“Skye met Caleb the summer before junior year. He’d just moved to town. His dad was hired as the new high school principal, poor kid. Skye spotted him at the Fourth of July parade. She was selling raffle tickets for the school band, and he bought five. Didn’t even ask what the prize was. Just smiled that sweet, lopsided grin. She told me he said, ‘Guess I already won something.’ It was charming.”
Ocean groaned. “No way.”
“Oh yes. Full teenage heartthrob nonsense. But it worked. He was tall, quiet, always had a pencil behind his ear. Skye thought he was mysterious. I thought he was just shy. But they clicked. Debates, concerts, track meets, late-night talks on the phone. The kind of high school love that feels like it’ll last forever.”
“And it didn’t?” Ocean asked.
“Obviously.” Jo shook her head gently. “They tried. Or at least that’s what Skye used to tell me when she came home for the holidays. Caleb was in Boston for college, Skye was out there in California. She said they had the usual relationship obstacles that occur with distance. Time zones, course exams, new friends. You know how it goes. The telephone calls slowed down. And then she met your dad.”
Ocean guessed that was a good thing for her. She wouldn’t be here otherwise.
“So, what happened to Caleb?”
Jo shrugged. “No idea. But if you’re ever curious, Clare kept dozens of pictures of them in those old albums.”
“Which ones?”
But before Jo could answer, the front door swung open.
Jo vanished in a blink.
Skye stepped inside, and Ocean saw it right away. Red eyes, blotchy cheeks. She’d been crying.
“Mom?” Ocean said, standing up fast. “What’s wrong?”
Skye dropped her bag and sank into the chair by the door like her legs had given out.
Ocean rushed over. “What happened? Tell me.”
Skye looked up, her face pale and wet. “Your grandmother…”
“What about her?” Ocean asked, heart pounding.
“She knew,” Skye said softly. “She knew something bad was going to happen. Before it did.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Skye
* * *
“Clare set up that joint checking account when I was leaving for college,” I told Arthur quietly. “She put both our names on it. Said it was for incidental things. Books, food, whatever didn’t fall under tuition. And she always made sure there was something in it.”
Arthur sat across from me, his reading glasses perched on the end of his nose. The late afternoon light filtered through the kitchen window, casting his shadow long and solid across the table. He was the one person I could talk to about everything. What had happened to my mother, what I was going through now.
Ocean hadn’t pressed me with questions when I blurted out that her grandmother had known that something could happen to her. When I came into the house visibly upset, my daughter had simply wrapped her arms around me.
I told her vaguely that Grandma had made financial arrangements for everything. That was all I could manage in the moment. When I said I needed to go across the street and talk to Arthur, she just nodded. She understood.
“She never closed the account,” I went on. “Even after I graduated, even after I got married. Every so often, she’d text me out of the blue and say, ‘Check the account. There’s something for Ocean. Or something for you. Do what you want with it.’”
Arthur reached across and covered my hand with his. His touch was warm, solid.
“Then today,” I said, clearing my throat, “I went to the bank. I figured I’d try to get a short-term loan to cover what I owe Bernie and take care of the funeral arrangements until Clare’s estate gets sorted out.”
“You didn’t have to do that,” Arthur interrupted, his voice rising slightly, sounding more hurt than angry. “You know I’d give you whatever you need.”
“I know. I do. And thank you.” A tear slipped free, and I swiped at it with the back of my hand. “But I didn’t want to ask anyone. I needed to feel like I could handle this one thing.”
