Page 19 of Summer Holiday Lifeline

“Eat your stew.” Kreed got up, knocked his knuckles on the counter, and set his almost empty mug down. “Get some sleep. Take it one day at a time, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Myles would have said just thinking about his past with Ozzy had put him off food, but an additional spoonful of Kreed’s cooking changed his mind. The man knew what he was doing in the kitchen.

CHAPTER FIVE

“I can’t believe you took all of the books from Finders.” Stephanie thumped books on the shelf in front of her, all pretense of dusting them forgotten.

“Why not? You didn’t think I’d let them just trash them all.” Steven glared at his sister’s back, not sure why her anger should spark his, other than their twin bond being tweaked uncomfortably.

“We decided this a long time ago,” she said to the shelf. “No more huge purchases until we get Dad’s junk pile sorted out.”

“I didn’t pay for them. They were tossing them. All I did was let them toss them into the Labyrinth. No cash exchanged hands. They were grateful they didn’t have to pay to bring them to the recycling. And Dad’s boxes aren’t junk. Besides, what do you care? You’ll be moving out soon. Jake’s already gone. We decided I was going to run the bookshop, remember? So if I want to⁠—”

Stephanie growled. The cover of the romance novel she held began to pucker in her grip. “Jake isn’t ‘gone.’ He lives across the yard. We discussed that too. Remember?”

Steven sighed. “Yes. I remember.” As soon as Tris had moved out of the small apartment to live with Ozzy, Jake had moved into it with his girlfriend, Lucy. It was good for everyone to have him move out of the main house, but not too far. His autism meant he’d need their support occasionally, but he was ready for more independence than living with his siblings would have allowed. “I get it.”

“I really, really hope you do, because if I move to the new house, I’ll be farther away. Jake will be down to you.”

“We spent a lot of time setting him up to succeed, Steph. We have to believe he can do it. He has Lucy. She wouldn’t have moved in with him if she didn’t think she could handle it. You need this as much as he does. You’re his sister, not his mother. You did your job. Time for you now, right? Before it’s too late.”

“Dude. We’re not even thirty yet.” She turned back to place the book, with exaggerated care, onto the shelf, then carefully brush some dust from the surface. “I am not out of time, and I am definitely not old. And that”—she pointed at the book she’d just shelved as she turned to him—“was Happy with Either, by the way.”

“I didn’t say you were old. Author?”

“Ruth Clemence.”

Steven typed as she poked through the box for the next book.

“It’s just that Jake’s only twenty-one and that’s so young to be playing house.” This time she wiped the book she’d chosen with her dusting cloth before shelving it.

“Hey.” He looked up from the screen. “They are not playing house. Lucy has been with him for almost three years now, and she loves him. She’s good at everything Jake.”

She picked up another book. “I hate to admit it, but she was right about giving him more space.” She glanced at the cover of the book in her hand. “The Gold of Noon by Essie Summers.”

“Spelled like the season?”

“Yeah.” She put the book on the shelf and picked up another, which she held in both hands in front of herself, almost like a shield. “Listen. About the shop. You have to be realistic. Dad never was.”

“It worked for him. Why do you think it won’t work for me?”

“Dad wasn’t fighting eBooks the way you are. You can’t keep every book you find in the street.”

He chuckled. “I’m not that bad.”

“Free books because they were going to toss them out?”

He made a face. “Okay, pretty bad. But in my defense, they had some really salable titles. They just aren’t a bookshop. They weren’t set up to make it easy to find what people were looking for. I can do that.”

“Just promise me you’ll be reasonable when you go through it all. I don’t want to leave you here buried under an avalanche of dead trees.”

“You aren’t leaving me here. You’re going to look at a new house you’ve wanted to live in your entire life. And I’m choosing to stay because I love you, but we need our own lives. You especially. I like it here. We always knew I was taking over the shop some day. Dad and I talked about it all the time, and that’s never changed just because they died.”

“I still worry. You never go anywhere.”

“I do.”