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Fondness washes over her face. A deeper nostalgia.
My heart twinges with pain like it’s fighting to come back to life. “Don’t look at me like that,” I whisper in distress.
She blinks. “Sorry. I just…okay. Yes. I’ll let the ghost follow me around and protect me, if that’s what the ghost wants.”
Oh God. “You’re the insufferable one,” I shoot back.
She smiles softly and looks around, her gaze pinging to the cot. Appreciation flashes across her face. “Thanks, Kenobi,” she breathes.
Kenobi. Most people call me OB. My initials. Zoey, the smartass that she is, would always try to slyly mutter “Kenobi” to me after someone called me OB. She’d have this cute grin like she made the best fucking joke. A joke only we shared.
I knew she was a Star Wars fan and loved Obi-Wan Kenobi. She said Kenobi suited me more than OB anyway.
That cute dork nicknamed me after an old man who flings around a light saber.
I want to smile.
I want to tell her I still love that nickname.
I want to tell her that I still think about her.
That I’ve thought about her every day since she left.
But I can’t do any of those things. Instead I say, “Get some sleep.” And I head towards the door, leaving her behind.
CHAPTER 7
October Brambilla
“Holy hell, OB, are those what I think they are,” my younger sister says as she enters the kitchen sniffing the air.
Same glossy brown hair and heart-shaped face as me, we’d almost look like replicas if it weren’t for the dark red birthmark above her left eyebrow. If you squint hard enough, the birthmark resembles a crescent moon.
Babette Brambilla is my lively twenty-three-year-old sister. And she completes my world.
Since she was little, she’s had an appetite for people. Making friends easier than Durands can make enemies, which is a feat around here. But she loves strangers and tourists more than locals, possibly due to preferring small talk over deep conversation. Or because strangers tend to be more honest, less cutthroat and desperate to be accepted by the town hierarchy.
By us.
When our parents disappeared, she was just seven. She vaguely remembers the search parties and the moment when the town’s sheriff declared the case closed after a short month. For Babette, she more vividly recalls the after. Being raised by Aunt Effie. Having our aunts, uncles, and cousins dodge every question about our parents that we could throw at them.
It wasn’t until I was in high school that Aunt Effie finally fessed up.
Our parents never disappeared.
They left.
Moved away.
They live in a small town in Canada. On the other side of Lake Erie. Occasionally I gaze out over the water, imagining if they ever think about us. I wonder if they’re fine to be written into our history books as missing persons. Another lie to add to the mystery of Mistpoint Harbor.
But that’s what we Brambillas do.
We keep the legend alive.
No matter the cost.
Grabbing a sculmacadoon, I carefully strain frying cookies from a pot of oil. Then I reach the butcher’s block island and place the cookies on a paper towel lined plate where over a dozen more are cooling.
Babette gasps. “It is them. October.” She nearly sticks her nose in the Italian cookies shaped like bowties. “I forgot how nukadells smell. Doughy fried deliciousness. So…so fucking good.” She’s about to bite into one like a wild animal.
I want to smile, but the movement is difficult and practically lost in time. I tear the sheet away from her teeth. “Were we raised in the same household?”
“We were,” she says coolly, leaning against the kitchen island, “only you listened and I laughed.” She reaches for a cookie. “Especially during cotillion.”
I smack her hand away. “These are not for you.”
Babette collects her glossy hair in a pony. “Then why would you make nukadells? They’re a Christmas cookie that you haven’t made in years. And it’s past Christmas.” She gives me a matter-of-fact look. “But you know they’re my favorites.”
They’re also her favorites.
I refuse to say that.
Instead, I say, “I also know that Aunt Effie hates when you call them nukadells,” I remind her. “They’re frappe.”
Babette makes a show of slumping on the island. “God, she’s such a b—”
I glare.
Babette says softly, “Bore. She’s a bore.” She buttons the front of her black blouse. Add in the matching black slacks, and Babette is a shining example of a Fisherman’s Wharf server. “Why does she care what most of us call them? The cookie has no real name. We could drive to Cincinnati and another Italian would call them something completely different.”
It is true. “She believes some of what we were taught is more uneducated. It can’t be found in any books. You know this.”
“And I hate this,” Babette says quietly, sadly. We share a brief glimpse of knowingness. That our mother taught us how to cook.
