I sit up straighter. Everything in me is buzzing. All that time, all the guessing, and now something solid. Finally.
I look at Wren and grin so wide my cheeks hurt. He’s already smiling back.
Before I can overthink it, I launch over and hug him. Quick, tight, completely on impulse. My whole body needssomewhereto put that feeling. But when his arms come up around me after a moment, I let myself hold him just a second longer.
Fifteen
Wren
Late nights are a semi-regular thing for me. Usually I stay in my room, but I linger in the kitchen tonight. The house is quiet except for the hum of the fridge and the faint whistle of the wind squeezing through the old windows.
Our house, like everything else in our lives, is functional and no frills. A two-story Cape Cod with low counters and wide doorways Dad modified after my accident. The living room doubles as a workspace for McCleave’s, with old maps and binders spilling across the worn coffee table. The kitchen is the best part of the house—bright, a little cramped, with scratched cabinets and a scuffed-up butcher block island that still smells faintly of lemon oil from when Eryn last tried to clean it.
I’m just about to pour myself another coffee when Dad walks in, his pajama pants hanging loosely around his waist, the faded T-shirt he’s been wearing for years barely holding on to its shape. He was clearly already in bed, his hair mussed from sleep. He doesn’t seem surprised to find me still up. He never does. Instead, he heads straight for the fridge, yanking it open and pulling outeggs, cheese, and vegetables that look like they’ve been in the crisper too long. He drops everything on the counter by the stove and grabs his skillet, the one he treats like a museum piece.
“You gonna let me make you a midnight omelet?” he asks, turning the stove knob with a practiced twist. “It’s been a while.”
It has. “Senior year?”
“Sounds about right.” He cracks eggs into a bowl, adds a splash of truffle oil, and starts whisking. “I’ve been experimenting with this stuff. Not sure how I feel about it yet. You game?”
I nod. “Sure. Thanks.”
Dad couldn’t boil water when he found himself a single dad raising a three-year-old, but he learned fast. By the time I was old enough to remember, he could whip up anything. It’s one of the few things, apart from mermaids, that he seems to genuinely enjoy.
His knife blurs as he chops onions and mushrooms. “How’s the new volunteer working out?”
“Lili,” I say before I can stop myself. Her name feels weird in my mouth, like I’m giving something away. Since meeting her, I’ve gone out of my way to keep her at a distance, to remind her that this idea of rewriting history is pointless. And yet, she keeps showing up. She ran alongside the boat the entire tour when I expected her to quit after a few photos. She spent days helping me with the new script, trying to get me to rehearse, even though I hate performing for tourists.
Except maybe her.
She laughs when I start to get angry, argues back when I try to aim my frustration at her, helps me find answers to questions I didn’t even think to ask.
And for better or worse, she pushes me to want more instead of just accepting things the way they are.
I should go back to calling her Tourist Girl. Pretend nothing’s changed. But it almost feels too late for that. I knew it earlier when I said her name—not just in front of her mom, but alone in that study, when she suddenly looked afraid of the answers she’d been chasing.
And when she hugged me, I did the thing I absolutely knew I shouldn’t have. I hugged her back. She felt soft and strong in my arms, sweet like I could breathe her in for hours without any effort at all.
And the worst part is, I didn’t want to let her go.
Dad’s still waiting for my answer. I can’t say any of that out loud. I shouldn’t even be thinking it.
“She’s like your truffle oil,” I say instead.
He doesn’t turn around, but I can tell he’s smiling by the slight tilt of his head. “Gotta be careful with that stuff. A little brings out the flavor, but it’s easy to overdo.”
“Same with her.” I hesitate, then settle on: “She’s not what I expected.”
Dad tosses the vegetables into the pan, and the hiss of butter fills the kitchen. “You want to find someone else?”
I shake my head. “No, it’ll be fine.” It has to be. Because after yesterday, there’s no avoiding her.
We took careful pictures of every page of the book from the McCleave’s archives and compared them to some of the entries in her dad’s notebook, and there’s no doubt left in my mind: It is Kezia’s diary. The one that the Whaling Museum has is from earlier in her life, up through just after her marriage. This one lookslike it starts right before the war. It’s the one she would have kept during her supposed smuggling operations.
If we can make sense of her dad’s entries and match them up with pages from Kezia’s second diary, we might actually find the answers Lili’s looking for. I doubt they’ll be the ones she wants, but they’ll be definitive.
I don’t believe in fate. But it feels like something is pulling me farther into this, farther into her orbit, and I don’t know how to stop it.
