XoXo,

It was a sunny day in the Hamptons and after being cooped up for all of yesterday, both Tristan and Molly enjoyed stretching their legs. Eventually they tracked down Mr A trimming the hedge maze over by the tennis courts.

Molly paused at the edge of the maze’s gravel walk. She put one paw on the gravel, lifted it back up, and looked up at Tristan with those big black button eyes as if to say, I don’t have to go with you, do I?

“It’s fine,” he told her. “You can wait for me here. Stay.”

Molly’s tongue lolled out in a doggy grin and she found a soft patch of sun-warmed grass to take a nap. 

“Your concern is touching,” Tristan said and started down the path. 

The maze had always been one of Tristan’s great joys during the summer. It was the perfect place to be alone to think and the site of many Super Soaker battle royals with his brothers. 

“I thought I told you to stay out of here.” Mr A didn’t look up from his cutting. The groundskeeper was tall and sinewy man, bronzed from all the time he spent in the sun. The sprawling maze was his pride and joy and it seemed he still hadn’t quite forgiven Tristan for the food dye teams event last summer that had stained the pristine white gravel pathways.

“Just because my team won, doesn’t mean it was my idea,” Tristan said, though it had been.

“Uh huh,” Mr A shot him a dubious look from underneath his bushy white brows. “What do you want?”

“You heard about what happened yesterday?”

“You mean that stupid trick you played on your new editor? Yeah, I heard.” He flicked another glance at Tristan. “Idiot.”

“Thanks. Well to cut a long story short, Katie’s uncle is driving up tonight. He wants to meet me.”

Mr A stopped trimming and let out a bark of laughter. 

“Your sympathy means the world to me,” Tristan said. “But in an attempt to make things up to him, I’d like to take him on a tour of the grounds before dinner.”

“A tour?” Mr A flavored the word with skepticism.

“He’s a realtor,” Tristan explained. “I figure a tour, followed by one of Mrs A’s dinners in the big house, might soften him up a little. But we’re going to need one of the golf carts with Katie’s ankle the way it is.”

Mr A nodded. “I’ll bring it round.” He frowned suddenly. “Don’t drive it into the maze.”

Tristan held up his hands like the thought had never occurred to him. “I would never.”

Mr A’s glare was deeply suspicious. But there was no way he could know about the Maze derby that had happened the last time he and Mrs A were away on vacation. 

Tristan had paid for the new layer of gravel himself.

The furrow between Mr A’s brows deepened.

“Thanks, Mr A.” Tristan clapped him on the shoulder and backed away. “I’ll leave you to it.”

“Tristan,” Mr A called before he got too far down the path. “You want to make it up to her uncle? Promise not to do it again and mean it.”

They were words to live by.