the small rituals that made a meal feel like home.

But he hadn’t been here for any of the years when those rhythms had changed. He hadn’t sat at my mother’s table after she gave up cooking. He hadn’t helped Tammy rescue a Sunday dinner or watched Ricky insist that burnt vegetables were a deliberate culinary choice. He hadn’t been there when we’d turned a lost family tradition into one of our own.

We had built a life without him.

I stood up abruptly. “I’ll go fetch dessert.”

I spent as long as possible dithering over bowls of instant pudding, which, had I looked in the fridge earlier, I would have noticed she’d portioned out into four bowls, and not three. Or maybe not. I’d been completely oblivious to the fourth place setting Ricky had placed on top of the hutch, which meant he’d been in on the duplicity. I might have gotten a little aggressive with the aerosol can of whipped cream then.