Emily already has her phone out, manicured fingers flying. “Mom is going to flip.”
“No, wait!” I say.
“Sorry,” Cole says, tapping his screen. “Beat you to it.”
My phone vibrates hard with a loudbuzz buzzagainst the table. The name “Mom” lights up the screen.
“Guys, come on,” I groan. But I answer and put it on speaker. “Hi, Mom. You’re on speaker. How are you?”
She skips the pleasantries entirely. “Where is she? When did she get here? Can you bring her to dinner tonight?”
“Mom,” I sigh.
When I thought Sierra was dead, my mom was moreoptimistic. She drove to every homeless shelter, put up flyers in every gas station and grocery store in the area, searching for months after Sierra ran away, trying to track her down. I still remember the hope she retained that we would find her alive, followed by the heartbreak when the PI tracked her down and we realized that she had left and never looked back.
Now I hear that same hope in her voice. My mom always said that, when she was ready, Sierra would come back to us, and now I have to crush her joy by telling her the prodigal daughter has returned but doesn’t want to see her.
“I don’t think she’s ready for that,” I say. “She seems really ashamed about…everything that happened.”
“Oh, I see,” my mom says softly.
Three small words shouldn’t carry that much weight. For a moment, I let myself hate Sierra a little—for breaking my mom’s heart again, and for making me be the one to do it.
“You might have time to see her. She’s staying for six more weeks,” Seth says. “Logan offered her a job.”
“What?” Cole says, frowning. “With us?”
“Not really,” I say with a glare at Seth. “Mom, we’re going to talk business. I’ll call you later,” I say and hang up the phone.
I turn back to my siblings, who wear various levels of irritation at my high-handedness. I tell them how Sierra is helping me set up the events, how good she’s been at it already. “Surprisingly so,” I admit. “Her independence, her ability to think fast on her feet—it’s impressive. Every time an obstacle appears, she’s able to sidestep it with finesse. When I worked by myself, it never took long before I got frustrated. It never gets that far with Sierra. She jumps in immediately, smoothly adjusting plans, finding fixes, spinning it into something better.”
“That sounds great,” Cole interrupts. “But you didn’t even ask us before you hired her? Come on, man. We literally talked about you making major company decisions without consulting us this last week.”
“I’m paying her out of my own pocket,” I protest.
He clenches his jaw. “And again—not the point.”
“I told Seth, and I’ll say it again now—I think I need this for closure. And it won’t be forever. She’s signed on for helping with the Candlelight Tour at the end of this week,” I say. “And then helping with the Blackstone Legacy event five weeks after that. There’s an end.” I swallow against the sudden bile that rises up at that thought.
“So let me get this straight,” Ethan says, his tone cool. “You’re running your first major event, planning another full one in six weeks, training a new employee, doing caving tours,andworking through deep-rooted emotional trauma?”
I rub the back of my neck. “Yeah.”
“I mean,” Emily says, “it is probably time you dealt with the emotional trauma part.”
“We can shift some tours to me,” Seth says with a sigh.
“That’s not necessary,” I say, but everyone else is already nodding. “Thanks, bro,” I say, my throat unexpectedly tight.
Seth gives me a look that says,I’m your twin—don’t look so surprised I’ve got your back. Even if you’re an idiot.
But now, days before my first-ever event, I question the wisdom of my plan. I am having a hard time focusing on the closure goal with everything else.
***
“Logan, it’s almost seven o’clock,” Seth says when he walks into the front door later that week.
I glance up from my laptop in the living room. Sierra threwin the towel about an hour ago to work out in our garage gym.
