Chapter Twenty-Two
“Look, I used to like Flynn well enough, but I’ve got kids now. I don’t want them looking at him and thinking they can follow in his footsteps.”
A COLDshower was his traditional cure for a hangover. In Flynn’s experience a morning clamber up a cliff face was just as effective. He edged out along the narrow ledge, toward the little girl miserably stuck on the spur of rock that jutted out of the cliff. One of her arms was wrapped around a fat Jack Russell that dangled from its armpits, its back legs kicking as though it could swim to safety. Gulls swooped and screeched overhead in furious defense of their nests, even though no one was near them yet.
“Hey, Gwennie,” he said. “What are you doing up here?”
She wiped her sleeve over her face and left a trail of snot and tears on the denim. “Bobby chased a bird,” she said, her lower lip pouted out. “We got stuck.”
“Oh,” Flynn said. The wind came whistling in off the sea and shoved at him. It caught his T-shirt and belled it out behind him. The tug of it gave him a visceral jolt. He knew he wasn’t going to fall, but for a second, he imagined what it would be like. That wasn’t helpful. Flynn sucked in a breath and shook the chill off. “That happens. How’s your puppy?”
Gwennie hugged her dog tighter.
“He’s skeered.”
“I bet.”
The roar of a car engine made him check over his shoulder. A jeep skidded to a stop in the parking lot below, and Jessie scrambled out with a float gripped in one hand. Gwennie’s mother, stuck in her wheelchair on the narrow concrete walk, pointed frantically up, away from the sea. Jessie tossed the float back in the jeep and ran. Flynn turned back and saw Gwennie shuffle her feet on the rock and lose her balance for a second. Her pink-jean-clad leg dipped precariously out into space, and the Jack Russell whined and squirmed as it slipped down an inch. She caught herself with the ease of one who is too young and unscarred to be afraid of the fall.
“Gwennie, just stay still,” Flynn said around the sudden lump in his throat. They weren’t that high. The cliffs stretched up a hundred feet overhead, and he’d had to drag kids off the crags in the middle of winter. It was only about twenty feet where they were, but it was high enough for a little girl. The tide was out, and the stretch of rocky sand below would be a bad place to land. “Stay where you are.”
“I’m gonna be in trouble,” she said. Her arms tightened around the dog and made it grunt and squirm. The thought started the tears again, and her cold-reddened face creased as she started to sob. “Mum’s gonna be mad at me.”
She shuffled nervously again, and her trainers slid on patches of bird shit and moss.
“Maybe,” Flynn said. His mouth was dry, and his muscles itched with the need to just lunge out and grab her before she fell. “Or maybe she’ll be so happy to see you back safe and sound that she won’t be mad at all.”
He glanced back to see where Jessie was. She had scrambled nearly three-quarters of the way up the cliff and dislodged shale from under her feet and onto the beach below. That Gwennie had managed to get up there was amazing, and Flynn had no idea how the fat little dog had managed it.
“I’m not supposed to go on the beach on my own,” Gwennie said.
“We all do stuff we shouldn’t,” Flynn said. He jumped across a broken bit of ledge and caught the spur of rock. The sharp edges sliced his fingers, but he managed to hold on. “The people who love us? They might yell a bit, but they forgive us.”
Gwennie shifted and frantically batted at the air with one hand. None of the gulls had actually swooped down on her, but the noise of them was intimidating on its own. She wiped her face again. “You sure?”
“I am.”
“You gotta take Bobby first.”
Flynn boosted himself up and grabbed the little dog by the scruff of the neck. It barked and twisted as it tried to get its teeth into him, but he swung it across the gap to Jessie, who shoved it under her arm and wrapped her fingers around its muzzle.
“Your turn, Gwennie,” he said. “Come on.”
She hiccupped out a sob and hesitated, suddenly scared of more than just her mother’s anger. “I don’t wanna fall!”
“I’ll catch you,” Flynn promised.
After a moment of scrunched-face doubt, Gwennie shuffled carefully to the edge of the rock, and he grabbed her. For a second she clung to him. Then the situation hit her, and she burst into tears and started to thrash.
“I want my mummy! I wanna go home!” she wailed.
Her heel nailed Flynn firmly in the stomach. He grimaced and oofed at the unexpected pain but kept his balance.
“You okay?” Jessie asked. Her mouth was pleated in an odd line that wasn’t quite sure if it needed to be worried or amused.
“I’m fine.” Apparently that meant Jessie could settle on amused. Her mouth tilted up into a silent snort of laughter at his pain. She didn’t even know the half of it. Flynn gave her a sour look over Gwennie’s flopping brown curls and then jerked his chin back to avoid an elbow to the face. He felt his weight shift and the tug of gravity catch in his stomach. “Gwennie, we’re going down now. Your mum is waiting. You have to calm down.”
She struggled a minute longer and then went limp. For a small child, there was a surprising amount of weight in her sniffling little frame. Flynn hitched her up onto his hip, and she wrapped her arms around his neck. She pressed her wet and snotty face against his shoulder.
