“And this is Joel, a neighbor,” I say. “He’s not staying.”
Edwin coughs, as Joel shakes Kiara’s hand too.
“Nice to meet you,” Joel tells her. Is her gaze lingering on his face? Does he think she’s attractive? I’m regretting this visit already.
“Well, I don’t know about anyone else, but I need coffee,” Danny announces. “Would you like one, Kiara?”
She smiles at him. “I’d love one.” She follows him through to the kitchen.
As Edwin joins them, I stand alone for a minute in the hall with Joel, listening to the polite chatter between my easygoing brothers and this stranger. I don’t look at Joel directly, but he watches me, a serious expression on his face. In the end, he steps closer and touches the back of my hand with his fingertips, and finally, I do look at him.
“Good luck,” he says, with the briefest of smiles, and then he leaves.
Edwin has resumed his chopping of ingredients when I enter the kitchen. Danny is pouring milk into coffee mugs, and Kiara is studying the old photos on the corkboard.
“It must have been lovely, growing up with so much family history around you,” she says. She sounds wistful, but as I gaze around at the worn surfaces in our kitchen—the battered wooden doors of the cupboards, the chipped tiles on the floor—I have a sudden mental image of her standing in a pristine high-tech kitchen in her own home this morning, white marble and stainless steel glinting all around her.
“Family history’s not all it’s cracked up to be,” I mutter into a pocket of silence, and they all stare at me. No one replies.
The kitchen doors are open, since it’s another hot, cloudless day, and the three of us take our coffees out onto the patio while Edwin begins to cook the risotto.
“Such a fabulous garden,” Kiara says, seeming genuinely enraptured, and for a moment I am able to ignore the scruffy grass and neglected borders and appreciate the beauty of it alongside her. We stroll along the paths and show her the orchard, the vegetable garden, our old play areas, and the gate to the cliffs. We offer to take her down to the beach later.
We carefully avoid the subject of our parents until we’re back indoors with Edwin, seated around the dining table, tucking into our lunch. The hydrangea heads droop toward the tablecloth in the heat.
“This is divine,” Kiara says, of the risotto. “And I wish I didn’t have such a strange reason for being here. But can you tell me why you came to see my father?”
She looks directly at me, and I put my fork down carefully, wipe my mouth.
“The day that Danny and I were born,” I say, “our mother had a mental breakdown. We don’t know quite what happened, but she ended up committing suicide, jumping from the cliffs behind the house. We were only a few hours old.”
Kiara brings one hand to her mouth. “Oh, I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah. Well, our dad only ever worked part-time after that, and we had our grandmother and various nannies here to look after us, so—it was okay.” I try to smile. “I mean, we had one another, you know? But then Dad had an accident last month. He fell off a ladder and—and he died. A freak accident.” Danny is sitting next to me, and he slides a hand over mine under the table.
I realize all three of them are watching me, and that my brothers are waiting for my explanation with as much wariness as Kiara. WhydidI go to see her father?
I draw in a deep breath. “I think our mother might only have had one baby that summer. I found a photo of her holding just one baby. And people always said... there were always rumors when we were growing up that something odd happened. And there was a girl working here at the time—Laura Silveira—who I thought might be able to tell us... Do you know the name?”
Kiara shakes her head slowly. “She’s the woman you accused Dad of sending a letter to?”
“I didn’t accuse him. I asked him.”
“But he didn’t,” Kiara says.
“Someone sent Laura a letter after our dad died, saying that if she spoke about Summerbourne to anyone, her daughter would be in danger,” I say.
“Who is her daughter?” Kiara asks.
We all look at her. At her willowy frame, her cheekbones, the texture of her hair. I’ve seen Laura’s olive skin, and Alex’s brown, and this young woman is paler than either of them, but what does that prove?
I shake my head. “We don’t know.”
“You think it might be me?” Kiara asks, frowning. “Or you?” she adds, staring at me. “I don’t understand.”
“I’ll get the photo,” I say. “Hang on.”
I rise and head to the kitchen, and for a moment I contemplate the doors that stand open to the garden. I could walk out right now, escape to the cliffs, abandon any further conversation with Kiara, set my sights on rescuing my old life. What’s left of my old life. A faint waft of humid air reminds me that it’s even hotter out there than it is here in the house.
