I walked with the planner, a bubbly woman we'd gone to high school with, and the caterer through the entryway of the house, where workers were shaking out linens over cocktail tables. I had dispatched a disbelieving Liam off to bodyguard the girls; I could trust smiling Alice to make sure his credit card was used, finally, on a new dress.

Naomi didn’t hate me. Someone who hated me wouldn’t have had such an epically crazy breakdown on the pier and tossed my swim trunks halfway to Cape Cod. We needed to have a serious talk about those antics.

But no matter what, I wanted to give her this beautiful, perfect night. Even if Naomi had said, on the way out the door, “I don’t want this,” only to have Alice pull her away, talking to her about freedom and Vera Wang.

"Yes, lights, flowers, magical decor, that sounds great." I nodded, knowing I probably sounded less than enthused. This wasn't my area of expertise. I only cared about making Naomi happy.

I heard heels clicking across the floor behind me a second before I smelled Happy.

I turned to find Kate behind me, just like I'd known I would. She wore her dark brown hair in a smooth French twist above her smiling face, and her slender white shoulders were exposed by the lines of her little black dress.

"What are you doing here?" I asked.

"Hello to you, too," she mock-pouted. "Your grandmother asked me to come... although it does seem like maybe she was confused about the hour." She turned to take in the set-up in progress.

"Let's go ask her," I said, taking a step back and gesturing her ahead. I resisted the urge to settle my hand into the small of her back to guide her through the house, the way I had a hundred times before, the small and intimate gestures that had been a part of our relationship.

"Have you seen my grandmother?" I asked one of the catering staff in the kitchen, who were busily setting up and finishing their mise en place. "So tall? Gray hair? Nose probably stuck firmly in someone else's business?"

Kate smiled. "You know she loves you."

"That, I never doubt," I said. "Her common sense is a different story."

"She was explaining how she wanted the deck decorated the last time I saw her," the caterer said.

"Explaining. How she wanted things." I said to Kate. To the caterer, I said, "Thank you. And that was... tactful."

Kate opened the French doors onto the deck, but gave me a teasing look over her shoulder. "Be nice."

"I'll be nice," I promised. "I'm always nice."

"You are a lot of wonderful things, Rob, but nice isn't one of them."

"What?" My tone was playful in response, but her words rankled. Kate knew me better than most, better than anyone who wasn't a SEAL or a brother of mine, anyway.

"Don't worry. Nice is overrated."

"You say that because you're a lawyer."

She gave me a playful smile I knew well and breezed outside.

On the deck, little white lights were being strung everywhere, their glow lost to the daylight. The surf rolling in seemed like a constant roar below.

Rebecca said to one of the staff, who was hanging lights, "That looks lovely, thank you.”

"Kate's here," I called. "We were wondering why you told her that she should be here three hours early. You know Kate's always been prompt..."

Rebecca turned, her face brightening. "Oh, Kate! It's so nice to see you."

"Nice to see you too," Kate said.

"Let's go sit in the study," Rebecca suggested. "I've had a few things I wanted to discuss with you."

"We're not getting married and having babies," I said. "Just so you know."

"Please," Rebecca sniffed. As if I were crazy to think that was her intent.

A few minutes later, I closed the doors to the study behind us, and the noise of the party set-up disappeared in an instant. It was the three of us in the gloom as Rebecca switched on the desk lamp, then sat primly in one of the wing chairs in front of the cold fireplace.

"I need to tell you a story, Rob," she said.

I sighed. "Now? You need to tell me a story now? There's a lot going on these days..."

"Yes, from my son lying in a coma to you throwing a party for kittens," Rebecca said. "It is a bizarre and interesting world, isn't it? Now sit down and be quiet for once."

I leaned against the edge of the mantle, crossing my arms over my chest. Kate took a seat at the desk. She drew a book from a shelf and began to thumb through it, as if she were trying to maintain a polite distance from our family drama. Even though Rebecca had, for some reason, felt the need to draw her into it.

"I know what you think about your father," Rebecca said. "And it has devastated me for all these years to watch you be so disrespectful to the man who raised you, who adores you."

