“Sounds like my father,” I say without thinking. “He could never figure out the timing.”
Levi’s eyes meet mine across the table. “Are you still close with your dad?”
“We grew apart for a while. But we reconnected a few years ago. After I moved back to Asheville.”
“I’m sorry about your father, by the way.” Jo’s voice is gentle. “Eleanor mentioned he passed?”
I nod, surprised by the sudden tightness in my throat. “Heart attack. It was quick.”
“That’s hard. Even when the relationship is complicated.”
“Family’s complicated,” Dean says gruffly. “Doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter.”
Coming from Dean, the words land differently. He’s looking at Levi when he says it, and something passes between them—an acknowledgment of sharedwounds, or just the understanding of two men who’ve learned to be brothers despite everything.
By the time we’ve finished the main course, the conversation has settled into something almost comfortable. Jo shares stories about her boutique—the woman who wanted a driftwood coffee table that could also function as a bathtub, the couple who commissioned matching vintage desks and then broke up before she finished them.
“Levi chased it out,” Dean says, halfway through a story about a raccoon at the fire station. “This was years ago, when he was still in high school. He just walked up to it and started singing, and the thing followed him right out the door.”
“Animals like music,” Levi says.
“Animals likeyou. That’s different.”
“Remember that seagull you accidentally adopted?” I hear myself ask. The memory surfaces from nowhere—Levi feeding crackers to a seagull with a broken wing until it healed enough to fly away. “You named it Steve.”
Levi’s face does something complicated. “You remember Steve?”
“You were devastated when he left. You wrote a song about it.”
“I did not write a song about a seagull.”
“You absolutely did. Something about wings and freedom and following your heart?”
“That was a metaphor.”
“For a seagull named Steve.”
He almost smiles. Almost. And even that—that ghost of a smile on his exhausted face—does something devastating to my chest.
Dean is watching us with an expression I can’t read. Jo’s eyes are bright, but it’s not the scheming brightness from earlier. It’s relief. Like she’s been holding her breath all evening, waiting to see if Levi would surface from wherever he’s been hiding, and he just did.
Because of a seagull named Steve.
Because of me.
I’m not sure how I feel about that.
“Dessert!” she announces, jumping up from the table. “I made peach cobbler. From last year’s preserves. Levi, help me with the ice cream?”
They disappear into the kitchen, leaving me alone with Dean.
“She means well,” Dean says after a moment.
“I know.”
“She’s not subtle.”
“I noticed.”
