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Galen had a pure heart, she realized. There wasn’t a speck of jealousy or competitiveness in him, at least when it came to her. He wanted the best for her no matter what. Which made him one of the very few people in her life she could totally trust.
She stopped in mid-twirl, suddenly realizing something. “Oh shit.”
“What’s wrong?” He lurched over to her. “Did you hit the wood stove? Got a burn?”
“No. I just realized that I can’t tell anyone about this. You can’t tell anyone. I don’t want anyone at school to know.”
“Why the hell not?” His eyes blazed with outrage. “You should be proud. Everyone should know.”
“But it’s about a porn ring. I’m an elementary school teacher. If parents find out, they might freak out.”
“Why? The kids aren’t going to be reading it. They’ll be reading, I don’t know, whatever kids read at that age. Goodnight Moon?”
She had to laugh at his sketchy memory of his school years. He’d told her that he’d mostly read comic books and adventure stories as a kid. “I don’t want to take a chance. The only people who can know are you and Granny.”
He put his hand over his heart. “I’m fucking honored. I will keep your secret to the grave.”
“If it’s a life or death situation, you can say something.” Amused, she pictured her students’ parents tying up Galen and tickling him until he spilled her secret.
Catching her up in his arms, he swung her around. “Don’t worry about all that. Right now we have to celebrate. This is a huge accomplishment, yeah?”
“Yeah. It is.” She couldn’t keep an enormous smile from spreading across her face. “You’re right, I should just enjoy the moment. I sold a book! I really did it! After all these years!”
“Congratulations, Brenda Storm.”
twenty-one
For Galen, one of the best parts of autumn in Lake Bittersweet was that the baseball season ended and Billy came back to town. During the season, Billy visited when he could, but he spent all his spare time with his two boys and barely saw his brothers. Jenna also brought the kids to Minneapolis for as many games as they could handle. Galen had never understood why he and Jenna had divorced. Jenna was a sweetheart and an excellent coparent, lucky for Billy.
But after the season was over, Billy had more time for his brothers. In mid-November, the three of them got together for their traditional “welcome back” fishing trip. Only the hardcore locals fished the lake in November, so they had all the walleye and Northern Pike to themselves. Dressed in winter fishing gear, thick sweaters under Helly Hansen oilskins, they went out in Thomas’ motorboat because it had a small cabin that gave them some respite from the frigid wind that ruffled the lake’s surface and reddened their cheeks.
“We need a new goddamn tradition,” Billy grumbled as he retied a lure onto his fishing rod. “I’m getting too old for this.”
“The professional athlete is crying about a little wind?” Galen already had his line in the water. “I took a hunting group out the other day and we got a foot of snow.”
Billy flipped him off. “It snowed during our last game. I fell on my ass trying to catch a long fly. You know what I thought?”
“Huh?”
“I’m getting too old for this shit.”
They all laughed, then Thomas gave a long yawn. “I sometimes think that when Teddy wakes up crying in the middle of the night. When I went through it with Danny, I used to think, ‘I’m too young for this,’ so go figure.”
“That kid could really scream.” Billy finally got his lure tied and pulled his gloves back on with a shiver.
The older he got, the more he looked like their father, with that classic square-jawed cowboy look and easy charm. He was three years younger than Galen, which put him in his early thirties. Galen could never remember how old anyone was. It usually seemed irrelevant to him.
“Remember when we used to take turns walking Danny up and down the lake trail in the middle of the night? It was the only thing that calmed him down.” Thomas smiled in reminiscence. “I’ll never forget that rotation schedule I made.”
Galen snorted. “You’re the only one who paid attention to that schedule. Billy and I ignored it.”
Thomas had only been eighteen when Danny had been born, and he’d had to fight the Kendall family for custody after Brooke, Danny’s mother, died at the hospital. It had been a crash course in diapering and burping for all three brothers, because Thomas had needed plenty of help. Since Galen and Billy were barely teenagers—Billy was only twelve—they’d complained their asses off at first. But they’d gotten used to it, and Danny had grown up with two very loving and rambunctious uncles.
“Is he coming back for Thanksgiving? I haven’t seen him since the wedding,” said Billy, casting his line. The lure dropped into the water with a comforting little plop, one of Galen’s favorite sounds in the world.
“I hope so. He might be bringing a girl with him.”
That news dropped like a two hundred pound marlin—the kind of thing you didn’t catch in a lake. “Who? Why?” Galen demanded. “He’s too young. He’s just a kid.”
