Tabitha was like one of those YouTube doctors. They found a pimple and kept digging at it. “I don’t know,” I said irritated and picked up another branch from the yard, dragging it to the road.
“You admit you’re hiding feelings!” she yelled. Did the woman know sound traveled crazy far when you lived by water?
I dropped my branch mid-drag and shook my hand to get her to stop. “Shhhh, what if he hears you?”
Tabitha scowled at Pierce’s mansion. “It’s way far away. He totally can’t hear me.” Obviously, the woman really was from landlocked America because she didn’t understand how sound around water carries. “You deserve happiness, Katy, and I think you could find it with Pierce if you put whatever petty bullshit you two have behind you.”
“My foundation with Pierce is based on petty bullshit. Plus, there is no way he’ll ever talk to me again.” Not after what I did at the funeral.
“I don’t know, Katy. Have you ever told him how you feel?”
“Of course not.” Did she consider me crazy?
Tabitha shrugged in a way I normally found cute but now annoyed me. “You should try it. Just one time make yourself vulnerable and tell him how you feel.”
“What if I don’t even know the truth of my feelings?” I’d hidden them for so long and now they were mixed up with my grandmother’s anger. I never learned where I began and Pierce stopped before the whole of us came together. We were a tangled web of crazy since day one.
No, that wasn’t fair. That first week he helped me with the frogs we’d been perfect. It wasn’t until Nanna got involved and brought her fury for his family into my life that things changed.
“What if I don’t know how to let it go?”
Tabitha shook her head and picked up a branch from the ground. “The first step is trying. Have you ever really stopped and thought about you and Pierce?”
I laughed. I spent a whole life trying not to think about me and Pierce. “No.”
“Start there. Where do you see yourself in five years, and what if Pierce married Mari? You’re the strongest woman I’ve ever met, Katy, and you deserve happiness. If you want, we can go to the ice cream shop before it closes and pick up a few more pints to help you make your decision.”
“Ice cream would help,” I said with a smile. Tabitha was right. It was time to do deep thinking about Pierce for the first time in my life. It seemed wrong to talk about my Nanna now that she was gone, but maybe everyone was right and I needed to move on. Not for her but for me.
To not let her bitterness ruin what could be my future. I just didn’t know if I possessed the strength to do it. Nanna just died and now everyone wanted me to abandon my commitment to her. I’d lived one way for so long. How did a person change?
Did I even want to?
20
Pierce
Nothing in my home looked the way it should. Katy never lived here, but I caught her sneaking into the laundry room window at least twice a week. I offered her a key once, for her safety, but she’d never used it, even though it went missing from the counter where I left it with a note telling her to take it. Now realizing I would never get the chance to catch her in my space again, I wanted to keep her and everyone else out forever. The doors were currently locked along with the windows. An empty house greeted me every time I entered.
Things needed to change. The place had always been too big of a home for me to live in by myself. With the recent developments, now was the time to leave Pelican Bay. Start fresh somewhere new. I found the thought despairing rather than exciting, but I needed to get used to it.
It’s how the rest of my life would feel like without Katy in it anymore. The madness had to stop at some point. I couldn’t go on any longer. Katy humbled me from the cocky self-assured man I used to be into someone who sat at home in his office wallowing in self-pity. I didn’t like it.
“I think we can still hit projections as long as nothing else happens,” my cousin Jerome said on the phone as I stared out my office window at the crashing waves while darkness fell across the coastline.
Always business. I loved my cousin dearly. Without having siblings, the Kensington cousins were as close as brothers, but I also didn’t want to hear about his problems anymore either. “The important thing is that you’ll be here tomorrow. Right?”
“Yes, I said so, three times now.”
Good. “Have you reserved a room at the bed-and-breakfast?”
“Yeah, a woman named Angela set it up. She sounded hot.”
“Well, there’s been a change of plans, and I may not be here much until the building is finished. So if you want to cancel, you can stay at my place.”
Jerome whistled over the phone. “No thanks, brother. Remember the last time we shared accommodations?”
I laughed for what felt like the first time in years. “Yeah, I remember getting stuck with the bill at the end.”