I started to stand to my full height, and my tiny little grandmother pointed her finger at me. "No, Rob. This is my time to speak. I've been quiet all this time."

I had never known her to be particularly retiring, but I raised my eyebrows and let her go on.

"I don't know everything that happened the night of the wreck," she said. "He would never tell me. But I think that what's happening now goes back to that night. You need to know."

"I do know. I've read all the newspaper pieces about it, believe me." I'd tormented myself with them.

"No, you don't." She squared her shoulders. "Whatever happened, you need to know that I saw him that night. I saw him half an hour after he supposedly wrecked that car with a blood alcohol content of .12. And he was stone-cold sober."

"Maybe because he had almost killed someone--"

"That's not how sobering-up works and you know it," she said. "Something else happened that night. Your father was covering for someone."

"You've believed that for the last ten years, he lived in disgrace and you never asked him why?"

"He told me if I kept asking, he would cut me out of your life. All of your lives."

"Why?"

"That's what you need to figure out. To figure out why someone hurt my beautiful boy." She pointed that angry finger at me again. "But most of all, you need to understand that he isn't the monster you believe he is. I can't believe that he might..." she stumbled over the word. "He might not wake up, Rob. And then what?"

Kate rose abruptly from the chair in the table to wrap her arms around Rebecca's shoulders. As Rebecca folded up inside her arms, beginning to cry, I thought that if I were nice, I would be the one hugging her.

But I couldn't believe it. Couldn't process what she was saying. Couldn't trust the way I wanted to believe it.

"Why's Kate here?" I asked, my voice abrupt.

Rebecca wiped her eyes with a tissue. "I knew you might not believe me. But Kate was here that night. She saw him too."

Kate looked up at me, her eyes warm with compassion. "I did, Rob. And she's right. There's no way he was drunk. He was shaken by what had happened, upset. He was on the verge of tears. But he was totally lucid, coordinated, together."

"My father could handle his booze."

"I know your family," Kate said. "I've seen our fathers drink together. I know what a drink too many on a Delaney looks like, and this wasn't it."

"Why didn't you ever tell me?" I demanded.

"He asked me not to," Kate said. "Later. He asked us both. To forget seeing him that night. To let it go."

"And you didn't think that was strange? Worth telling me about?"

Kate glanced down at the floor. "It wasn't an easy decision, Rob. He said it would protect you."

"Well, you were either lying to me then or you're lying to me now."

"I wasn't lying, ever. I wouldn't lie to you."

"It was a lie of omission if you didn't tell me then."

"Oh, Rob." There was a familiar fire in her deep brown eyes. "Don't be pedantic. I was trying to protect you. Things were so hard then for your family."

"Yeah. Yeah, they were." I glanced away, although the brown-and-gold spines of my father's library seemed distant. "Why were you here that night, anyway?"

"I'm going to go supervise," Rebecca said, standing from the chair. She wiped her eyes one last time with a tissue.

"Okay," I said, and let her go. Rebecca shut the door softly behind her, doubtless headed upstairs to reapply her lipstick. To wipe away any evidence of weakness like any Delaney would.

"Do you believe me?" Kate asked.

"I don't understand this."

She met my gaze for a few long seconds before she looked away. "That's not what I asked."

"Tell me about that night," I said, because I didn't want to answer her question. "Start with why you were here."

"So I'm one of your oldest friends and I have to prove that what I'm saying to you is true?"

"Yes," I said crisply.

She shook her head, a disbelieving smile on her perfect red lips. "All right, Rob. Well, I don't know if you remember the details of that month. We were off-again, in the endless rounds of Rob-and-Kate. And I couldn't stand it."

It looked like it hurt Kate to admit all that, but she was composed anyway. “I had been out with Mary Beth and her boyfriend and watching them together made me keep thinking about us. I felt lonely for you. I was driving my Jetta home and I ended up here."

The details sounded right. Mary Beth had been Kate's best friend; Kate had gotten a Jetta for her sixteenth birthday. We'd all teased her because she wanted a convertible and her father found the safest possible convertible for his little princess. I knew I should be processing the sadness of Kate’s admission, I felt lonely for you, but I was focused on the facts.

