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I don’t either. And for a bit, the silence stretches on. Because I don’t want this to be real, what’s happening here. Our now that makes all our thens so distant and so past.
But.
Vivien loves Nic with her whole, unfiltered, warm heart.
But he is my cousin.
So I draw in a breath too, square my shoulders, set my hand on one of his. Tell him the truth he needs to hear, instead of the one I want to believe in. “Not ‘may be other things,’ Nico. Are.”
He looks over at me, and to my shock, there are tears in his eyes. “I know. But I already feel like I’m cheating on her by wanting anything she doesn’t.”
I put my arm around his shoulder as he brushes his eyes with the heel of his hand. For a second, he rests his head against me, tips it onto my shoulder, burrowing in for comfort just like Emory does. He smells like sweat and salt and sand, like family, like Seashell. The night is still, still, except for the familiar summer sounds, the shhh of the tide, the bzzz-whhr of the crickets, a dog barking a warning into the night, far, far away. Fabio, who has been snoring under the couch, snuffles, passes gas, and falls silent. Nic and I can clearly hear Emory’s and Grandpa Ben’s sleep noises. Grandpa Ben: “Snuffle snuffle snuffle . . . silence . . . snort.” And Emory, who really does sound more like the snoring cliché: “RRRR . . . shhh . . . rrrr . . . shhh.”
“What about Em?” Nic asks, swinging his long legs over mine, kicking his foot. “Where’s he supposed to fit into the whole personal obligation thing?”
Yeah. Em. Dad telling me that if Nic left, I’d be the one picking up the slack with my brother. And when I go to college . . . what then? I rub my chest, pushing away the tightness there.
Because . . . can I even go to college now? Does that mean Em’s my responsibility forever?
Well, of course he’s my responsibility forever. Nic and I’ve talked about that, how we’ll probably end up dividing care for him for the rest of our lives, but both of us thought it would be later on, much later on. And it probably will be—Mom’s only thirty-six. But . . .
I love my brother more than I can find words to tell. But like my cousin, I want off-island. At least for a while. If I wind up, somehow, staying . . . I want it to be my choice.
“Cuz.” Nic touches my cheek. “S’okay. For God’s sake, don’t be the second girl I’ve made cry in three hours. I’ll figure it out.” He taps one of his temples, smiles at me. “I always do. And uh, speaking of figuring things out, anything you want to tell me about Somers?”
A much better place for my thoughts to go. I touch my lips, unthinking.
Nic gives me a slow once-over. “Oookay. Got it. No details. I only need to know one thing. He treat you right?”
“He’s been a perfect gentleman.”
“I’ll bet,” he mutters. His shoulders twitch as though he’s shaking off any image of me and Cass together.
“I mean, he—we—”
“Big picture only, for God’s sake. You happy, Gwen?”
“I am.”
“That’s all I need. I’m out.” He slides off Myrtle, heading for the outdoor shower, then turns back. “If that changes, you know I’ll kill him, right, cuz?”
Chapter Thirty
“Okay, buddy. The big one. You ready?”
I’m not.
Em has his toes curled over the edge of the raft, poised to jump. He’s not wearing his life jacket, just has one of those overly bright, puffy foam swimming noodles looped under his armpits. His reflection looms over the water. Like me and Nic last night, swaying over the unknown.
But this is not me or Nic. This is Em.
Cass and I have already debated the wisdom of this three times during the walk down to the beach. Two more as we swam out to the raft, Emory’s slight arms looped around Cass’s neck, me pulling up the rear with the noodle and all my worries. We walked down the hill, debating, towing the wagon, Emory calm and collected, narrating the landmarks of the journey for Hideout, Fabio proudly aboard, head raised, like a dignitary at a motorcade.
Even when we hit the beach, I’m still arguing that Em’s not ready yet to make that big leap, not without something that’ll definitely, completely keep him above water—preferably something Coast Guard–approved. Cass saying he’ll have something to hold him up, but it’ll be in Em’s own hands, his control, that that’s important psychologically, repeating, “I know this stuff. Trust me, Gwen.”
“I’m not sure Em gets psychologically, Cass. He doesn’t think like that.”
Saying my brother’s limitations out loud feels like betraying him. We’ve always been careful not to, as if that story wasn’t ours to discuss either, what he can’t do, what he may never be able to do.
“Ready. Sssset,” Em says, his brow crinkled in concentration, poised on the edge of the float. I grab the end of the noodle. Clearly not the solution. Cass gives me a raised eyebrow, peels my fingers gently from the yellow foam.
I look down at the water. So flat and green and clear I can see the ripples of the sand far below, crabs scuttling around, eel grass. I sigh. And stand back. Emory takes a deep breath, flips his hair back exactly the way Cass does, studies the water with Cass’s focused frown. He’s been studying more than just Cass’s swim moves.
“Low tide. No surf,” Cass says, close to my ear. “If you trust the water, it holds you up. We’re both here. This’ll be fine.”
He counts down as Emory takes a deep breath, squints, concentrating hard on the water. “It’s a bird. It’s a plane. It’s . . .”
My little brother has the noodle clamped tightly under his arms, ends sticking out on either side like wings, his eyes serious, focused on the horizon. He turns and flashes me a grin, a broader one at Cass, then shouts, “It . . . I . . . Superman!” He launches himself, rockets into the world with a squeal.
And he is fine. Bobbing up a second later, shaking the water out of his hair.
Giggling. He throws his arms out in a Victory V, which sends him sinking below the surface again. Then pops back up, still laughing, and starts heading for us.
I make a move toward the edge of the float, Cass catches my elbow. “He can do it himself.”
He can. Em kicks in that overly splashy way little kids have, spiraling his arms back to the wooden ladder, anchoring it with his feet, clambering up. He splats the noodle onto the float, unself-conscious, confident. “I Superman,” he repeats, the S sound coming out perfect, beaming, showing every one of his teeth.
Em jumped off and swam back to the raft at age eight— just like Nic, Viv, Cass, and me. The only milestone he’s hit exactly on time.
Cass relaxes now, tension I didn’t even read before suddenly gone, tan legs hooked over the pier, dangling toward the water, slanting back on his elbows. Emory does the same, kicking his feet, splish, splash, smiling from ear to ear.
I take in a long deep breath, as though I’m about to jump into the water myself. But instead, I look at my brother, lying flat on the float now, little-boy straight, arms against his sides, still gri
Where you look. When you leap.
More to life than mastodons.
Chapter Thirty-one
“This is what comes after Tess?”
I rouse myself from the sleep I’ve fallen into on the glider during Mrs. E.’s nap to find Cass standing over me, holding one of her racy books. This particular cover features a man wearing an eye patch and all too little else, and a stupefied-looking woman in an extremely low-cut dress that he’s clearly in the process of lowering farther. They are, of course, standing on a cliff. In a brewing thunderstorm.