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“Come here.” I held open my arms and she got up from her chair to sit on my lap. I smoothed her hair, looking into her eyes. “I’m sorry. About all of it. The last thing I want is to hurt you, which is why I’ve tried so hard to stay away.”
She wrapped her arms around my neck. “Let’s just enjoy the rest of the month and decide then what to do.”
“Yes, okay.”
“And we’ll be discreet, even if it hurts me,” Luci said. “But I’m not giving up on my brother. I know Jack, and, if he understood what this really is, he would never ask us to stop.”
“Have you thought about what it means for you? If we tell Jack and he kicks me out of the band. Do you see how that could ruin your relationship with your brother? This isn’t just a risk for me.”
“He wouldn’t kick you out of the band. Not if he sees that we’re not just playing around.”
I wanted to believe it. More than anything. However, I remembered the glittering look in Jack’s eyes after that Thanksgiving. I knew what it meant. Stay away from my sister.
But I couldn’t.
12
LUCI
December 10
First Freeze Lantern Celebration
Light flurries
Supper: Beef & barley soup · Bread bowls
Finley had predicted the weather somehow and chosen the exact right night for the annual lantern walk and ice skating. Apparently, some years the weather didn’t cooperate, which meant they could only do the lantern walk portion of the festivities because the pond hadn’t frozen solid enough to handle people. That was not the case tonight.
Men had been out at the pond that afternoon with an auger, drilling test holes, which was both reassuring and terrifying. They had deemed it safe.
After supper that evening, we met Finley outside the restaurant. Most of the gang was participating but I hardly noticed, too intent on not looking at Grant to pay much attention. They’d set the lanterns on the snowbanks above the pathway, one every few feet down both sides so that the path ran between two lines of low gold light. The snow reflected the light from the lanterns, throwing it back up so that the whole trail seemed lit from underneath. Snow laden branches hung over the path, making it feel as if we were walking through a tunnel. To add to the beauty, minutes after we headed out, snow began to fall. Generous, soft flakes that tickled my cheeks and stuck in my lashes.
We all fell into a similar gait along the tracked and trodden path, everyone chatting in groups, laughter erupting into the quiet night. Grant was somewhere behind me, large and quiet. We’d spent most of the day in my cabin, talking, ordering food from the kitchen so that we didn’t have to go out. About an hour before supper, Grant had snuck out to go the fifteen feet to his cabin to change for supper. We’d agreed to meet there.
And now, here we were, back out in the world where we could no longer hide. My mother fell into step beside me, linking her arm through mine. “Hi, honey. Where were you all day?”
“Just chilling in my cabin. Reading. Watching movies. Relaxing.” That was all true, although I’d left the parts out where Grant and I had tumbled in the bed.
“How nice. I noticed Grant was missing in action too. Were you together?”
Leave it to my mother to notice that and bring it up while surrounded by other people.
“Nope. Just me.” God, please don’t strike me down for lying to my mother.
“I wonder what he was up to then?” she asked.
“No idea.”
She leaned close, and said quietly, “It’s no good, keeping things from your mother.”
“Mom, please, just let it go.”
“Sure. No problem.” She chuckled.
“It’s not funny,” I said.
“Right.”
