“Ruh-oh,” Jazmine said teasingly behind my back as she followed us through the balcony door.
Ruh-oh was right.
We all took separate vehicles to Heron Cottage. The Corvair truly did stink with my discarded meaty hand pie, but it was a welcome distraction from my chaotic thoughts for the short drive. By the time I’d dumped it into my trash can, Jazmine and Seb were both parking behind me. And when I unlocked the front door, Punkin raced past me and headed straight for the bowl of water in the kitchen.
“What’s going on with this?” Jazmine asked upon entering, gesturing toward Punkin. “My mom said she’d push that dog off our balcony if it ever came in our house again.”
“No balconies here at the cottage,” Seb said. “Paige said she could crash here sometimes, so I guess the only Punkin hater left is your mom. Your dad lets her lick his face.”
Jazmine snorted. “You know very well that my mom hates her because she had to steam-clean her favorite rug. Besides, Benny’s dad says she has fleas, so my mom’s not theonlyhater. But I am surprised about you, Paige. We all know you and dogs don’t mix.”
“Yeah, well...” I opened the door to the basement and flipped on the lights. “Guess people change.”
Jogging down old steps, I inhaled cool, dank air. The basement was small and crowded, built into the side of the land that made up the front yard, with a single window that looked out beneath the back porch. I’d always hated coming down to the basement when I was a kid and only did so now to wash and dry clothes. But last year, before I’d left for school, Jazmine and her parents helped me pack up most of Nana’s personal things into giant plastic totes.
They stood together near the washer and dryer, a wall of memories that I didn’t want to face.
As far as I could tell, the men who broke into the cottage never even made it to the basement. It remained just as I’d left it last year.
None of the plastic totes were labeled, but I had a vague recollection of packing the photo album away, so it didn’t take me long to segregate four plastic totes—which were so big, they required two people to carry. Seb and Jaz helped me haul them upstairs, and after helping ourselves to leftover barbecued chicken and corn on the cob that almost made me weep with how good it was, we switched on Nana’s old radio to a station out of Grand Rapids and proceeded to lounge on the living room rug and dig through the boxes we’d brought upstairs.
I was thankful they were both here to help. I didn’t want to get swallowed by grief, sorting through all this stuff, and their presence was tempering, along with all the drama of the night that tumbled around inside my head while we opened boxes and talked.
Seb gave Jazmine a dramatic re-creation of our adventure on theDevil’s Revenge. “And then we slipped inside the captain’squarters like this...” He demonstrated, hiding behind the boxes like he was trying to avoid getting shot by faux gunfire from the fictional FBI agents who were trailing us in his livened-up version of the events.
“Absolute foolishness,” Jazmine said, shaking her head and laughing.
After that, we took our time going through nana’s things, halting briefly to clean up our impromptu dinner and let Punkin outside to pee, and when we settled back down to continue our search, Seb sat on the rug next to me, and we unsnapped the lid of one of the big plastic totes and delved inside while Jaz answered a phone call from Patty.
As I finished sorting through a stack of books, Seb straightened out his leg and bumped into me.
“Sorry,” he mumbled.
I glanced down, my gaze snagging on a shiny, triangular scar right above his knee. I knew that scar. It’d been there since he was ten and hadn’t faded much over the years.
“Admiring your handiwork?” Seb asked, one side of his mouth lifting.
“It’s not mine,” I said.
He squinted at my face. “Are you screwing with me, Malone? This is absolutely your doing. You were pissed because I’d borrowed that fishing boat—”
“Youstoleone of Mr. William’s boats.”
“—and threw that net at me, and a J-hook jabbed into my flesh.”
He wasn’t wrong. I’d been shocked by the amount of blood. “I remember nearly passing out when you pulled out the hook.”
“You and me both,” he said, smiling.
I stared at the scar. “Your dad blamed me and got in a screamingmatch with Nana at the ER. He called me a jezebel, and I had no idea what that was, but I do remember him shouting that I was a bad influence on you. Talk about irony.”
Seb’s eyes slid toward mine. We both snickered, then he said, “Yeah, my mother had left us the year before, and Pops wasn’t doing the best job dealing with it. He thought every female was trouble, no matter if it was you or Nana Malone, or the Virgin Mary. But you’re missing the point. This scar? It’s your handiwork.”
“Fine, you’re right. I did that, and I’m still sorry.”
Seb set a pile of paperwork on the floor beside him. “I’m not. It’s proof of life.”
“Proof of life?”
