My pulse ticks wildly in my throat and I’m too afraid to look beyond her, to see the parent that accompanied her.
I pivot, hunching over the cooler box, and sift my fingers through ice as I try to keep my voice light. “What ice cream are you after?”
Holly’s still catching her breath. “Strawberry!” She says brightly, and then on the same breath, exhilarated, naïve, uncensored: “Are you my brother?”
I tip over into the ice and numbly drag myself out of it.
Holly laughs like it’s a joke. Then says again, with that naked curiosity, “Are you?”
Such childlike innocence. No hesitations, no doubts, no life experience to hold the question back.
“‘Cause, I wanted to learn magic like your coin trick. My nana said it was the same wish Dylan had when he was my age. Then Mum got mad and Nana went quiet. I didn’t want to ask her, so I’m asking you.” She bites into her ice cream. “You had all the stories of Beth. Of her putting the cat in the shower for time out.I found a picture of a cat.” Her hand stretches to my ear. “And we have the same mole.”
I thunk onto the sand and huff a pained, awkward laugh against my knees.
Holly keeps licking her ice cream, then biting down the cone.
“You’re nice to me,” she says, when I’ve sat lost for words. “I hope you are.”
“Holly,” I start, but I’m interrupted by my mum’s cool voice.
“Holly.”
She scrambles to her feet. “He is. He is!”
“Go play somewhere else a moment, hm?”
Holly drops her towel and races for the water. “He is,” she yells.
I rise, brushing off shells and seaweed.
The sun flashes on Mum’s dyed-brown hair and heavy eyeliner. Her lips press together, choosing words. Her manicured nails dig into her handbag.
“Don’t think I didn’t know it,” she says. “The ‘scholarships’ to drama classes. I’ve known. I’ve let it happen.”
I swallow thickly.
I thought it was my secret, my way to bond with Holly without anyone knowing.
I’m not sure which is worse: her not knowing, or knowing and not caring.
I open my mouth, but her hand tightens on the bag.
“As long as you don’t try to make out that you’re family, it’s fine.”
“Wearefamily.”
“You’re biologically related. It’s different.”
My heels sink into the sand.
The sky’s spotless. Moana’s whanau laugh over kai. Tamariki chase around sandcastles.
At the roadside, Trent’s truck slows.
“You had your chance at family,” Mum says, her voice tight. “You lost it.”
I swallow hard, watching Sara jump out and Trent helping Grandpa from the truck.
