Police lights flashed on Harbor Drive, the main drag that curved along the lake.
“Shit,” Seb said. “We should probably...”
He didn’t have to tell me. The last thing I needed today was getting questioned by the local Haven Beach cops, who all seemed to be a horrible mix of dumb, power-hungry, and bored. Seb whistled at his dog and set off after me as I headed past the food truck park, praying that Patty didn’t see me with Seb.
“Christ, Paige! Slow down. Thought you were studying art history, not track and field.”
“And I thought I could leave this town for two measly semesters and come back to find my own home intact.” I halted long enough to dig his key ring out of my pocket and threw it at him, missing by a mile. “Don’t even tell me it wasn’t you who trashed the cottage.”
“But it wasn’t!” He bent low to search for his keys in the sand, shoving blond waves out of his eyes. “Paige, come on—”
“Don’t, okay? Just don’t. Your lies may work on the rest of the people in this town, but they don’t work on me anymore.”
I continued trudging across the sand, leaving him behind as he dropped a dozen f-bombs while searching for his keys. For a few minutes, I occasionally glanced back at him and the dog, wondering if he’d just give up and leave. But after I rounded the little hill that harbored my grandmother’s cottage and made it to the back porch, I felt him running up behind me again.
“I found ’em,” he announced, like I cared.
“Next time I’ll throw them in the lake. See that?” I said, pointing toward the window I’d secured with tape and cardboard. “You’re paying for that.”
“Me?” he said, sounding like the bewildered boy I once knew. And I suppose it was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back, because all the grief and hurt I’d been feeling earlier while cleaning up the cottage now came back in a rush of anger.
“Howdareyou,” I said, stopping at the bottom of the cottage’s back porch. “Nana would have been so disappointed. Would’ve broken her heart that you did this to our home. She took care of you when your dad was working—washed your clothes, fed you. Gave you presents.”
“Paige—”
“And to pay her back, you break into the cottage—”
“I didn’t break in!” He pulled out his sandy key ring and jangled it in my face. “I still have a fucking key!”
That honestly surprised me. “You’ve been letting yourself into my house?”
His eyes flicked everywhere but my face as he tried to come up with a story. But I knew him too well, knew that fight-or-flight look on his face and the nervous laugh that followed. “Okay, I may have, once or twice, crashed here—but only when I didn’t have any other options. I had the old spare house key—”
“And that gives you the right to host ragers here and tear up my stuff? Nana nursed my mother in that rocking chair! It’s been in our family for decades. But if you didn’t care about that, I thought for sure you’d respect Nana’s paintings. Four of them were so damaged, I don’t think they can be saved. What the hell is wrong with you?”
He looked wired and exasperated. Defensive. “I didn’t break the chair or the paintings, Paige. You’ve gotta believe—”
“I don’t ‘gotta’ do nothing,” I said, unable to stop my eyes from brimming with tears. “Why should I believe anything you say? You made it clear that you didn’t want anything to do with me or any of your other friends years ago when you all but abandoned the Wags for those fucking Vanderburg dirtbags!”
“I got sent off to boot camp!” he shouted, throwing up his arms while his dog started barking at us again.
“And we all tried to get you out of that place! You know we did, even though you barely spoke to us the year before you got sent away. We still wanted to help you. You know this! After Nana got in a fight with your dad when she tried to intervene, and you sent me that letter and told me to leave you alone—”
“Because helping me was pointless, all right? I was fucked, and I’d done it to myself, and I just had to get through the punishment. That letter, by the way, was supposed to be me riding off into the sunset. You’re spoiling my dramatic goodbye right this minute, you know.” He said this as if he were joking, but I heard hurt beneath his easy words.
“I left you alone, just like you asked, Seb. I didn’t write you back. I didn’t call. And I didn’t visit. I did what you asked, only to have you waltz back into my life with a sledgehammer!”
“I don’t know how many times I need to say this, but I did not wreck the cottage, Paige. I mean, sure, I’m no domestic goddess and may haveoccasionallyleft the cottage a mess when Ioccasionallycrashed there while you were away at Harvard—”
“She’s dead,” I blurted, angry and confrontational. “Nana is dead. She’s been dead for almost an entire year.”
Seb opened his mouth to say something and then shut it. He stood still, a little frozen, as if he had no idea how to respond.
“Cut the shit,” I said. “You wouldn’t dare break into here if she were still alive. And I know Benny told you about the funeral because I asked him to call you last summer when it happened, seeing how he was the only Wag you stayed in touch with,” I said, accusatory, then a fresh wave of grief washed over me, and I feltmy shoulders sag with the weight of it. When I spoke again, my voice was small and broken. “You didn’t come, Seb. She practically raised you, and you couldn’t even bother to show up at her funeral—not for her, and not even for me.”
I would not cry in front of him, I just wouldn’t. When tears brimmed, I turned my face away and climbed the porch steps past the Mr. Legs tree-trunk sculpture, rushing to swing the screen door open so that I could get the cottage unlocked before I lost control.
Chapter 3
