I need you to fight, Si. With everything you’ve got. Fight for Lemon. But fight for yourself, too. Whatever it takes. All to pieces.
I couldn’t have asked for a better brother. Heck, I got the four best on the planet. But you’re my twin. I can’t imagine I made it easy on you. But you were the right person for the job, and I’ll never, ever forget how much you loved me.
Enough of the mush. I’m sure you’re squirming in your seat.
She was right. I was. Eyes were burning too.
GiveAnna lots of hugs from me.
See you on the other side, Bestie from the Nestie.
Forever and always,
Sophie
I set the letter in my lap and closed my eyes.
So she had done this for me and Clem to get together. I’d been right about that. The part I got wrong was that Sophie wasn’t trying to boss me around from the grave or have one last laugh. She knew me. She knew what I needed to be happy, and Lemon, too. And she’d facilitated a plan to knock us both off our axes, and give us the time to set them aright, together.
I cruised the winding, hilly back roads of Seddledowne for hours, mulling over Sophie’s letter, over Clem, over the botched ninety days with Anna—trying to figure out what to do. By the time I headed home, it was well past lunch. My stomach was reciting an oral presentation about it.
There are five residences at Dupree Ranch—my parents’ house, Sophie’s small cottage, two tiny ranch hand trailers, and all the way on the other side of the five hundred and twenty-two acres, Uncle Troy and Aunt Wendy’s house, the original home-place. Sophie’s was the first one you passed once you crossed onto Dupree land. I hadn’t been inside since the day after she died. And I’d left that day, hyperventilating. It was vacant now, and my parents hadn’t made plans for anyone to move in.
So when I drove by and saw a car parked in front, I made a three-point turn and pulled into the driveway.
It was a standard, nondescript gray sedan. With a rental company sticker on it.
Christy.
It was her rental. I’d seen it for half a second in the driveway at the house in Sandbridge.
Had she driven here from the beach? She must’ve come looking for me and thought this was my parents’ house. I didn’t want to do this with her, but I couldn’t really avoid it if she’d come all this way.
I got out and jogged to the house.
But I never got off a single knock on the front door.
Because there, on Sophie’s couch, framed by the picture window like something on a Christmas card, was my brother and my ex-girlfriend, arms wrapped around each other, sucking face.
My hands gripped the sides of my head and a sound I’d never made before exploded out of my lungs—part shocked snort, part incredulous laugh, part expletive. I stumbled backward off the porch and onto the grass.
Holden jerked back, his eyes flashing to the window. He jumped off the couch and raced over to the door.
My head gave a small shake, reeling. “I can’t…wow. Unbelievable.”
The weird laugh-snort kept repeating in my throat and I couldn’t stop it. Didn’t have a name for it. I’d never walked in on my brother kissing my very, barely ex-fiancée before.
I was pretty sure Holden was experiencing feelings he couldn’t name either. Because Holden had dated probably a hundred girls over the years and never felt a bit of shame in the way he necked with Julie one night and went out for a drink with Jocelyn the next. Discomfort, guilt, and self-doubt were not emotions he possessed when it came to the female sex. But they were on his face now, in every tense, taut muscle of his body.
“Si, I’m sorry, man. I didn’t mean?—”
Christy bolted past him like he wasn’t there—her eyes desperate. “It was nothing, Silas. It was a mistake.”
Holden’s head snapped back like she’d elbowed him in the nose.
I put my hands up for her to stop before she got any closer. “Doesn’t look like nothing to him.”
She glanced sheepishly at Holden. Then she turned back and reached for me. I took another large step back, shaking my head.
