“Gee, I never would have known,” she said with a faint smile. They retraced their steps to the house, and when they reached the gravel drive, Beth pulled a hand out of her jeans pocket and gave a small wave.
“Thanks for the walk, Logan.”
She expected him to correct her the way he had with Ben—to tell her again he was called Thibault—but he didn’t. Instead, he raised his chin slightly and grinned.
“You too, Elizabeth.”
She knew the storm wouldn’t last long, though they desperately needed the rain. It had been a hot, dry summer, and it seemed like the heat would never break. As she sat listening to the last drops of rain falling on the tin roof, she found herself thinking about her brother.
Before Drake left, he’d told her that the sound of rain on their roof was the sound he would miss most of all. She wondered if he often dreamed of these North Carolina summer storms in the dry land where he ended up. The thought made her feel hollow and sad all over again.
Nana was in her room packing for her trip, as excited as she’d been in years. Ben, on the other hand, was becoming more and more subdued, which meant he was thinking about the fact that he’d have to spend a big chunk of the weekend with his father. Which also meant she’d have a weekend alone at home, her first solo weekend in a long, long time.
Except for Logan.
She could understand why both Nana and Ben had been drawn to him. He possessed a quiet confidence that seemed rare these days. It was only after she got back to the house that she realized she’d learned little about him that he hadn’t already told her during their initial interview. She wondered whether he’d always been so private or if it stemmed from his time in Iraq.
He’d been there, she’d decided. No, he hadn’t said as much, but she’d seen something in his expression when she’d mentioned her parents—his simple response hinted at a familiarity with tragedy and an acceptance of it as an unavoidable aspect of life.
She didn’t know whether that made her feel better or worse about him. Like Drake, he was a marine. But Logan was here, and Drake was gone, and for that reason as well as more complicated ones, she wasn’t sure that she could ever look at Logan with fairness in her heart.
Gazing up at the stars that had emerged between the storm clouds, she felt the loss of Drake like a newly reopened wound. After their parents had died, they had been inseparable, even sleeping in the same bed for a year. He was only a year younger than her, and she distinctly remembered walking to school with him on the first day of kindergarten. To stop his tears, she had promised that he’d make lots of friends and that she’d wait by the swing set to walk him home. Unlike many siblings, they had never been rivals. She was his biggest cheerleader, and he was her unwavering supporter. Throughout high school, she went to every football, basketball, and baseball game he played and tutored him when he needed it. For his part, he was the only one who remained unfazed by her dizzying teenage mood swings. The only disagreement they’d ever had concerned Keith, but unlike Nana, Drake kept his feelings largely to himself. But she knew how he felt, and when she and Keith separated, it was Drake she turned to for support as she tried to find her footing as a newly single mother. And it was Drake, she knew, who kept Keith from pounding on her door late at night in the months immediately afterward. Drake had been the one person she’d ever known that Keith was afraid to cross.
By that point, he’d matured. Not only had he been an excellent athlete in virtually every sport, but he’d taken up boxing when he was twelve. By eighteen, he’d won the Golden Gloves in North Carolina three times, and he sparred regularly with troops stationed at Fort Bragg and Camp Lejeune. It was the hours he spent with them that first made Drake consider enlisting.
He’d never been a great student, and he lasted only a year at a community college before deciding it wasn’t for him. She’d been the only one he’d talked to about enlisting. She