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Everything is easy. It all feels right.
If only my mind didn’t continue to trip back to that drawer in the kitchen.
Later, after I’m done loading the dishwasher, I corner my father in the family room.
“Dad. We need to talk about those bills.”
He settles into his recliner with a groan, not meeting my eyes.
“Dad—”
“She’s good,” he cuts me off. “Kind. Does she know what you did?”
I clench my teeth, not wanting to get distracted from the matter at hand. But when the topic is Summer, I have trouble concentrating on anything else.
“No. She doesn’t. The bills—”
“Are you going to tell her?”
“Yes,” I snap.
Of course, he picks up on what I don’t say. “When?”
For a good minute, I don’t answer. Instead, I stare out the front window where I can see my grandmother pulling knitted shawls from her trunk and draping them over my librarian’s shoulders.
Mine. Right now she’s mine.
I’ll do most anything to keep it that way.
“When she won’t leave.”
A long sigh drags my attention back to the family room. My father grimaces at the wall, a spot where over a decade ago, there hung a family portrait. Now the spot has a fish my dad caught and mounted.
“You’re like me.”
“So?”
“So.” He seems to chew on his words, then finally lets them free. “You’ll drive her away.”
He could’ve punched me in the gut, and I wouldn’t have felt so sick.
“If she loves me, she won’t leave.”
My father keeps staring at the fish, it’s open mouth gaping, gasping for breath. Forever caught in the struggle for its life.
“That’s not how love works.”
Chapter Thirty
SUMMER
I find Cole in the kitchen, his knuckles pressing into the counter, his eyes trained on a closed drawer. The intensity of his stance screams that something is wrong. This isn’t the first time this evening.
Approaching him like I would a wild tiger, if I had any kind of valid reason to walk toward a jungle cat, I keep my steps light and my expression calm.
“Something I can help with?”
Tense shoulders only grow harder. “No.”
