Page 7

It was like being in some bad remake of an old movie, the kind where they try to shoot it just the same but with different people, and all it manages to do is remind you of how it looks different than the original.

Immediately, I noted that there was only one person in the boat.

“What the fuck?” he called. “Is that you, Leo?”

“Vincent!” I said, recognizing him immediately.

“I thought I told you never to come back here.” He was rowing towards me.

I swam towards him. He stopped rowing at exactly the right amount of time to keep himself heading towards me without running into me.

I was swimming against the current. When he reached me, I clutched onto the boat, and it swung towards me, and he leaned over to balance it. He looked good. He was still handsome. Both of the brothers had been handsome. He didn’t have the startling light green eyes like Damian, but he had the same color hair, his own easy Vincent smile, and a broader build than his brother.

Even though he was the oldest in the family, he hadn’t presented with the cyning markings, Damian had. I always used to think that made sense, though.

Vincent, hell, he would have made a terrible cyning. He was the least responsible person I knew.

“It’s so good to see you, too,” I said pointedly.

“That’s not why I said you shouldn’t come back,” he said. “Obviously, it’s good to see you.” He gave me an affectionate grin. “I remember that swimsuit.”

I looked down and I was showing a lot of cleavage. I rearranged myself behind the canoe and glared at him.

He cleared his throat. “Yeah, I wasn’t, like, checking you out or something.” A pause. “Obviously.”

“Obviously,” I said, and now I felt stupid. I was blushing. Vincent was like a big brother to me, always had been.

It was quiet.

The canoe drifted. I hung onto it and kicked my legs a little. He studied the oars he was holding onto.

“So, I’m here,” I said. “Even though you said I shouldn’t be.”

“Yeah, because of him,” he muttered.

“No!” I said, too forceful.

“It’s actually good, I guess,” he said. “Opal wanted you here. I’ve been feeling guilty about not telling you, anyway.”

“What?” I said.

“I lied to you,” he said, looking chagrined.

I was taken aback. “When? About what?”

“That first message, the one I unsent, I didn’t accidentally send you a message for someone else.”

“You didn’t? It was for me?”

“I was telling you what happened. Opal wanted you here.”

He’d said that before. “Why would she want me here?”

“It’s a hell of a thing, when a woman asks you a favor on her deathbed, and you feel really conflicted about it,” he said.

“Her deathbed,” I repeated. I realized that I had never found out how Opal died, exactly. The funeral announcement that I had seen had been vague. Something about how she’d been taken too soon, leaving behind her two sons and her husband. Anyone else would have asked, but I’d been so consumed in my own drama that I hadn’t. “How’d she die?”

“Easlings,” he said.