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“I—” I start but I don’t get the words out.
A jingle echoes from the pub door.
Parry and I whip our heads toward the sound.
No.
I’m groaning internally.
My oldest brother is here.
Brian stands inside The Drunk Pelican with a box of frozen crab claws. A dark raincoat on, beanie over his chocolate brown hair, and thick but neatly groomed beard makes him appear even more like a gruff local than the last time I was here.
Like the Lady of the Lake birthed him.
He doesn’t even acknowledge me. His first order of business is turning to his cook. “Get the fuck out,” he tells Parry.
Parry barely blinks. “We’re open, Brian. What if a customer comes in? You burn everything you touch. But if you want to serve char then by all means.” He nods to my brother.
Brian saunters to the window and flips the Open sign to Closed. “Crisis averted. Now leave.”
Parry grumbles under his breath and tosses the rag onto the bar. His eyes flit to me. “I’ll text you, Zoey.”
My brother’s intensity bears down on our interaction. Like he’s gathering every morsel of information he can.
“Sounds good. See ya, Pear.”
Parry gives me a nod. On his way out, he passes Brian and says in smoky anger, “Eat shit and die.”
“Get bent, Parry,” Brian shoots back.
Parry kicks the door open with his shoe, and Brian glares at his shadow as he departs.
I grimace.
Six years ago, they might have hated each other but it was a quiet, simmering hatred. Whispered curses and eye rolls. Now everything seems to be messy and exposed. Like there’s one string left holding things together before they just explode on each other.
One thing is certain: Brian can’t know Parry asked me here.
My cover story better hold up. It’s the only thing keeping the pin in the grenade.
With Parry gone, the tension thickens the closer Brian approaches the bar. He sets the box of crab claws heavily onto the stool beside me.
Confusion wrinkles the edges of his eyes, and his hair is starting to gray at his temples.
Thirty-nine.
Shit, I can’t believe my brother is almost out of his thirties. He was only thirty-three when I left.
We have a fifteen-year age gap, but it’s not really strange considering we’re biologically half siblings. Brian, Colt, and I all share the same dad. Different moms.
He still hasn’t looked at me. Instead, he digs into his raincoat and unearths his cell. He intently scrolls, clicks, and types. It’s unnerving.
“You’re really not going to say anything?” I ask him.
“There’s a Greyhound leaving tonight. I’m booking you on the first one out of town.”
The floor might as well drop from underneath my stool. “What?”
For the first time, he finally meets my gaze. We share the same blue eyes. Rough and turbulent like the lake outside these doors.
“When you turned eighteen, I told you to stay,” he says each word with a precision and sharpness like he’s brandishing a razorblade. “I told you what would happen if you left.”
The roots are rotted underneath our family tree. Decaying. Gone.
“You told me I’d have no home here,” I say in a soft whisper. “I remember, I just thought—”
“You thought I was lying?” he says coldly.
“No, I didn’t think that.”
“But you thought I’d change my mind and accept you back with open arms.” He doesn’t phrase it like a question. Because it really isn’t.
Brian has always been a stern, angry person. But he’s been a decent brother. So maybe I did think that seeing me would trigger a change of heart. Especially since I always thought it was more of an empty threat to get me to stay.
He was the biggest cheerleader on Team Mistpoint Harbor and aggressively against those on Team Chicago. He needed help with The Drunk Pelican, and my college plans weren’t part of the familial responsibility to the pub.
And maybe I was the selfish one, running out.
So it’s hard to blame the anger that rolls off Brian in waves, but I’m still his little sister. We’re both still Durands. We grew up as outcasts in an already cursed town. There’s got to be some solidarity in a single cell in his body.
“Aren’t you even going to ask why I’m back?” I snap.
“I don’t want to know. I don’t need to know. You’ll be gone in…” He checks his motherfucking watch. “An hour.”
“I’m not leaving, Brian. I’m here to write a book.”
“A book. You?” he states like it’s absurd. Me writing a book.
“Yeah, me,” I almost shout. “I’m Agatha fucking Christie. Have a problem with that?”
“No. Just go Agatha-Christie-yourself someplace else.”
“I can’t. It’s about Mistpoint Harbor.”
“What is?”
“The book!” He’s exhausting me.
I’m rattling him. “No. No.” His gaze darkens. “You’re not. Not here.”
“Yes, I am, and I’m not leaving.”
He takes a long breath like he can’t ingest enough oxygen to fill his lungs. And then he glares at me. “Well, you’re not staying here.”
