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Ronan’s eyes were trained on the horizon. “It’s hard to know if I’m remembering it right, but I think so. My mom was…” He exhaled. “She was great. Warm. Loving. Fun. I always wanted to please my dad, but I think that’s to be expected. I don’t remember behind unhappythough.”
“I’m glad you have that,” Julia said. “Thosememories.”
She wondered if it was harder to have something good and have it taken from you or if it was worse to never have it atall.
She felt his gaze on her face. “There must be good things from yourchildhood.”
A series of images played across Julia’s mind: she and Elise jumping on the bed and laughing until they fell in a heap on the covers, chasing each other around the kitchen with a whipped cream can, both of them shrieking, hiding under a blanket fort in the living room when they were in high school, giggling about Julia’s firstkiss.
“There are,” she admitted. “I know I was lucky in a lot of ways. I had my gramps, and I hadElise.”
But a voice had begun to whisper in her ear, a voice that said she wasn’t beingfair.
That she wasn’t beinghonest.
Her mom had been there in the background, yelling at Julia and Elise to get off the bed, plucking the whipped cream can from Julia’s hand and turning it on Elise with a laugh, trying to push her way into their blanketfort.
It wasn’t everything but it wasn’t nothingeither.
Chief returned from her investigation of the seaweed and lay down next to Julia smelling like salt and wetfur.
“You know I’m going to Italy,” shesaid.
She didn’t want to talk about her momanymore.
He didn’t look at her. “What if I told you it was dangerous, not just for you but for metoo?”
“How so?” she asked, taking in the line of his mouth, the set of his jaw inprofile.
“I won’t be able to think straight with you there,” hesaid.
“I don’t believe that. You’re a professional. I’m sure you’ve worked under worsecircumstances.”
He turned to look at her, his blue eyes on fire. “Not like this,Julia.”
Her chest tightened and she drew in a breath as she looked away. Saying I love you was easy compared to the current of emotion that ran through her when he looked at her likethat.
She worked to keep her voice steady as she drew in the sand with her finger. “I’m not saying I have to go with you to the party.” They hadn’t even figured out yet how to get in, but it was a given that at least one of them would have to gain access to find out if Elise was there. “But I can’t stay in Boston while you go to Italy to look for my sister. It will killme.”
For a long moment, he didn’t speak, and she thought maybe she’d made herpoint.
“What if I saidno?”
She looked up at him, anger flaring in her chest. “I’d like to go with you, to help however I can, even if it’s just as backup for Clay’s work. If you don’t want me to go, I’ll go alone, and I’m betting I’ll have an easier time getting into that party than youwill.”
He glared at her. “That would be a suicidemission.”
She shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. But I’m not leaving my sister again, and I’m not sitting on my ass in Boston while you go to Italy looking forher.”
He turned his eyes back to the water and cursed under his breath. “You’re going to get yourself killed, but maybe that’s thepoint.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? You think I have a deathwish?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know, Julia. Your grandfather hired us to find Elise so you wouldn’t have to put yourself at risk. So why do you insist on doing itanyway?”
She swallowed the lump that rose in her throat. She didn’t have an answer to his question. Maybe it was because she had so little to call her own that saving Elise gave her a sense of purpose. Or maybe she liked being Elise’s savior more than she’d let on all those years when she played themartyr.
She pushed it all away. It wasn’t thatcomplicated.