"Rebecca invited me in, said you weren't there. You were late at swim practice. I was embarrassed, I was going to go, but you know how she is. She loves to give advice."

"I know," I said. “I know.”

"Especially to girls," she said. "She is a font of love advice. As you might expect for someone married four times, right?"

"Five, now. The Tuscany misadventure."

"Oh. I guess we've all fallen out of touch."

I was trying to remember that day. All that I remembered now was the news crews that had parked in front of the house that night, and waking up in the morning to Mitch making coffee. Mitch was red-eyed and refused to talk; he’d taken the coffee and a box of cereal away to his study. I had known things were bad when my father’s lawyer, Mr. Bevor, crossed the entryway and disappeared into the study.

Then it clicked. I remembered the afternoon, before I came home, before the swam of news media and the chaos and the sound of my father crying down the hall while I lay sleepless in bed.

Swim practice. Naomi and I had been volun-told to switch the lines at the end of practice, resetting them for the open swim hours that night. I'd tackled Naomi into the water, the two of us enveloped by white bubbles for a second of peace, then surfacing in each other’s arms. It had been much like the way I’d played in the ocean waves with grown-up Naomi, pressing my nose against hers, droplets of water warming between our bodies. I felt an ache remembering the boyish happiness of that afternoon. I’d come home both excited and with a sense of consternation; I was so comfortable with girls usually, and yet I couldn't figure out how to kiss Naomi for the first time.

That was why I hadn't been home when Kate arrived.

"I'm sorry I wasn't there," I said. "I wish I'd seen my dad myself."

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you," she said. "I was trying to protect you, Rob. It was a mistake. But I was seventeen."

"I know." I thought about how I would have responded, the desire to clear my father's name blooming powerfully. I knew that I would have done anything, no matter how stupid, if I'd believed there was hope for Mitch Delaney then. "I was seventeen too. I would have made mistakes myself."

"I was standing in the kitchen with your grandmother. She made tea for us both and told me about how she fell in love with one of her husbands, I don't remember which one. And your father came in. He wasn't drunk. Not one bit."

"But why wouldn't he fight to clear his name?"

"I think Rebecca is right. I think he was protecting someone."

"Yeah, but who? Why?" I threw my hands up in the air. "I get it when I was seventeen. But why the hell wouldn't Mitch have told me what was going on?"

"Maybe he didn't get the chance."

I thought of Mitch’s quiet urgency in the dim sum restaurant. I hadn't given Mitch much opportunity to speak.

"I'm glad you told me now," I said, by way of reconciliation. It bothered me to see Kate looking distraught. "You did what you thought was right. I'm not mad at you."

"Good.” She lunged forward suddenly to hug me tight. For a second, I was surprised by her slender arms around my waist. Then I squeezed her back. "I've never been able to stand having you mad at me."

"Me either," I said, "Even though I gave you plenty of reasons to be mad in high school."

She tilted her head to look up at me, the corners of her almond eyes crinkling. "We're older and wiser now."

"Older, anyway," I said. With all the mystery surrounding my father— then and now— I needed to get wiser in a hurry.

Kate pulled my shoulders down hard and planted her lips on mine. My hands tightened automatically on her waist, holding her body against mine, as her soft, warm lips parted against mine.

I took in Kate's eyelashes resting against her chiseled cheekbones, the little scar above her eye from a lacrosse accident that no one else would have noticed, and even though kissing her was wrong, I couldn't push her away. I couldn't hurt her all over again.

She let her hands slip away as she took a step back. "Just to see if it still feels right.”

I nodded, because I didn't know what to say to that. I didn't want to disappoint her. But there was only one girl in Newport for me. Even if that girl didn’t exactly like me at the moment.

But like and love are two different things.

A pained look crossed her face. "I hope you find what your family needs," she said stiffly. "I hope you all are... safe."

"You be safe too," I said.

The words seemed like so little between us after all our history.

Kate nodded and headed for the door. Her shoes were soundless on the rug, but she left the door open behind her. I could hear her clicking away when she reached the tile.

God. Damn. It.

I felt like I'd made a mess of that. Of Kate's feelings. Of what I owed Naomi.

I felt like I'd made a mess of the last ten years.