“More like this morning. And also, years ago.”
“You enjoy talking in riddles? Want me to do a puzzle to figure out what you’re saying?” she scolds me while rummaging through the fridge before coming out with a stick of butter. Her long gray braid swings with each movement.
I huff out a breath. “Isla got hurt when we were younger, and I could’ve stopped it from happening but didn’t.”
Grandma barks out a laugh. “That’s a lie. Biggest one I’ve ever heard from your mouth.”
“I’m not lying!”
How does she always make me feel like I’m thirteen rather than thirty?
“Don’t you raise your voice in this house.”
“Sorry.” I keep my voice low and steady this time, though I want to argue.
My grandmother gives me a hard look. “You’re saying, youknewshe would get hurt, and you didn’t do anything?”
“No,” I admit. “But I knew someone could get hurt.”
“And you did nothing?”
Not after my dad shoved me away from the wheel. He would get rough sometimes after drinking too much.
“I could’ve done more.”
My grandmother rubs the stick of butter around the inside of a metal pan. “This have anything to do with your daddy?”
“Don’t see why that’s relevant,” I mutter.
She reaches for a wooden spoon and tries to jab my side with it as I shimmy out of her reach. “If your daddy was involved, then he was probably the one doing the hurting. And Lord knows, I was never able to control that man. So, don’t go thinking you could either.”
Maybe not when I was little. But by the time I was sixteen, I was just as tall and weighed almost as much. I could’ve wrestled the control of the boat from him. It would’ve been a fight, but I should’ve done it.
“Everything bad in the world could’ve been stopped if only we’d known about it first.” My grandmother keeps going. “But youdon’tknow beforehand. So, you can’t be taking on that shame. Especially when it’s your daddy doing the bad thing.”
Wouldn’t that be great if I didn’t have to carry the guilt of that night around with me? But even if I find a way to forgive myself, that doesn’t mean that Isla will suddenly appear in my life.
A loud knock sounds on the screen door.
“Got it,” my grandpa announces, strolling through the kitchen with a half-empty container of seeds he was no doubt using to refill the bird feeders.
The timer goes off, and since my grandmother’s hands are busy, I pull on a set of oven mitts and go to pull out the first two layers of cake. Tomorrow is my grandpa’s birthday, and she prefers to get a head start on the celebration. I still need to wrap the bat box I built for their backyard. The man loves to sit on his porch every evening and listen to the squeak of the little flying creatures as they hunt for bugs in the dying light.
“Looks like we got some guests.” Grandpa returns to the kitchen with a small group behind him.
When I see who the new arrivals are, I almost drop the cake tin I’m holding. I barely manage to make it to the cooling rack.
“Isla.” Her name chokes from my throat.
“Finn.” She steps forward, looking gorgeous in a dress that sways around her legs and hugs her chest as tightly as I want to. “These are my parents, Ann and Patrick Brown.”
The two people have the same short stature, pale complexion, and dark hair color as their daughter, but only her mother has the same shade of mahogany eyes. Her dad’s gaze is darker, and both of the Brown parents stare at my family as if we were a pack of wolves about to devour them.
Owen wasn’t kidding when he described Isla’s parents as the cautious sort.
“Nice to meet you.” I move forward with slow, obvious steps, and then I hold out my hand, shaking both of their reluctant ones in turn. “These are my grandparents, Ethel and Barty Hammond.” I face my family. “And you’ve met Isla before.”
Grandma nods with a broad smile, wiping her hands on her apron. “Sure have. Why don’t you all come in? Take a load off. I’ll get you a cup of tea.”
