“Because you’re amazing.”
“My dad says I was a fussy baby.”
“Geez, Hadley.” Galen exhaled heavily. “Babies are fussy. If I took everything my mother said about me when I was a baby to heart I’d be curled up in the fetal position. She still blames me for the time I bit her when I was trying to take a bite of an apple and she got in my way. I was two. She’s convinced I was paying her back for not breastfeeding me.”
I pressed my lips together, my eyebrows migrating up my forehead. It wasn’t a funny story, but laughter bubbled up all the same.
“It’s okay,” he encouraged. “Booker still teases me over that story. His mother didn’t breastfeed him either.”
“Did you guys bond over that?”
He lifted one shoulder. “Our mothers might hate one another — hardcore — but they’re weirdly similar.”
“That’s probably why you guys are besties.”
“He is not my best friend.”
“Yes, he is.”
“You’re my best friend.”
“I’m going to be your wife. You need a best friend to vent to when I do weird stuff. That’s Booker. He vents to you about Lilac.”
“He claims Lilac is perfect.”
“He’ll get over that. We were schmaltzy at the start too.”
“Who are you kidding?” His grin widened. “We’re still schmaltzy. I plan to be schmaltzy forever.”
“I’ll get you a T-shirt made up saying just that.”
“I’ll wear it.” He went back to his file. “Do you want to talk this out while you’re watching, or should this be a silent event?”
“We both know I can only handle silence for so long before I start babbling.”
“Okay.” He ran his hand up and down my sweaty back twicebefore focusing. “Declan came to the island five years before he disappeared.”
“I think he was here before that,” I argued.
“I guarantee he was, but he went by a different name. This file doesn’t have that name. Maybe the DDA file does. Have you gone through all of it?”
“Most of it.” I focused on my mother, who was back at the storage building door. She was fixated on it tonight. She usually wandered aimlessly like the rest of them. “I got distracted researching dhampirs.”
“We can go through the rest of it when we get home.”
“How did he get that house?” I asked. “You told me property ownership is nearly impossible if you’re an outsider. The only reason I could inherit the lighthouse in the first place was because May was a lifer and I was her blood granddaughter.” Something occurred to me. “If my parents had adopted me, would I have been able to inherit?”
“Probably not,” Galen replied. “Someone would have challenged your claim to the property.”
“Because they wanted the lighthouse.”
“Everyone on the island wanted the lighthouse.” He let loose a low chuckle. “That’s a prime piece of real estate.”
“It’s not as if anyone can knock it down to build a hotel.”
“Back when the DDA was in charge, if someone greased the right palms, it could have been knocked down for a hotel. It’s not as if a lighthouse is necessary in this day and age.”
“But it was back when pirates ran the island.”
