Smart girl.
I’m better off away from that place and all thoughts of an existence built on lies.
Ares clearly feels differently.
He’s pining after her, looking around and whining every few hours, waiting for the girl who delivered pets and too many treats to come walking through the door.
My phone buzzes and I manhandle it with a groan.
Just a text this time.
I already guess it’s Margot before I see her name.
Damn near everyone else is blocked or being ignored. But Margot was just as blindsided by the big reveal as me. She shares a sliver of my pain, and that’s why I open it and read.
Still alive?
You might be the biggest idiot ever born, butyou’re still my brother. Call me so I don’t have to say that again.
Damn.
Ignoring my sister is the second worst part of this grim isolation after my drunken tantrum sent Hattie packing.
Idiot? No, that’s too polite.
I am a colossal, demonic fuckup.
Snarling, I drag a hand over my face and pour myself another drink.
Ares watches me with his judgmental big brown eyes.
“What? You’ve got to stop looking at me like that,” I grumble. “Good news, you’ll see Margot again at some point. But she’s not coming here while I’m in this state. Sit tight, pal.”
Smacking his lips, he grumbles and settles his snout on his massive paws, turning his face away from me.
I wish I could shut out everything so easily.
Yes, being here feels better than being haunted at home—but barely. Hattie would havelovedthis place.
The old paperbacks lining that old bookshelf in the corner.
They’re mostly cheap pocket paperbacks from the eighties and nineties. They would’ve spoken to her, especially the romances with their raunchy covers of long-haired princes and women in half-ripped dresses.
Even the dry nonfiction texts about fishing and bird watching have their charm. They’ve been read so many times their bindings are loose.
She probably would’ve found a way to fix them, knowing the soft spot she has for old words.
‘Pre-loved books,’ she calls them.
But it’s not just the books she’d adore.
She’d have loved the quiet, too. The fireflies coming out at night to dance like tiny stars.
They’re rarer now than I remember back when I was a kid, but that’s probably the same story everywhere, not just Maine.
And she would’ve laughed at the way I can never get Ares to make room for me in bed, the old dog stubbornly occupying my spot every time I’m not in it.
She had the magic touch. That lazy pile of bones would always move for her.
