“What are you doing?” Jen asked, stepping into the kitchen that hadn’t changed at all, with its shiny red refrigerator and everything.

“Cooking.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“Sure, I do. You’re a guest.”

A guest. Right. A guest in the house that had once been the only place she’d considered home. But then, she’d been the one to go away to college and leave it all behind. She’d been the one constantly working when Bev was sick, and then out of the country working on an incentive event during the funeral. Bev had left the place to Aimee, a fact that still stabbed Jen’s heart with a dull knife laced with guilt.

Jen pushed a smile onto her face and tried to make a joke. “It’s lunchtime. Your sign says Breakfast.”

Aimee pressed her palms to the countertop. “Please, Jen. Let me do this.”

Jen got it. She’d spent her life taking care of her older, crazier sister, and now Aimee had something to prove.

“Okay,” Jen said, lowering herself into a familiar wood chair around the heavy kitchen table. She fingered the watermelon-shaped placemats. “So I, uh, saw that sign out on Route 6.”

Aimee slid a cutting board onto the counter. One dark eyebrow twitched. “Which one was that?”

Jen hated the way she felt her neck heat up. “You know.”

“Ohhhhhh. That one.” Aimee craned her neck to peek at the clock. “Wow, only twenty minutes.”

“For what?”

“For you to mention him.”

Jen supposed it had to have taken coming back here to finally ask Aimee about Leith, considering neither of the sisters had brought up his name in ten years. “They put up that huge sign?” Jen asked. “Just for him?”

Aimee took out a roast from the refrigerator and started to carve thin slices from it. It looked like she actually knew what she was doing, and Jen tried not to gape. This being the sister who’d once needed Jen to boil water for mac and cheese.

“It was a big deal then,” Aimee said, “a local who wasn’t a pro winning the athletics in the games so many years in a row. And after his football season and those state track championships and all . . . It’s a small town. He’s a bit of a celebrity.”

“Huh.” Jen had forgotten about the football and track. She’d only come to Gleann in the summer, so she’d never seen him do those things. But she had watched him turn the caber and throw the hammer and toss the sheaf, and do all the other heavy athletic events in the games.

“He doesn’t compete anymore,” Aimee said, “but they still love him like he won the Olympics or something.”

“I’d say. That sign was like a shrine. An effigy shy of a temple.”

Aimee gave her a weird smile and started to assemble sandwiches.

Jen gazed out the window, into the backyard that sloped down to the creek. Old images of Leith came back to her, and she felt more than a little dirty picturing his eighteen-year-old body, big even back then, moving on top of her in the back of that Cadillac. How cliche to have lost it to each other in the backseat of a car.

How wonderful to have lost it to him.

Aimee ducked into the pantry, her muffled voice floating out from inside. “You should ask him to compete again.”

Jen felt like she’d tripped over something, and she was still sitting down. “Wait. What?”

“You know. Get him to come out of retirement or something. DeeDee tried before she took off, but it didn’t work. I bet the town would love it.”

Suddenly her chest felt tight. “You mean he’s still here?”

Aimee tipped down a bag of pretzels from the top shelf. “Sure. He owns a landscape business, though word is he’s hurting, like everyone else, now that Hemmertex is gone.”

But he was still here. Oh, God, Leith was still in Gleann. Jen didn’t feel guilty for leaving him ten years ago—it was what her life and dreams had demanded of her—but the possibility of seeing him again . . . “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Aimee shot her a hard look that was way too familiar. “Because everyday news about Gleann hasn’t interested you in a decade. Until you learned it was dying.”

Jen swallowed and dropped her head in the face of the truth.

She’d chosen to keep her memories as just that: particles of the past drifting around in her mind. They weren’t allowed to affect her life in New York. She couldn’t afford to move backward, not even an inch. To live in the past was equal to stagnancy and laziness, and that, to Jen, was a fate worse than death.

It meant she was no better than her mom.

Jen lifted her eyes to the backyard again. Leith had once kissed her under the giant maple tree, up against its trunk that leaned over the creek. That particular event had led to sex on a blanket, with a tree root gouging into her back. How could something she hadn’t thought about in so long now feel so fresh?

“Has he ever, um, said anything? To you? About me?”

“How old are you again?” Aimee shoved a plated sandwich in front of her. “No, he hasn’t. When we run into each other, it’s smiles and small talk. You remember how he was, like nothing could ever faze him. He’s like a walking good mood.”

