“Cami,” she replied with a caramel-crusted grin. “Doyouhave a nickname?”
“Not anything fun.”
Cami pursed her lips and seemed to think hard. Then: “How about Go-Go?”
I choked and covered it up with another laugh. Glancing up at the sky, I smiled at the absurdity of the situation and said, “Sure. Go-Go it is.”
As if summoned, Andrew appeared a few feet away, hands stuffed into his jacket pockets. He looked uncomfortablewatching us interact—his two worlds finally colliding, and only thanks to the dying wish of a woman I’d never meet.
“Margot,” he said, nodding. “Thanks for agreeing to meet.”
“Sure.”
I rose to my feet, feeling stuck between the sudden attachment to my newfound sister and the unfortunate fact of our father’s existence. We stood there, the three of us, awkwardly framed by autumn cheer and the distant sound of folk music.
Camille tugged on her father’s sleeve. “Can we go up in the balloon?”
Andrew hesitated. “Maybe later—”
“Youdon’t like heights,” she told him. “Go-Go should take me,” Camille said brightly, pointing at me with her half-eaten caramel apple.
I raised an eyebrow.
He blinked. “That’s not—”
But Camille was already looking at me with wide, hopeful eyes. “Please?”
I sighed, rubbing the back of my neck. “Fine. But only if… he says it’s okay.”
Andrew nodded, relief flickering in his expression. “Just be careful.”
Ten minutes later, I stood in a wicker basket surrounded by rope and propane tanks, wondering how I’d been tricked into this. My stomach tied itself into knots somewhere between the sidewalk and the death march to this torture chamber. I’d watched it bob over the roofs of Main Street shops all week, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that if it was going to burst and plummet to the ground, it would happen while I was in it.
Or, worse, the tether would snap and we’d be sent drifting across the Atlantic. I pressed a hand to my mouth and gripped the edge harder.
Camille bounced beside me, face flushed with excitement as the balloon crew prepared for launch. “This is socool,” she half-whispered, half-yelled. “I’ve never been this close to one before.”
Neither had I.
What seemed like a second later, the ground began to tilt away. My stomach dropped. We rose higher, the town shrinking beneath us into a patchwork of color and trickling dots of people navigating Fallfest.
For a few moments, neither of us spoke. The silence was unreal—no music, no chatter, just the whoosh of the burner and the rush of wind. It would’ve been beautiful if I wasn’t silently bemoaning the lack of a will and testament for my shoe collection.
“Can you help me see?” she asked finally, straining over the wall of the basket as if to demonstrate her height.
“Yeah,” I replied, quickly pulling her away from the edge and swallowing the acidic lump in my throat. Sucking in a breath, I scooped her into one arm and used the other to hold on for dear life.
I watched with fascination as her face lit up. The caramel apple hung limp at her side, a forgotten interest. Most of it had ended up on her face, hands, and clothes—but she didn’t care. Her eyes, the same brown as mine, sparkled with an amount of wonder I hadn’t seen in my own for years. It almost made me forget that we were jostling in a death basket mid-air.
Almost.
She chewed her lip. “Dad said you don’t like talking to him.”
I exhaled. No preamble, no beating around the bush. We were definitely related. “That’s… complicated,” I murmured carefully.
“He said he messed up. A lot.”
“He’s not wrong,” I replied evenly, although my tongue soured. Apparently, he could be more honest with a five-year-old than me.