A little piece of Jen’s heart crumbled off and knocked around inside her chest. She’d managed to faze him all right, the night before she’d left Gleann for good and he’d begged her to stay. Told her he loved her with his soul in his eyes. But what was she supposed to do? Sacrifice college and career, and risk suffering the drunken, aimless, bitter lifestyle of her mom?

“So he doesn’t know I’m here?”

Aimee shook her head. “No one does except the mayor and me. What if you’d said no, Jen? We didn’t want to get our hopes up and then be denied.” A pregnant pause. “I’ve had enough disappointment.”

I, not we. Jen knew Aimee wasn’t talking about today as much as her and Ainsley’s disastrous visit to New York three years ago. It had coincided with the same week the fashion house had called, and Jen had had to drop everything to secure the prestigious new client, including entertaining her sister and niece. Without their reason for visiting, Aimee and Ainsley had left the city.

Aimee took a bite of sandwich and talked with her mouth full. “When’s your meeting with the mayor?”

Jen flicked on her phone to check the time. “About ten minutes.”

Which, if she remembered correctly, gave her about six minutes to eat, since it took four minutes to walk to Town Hall. They ate in silence, Aimee’s past disappointment hovering around them. Then Jen fixed her hair and makeup, grabbed her purse with her trusty laptop, and headed for the front door.

A hard wave of memory slammed into her. This moment felt like all those other summers, leaving for job after job after job, her college-fund bank account growing with every hour worked. It was as though ten years hadn’t passed. Even the feel of the front door’s oblong brass knob brought back memories. She’d drown in them if she wasn’t careful, and she’d only been in Gleann for an hour.

She opened the door, the scent of thyme and rosemary wafting in. The herb garden, surrounding little metal breakfast tables, was new. She couldn’t, for the life of her, picture Aimee having planted that, but apparently she had.

“Jen.”

She turned around to find Aimee standing in the hallway, at the foot of the narrow, creaking staircase leading up to the guest rooms, her eyes filled with emotion.

“I want you to know that I feel bad asking, for taking you away from the city.”

“Don’t. It’s no biggie. Came at the perfect time.” Jen’s eyes swept over the foyer and she smiled. “Anything for this place. Anything for you.”

She hadn’t told Aimee about the impending partnership or the risk she’d taken coming here at this particular time in the year. There was no point. She’d been taking care of Aimee her whole life. Back when they were growing up, it had been a responsibility Jen had assumed with drive and determination. Now she accepted it with bittersweetness, but still with love.

Aimee blurted out, “I’m older. I should’ve been taking care of you, instead of the other way around. And here you are again.”

The first time Aimee had said anything of the sort, and it struck Jen like a bell. She covered it with a smile, as reassuring as she could make it. “It’s okay. I’m going to do what I can,” she said, and then headed downtown.

Gleann legend claimed that its founders had used Celtic magic to transport a chunk of old Scotland into this out-of-the-way valley in the new world, from its stone-facade shops crowding the narrow sidewalks, to the meandering paths of its streets. The Stone Pub stood at the center, beckoning everyone under its thatched roof. Jen had always found this place magical, despite no truth to the legend. Even as a doubtful eight-year-old, the first glimpse of Gleann had set her at ease.

Now, however, the place was practically deserted. She remembered buckets of bright flowers spilling from window boxes and street lamps, and the shop that had once sold granny sweaters and wool pants. All gone. Kathleen’s Kafe, with its row of six-paned windows, still stood though, and that made her sigh with some measure of relief.

The ice cream parlor where she’d scooped out orders one summer had long since closed, but she could see that at the building’s last use, it had been a scrapbooking store. The Picture This sign still hung over the door. A faded poster was taped inside the window, one corner curling back, proclaiming: Gleann’s Great Highland Games! Don’t Miss It!

Looking around town, she realized it was the only mention of the games anywhere, and the thing was supposed to happen in two weeks. It matched what Aimee had told her over the phone, that the games had faded into an annual event with very little enthusiasm and dwindling participation, yet the town clung to it out of tradition. If this was the kind of hill she’d have to scale while here, she was in deep shit. But then, that’s what she excelled at: climbing her way out of that deep shit and putting on the best events any amount of money could buy, in any amount of time, no matter how short.