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I charged into the kitchen ready to confront Lana about her erasure of Mom, but some of that fire is gone now. We’re back to talking about normal daily life. A happy smile spread across the surface. A lifetime of shit buried underneath.
But I don’t have the energy to dredge it up. I feel emotionally hungover from last night. And despite how much I want to dive back into bed and pout, I can’t bear to disappoint Lily and Brady.
“I’ll take them,” I sigh.
Lana smiles. “Great. Can you not take them to the local spot?”
“You mean the neighborhood beach? Why not?” Lana and Mitchell live a stone’s throw from a decent beach. Two blocks away, there’s a stretch of sand with access just off their neighborhood park. All the neighbors hang out there.
She sniffles. “Alicia texted me yesterday and wanted to get all the kids together to play at the beach today, but Grayson has been sick for the last week. There’s no way I want her germy little snot playing with Brady and Lily.”
“I can just keep them apart when we go. It won’t be that—”
“No,” she interrupts. “I told her that Brady was recovering from a virus he caught last weekend and that I wanted to wait the full ten days to ensure he wasn’t contagious.”
I blow out a breath, lifting a strand of hair across my forehead. “So you lied to roundabout shame her into keeping her son at home?”
“I tried,” Lana says. “She gives Grayson echinacea supplements and acts like it’s a cure-all. Every time that kid is sick, the entire neighborhood catches it. So she can’t see you with Brady and Lily or she’ll know it’s all bullshit.”
“Okay. Fine. Whatever.”
“So anywhere else is good,” she says. “I don’t care where. Just nowhere too crowded. And somewhere nice. Maybe I can call Mitchell. Some of his coworkers live on the water. Maybe you could—”
“I know a place.”
Lana lowers her phone and looks at me, eyebrow arched. “You do?”
This is probably a mistake. God knows I’ve made plenty of them already.
So what’s one more?
* * *
“Whoa,” Lily breathes, tipping her little head back and squinting into the sky. “It’s a castle.”
“It’s a mansion,” Brady corrects her.
Lily turns on him. “That’s the same thing.”
“No, castles have dragons,” he insists. “Right, Auntie Rayne?”
I’m digging through the trunk for the ten thousand items necessary for a beach day for these two small creatures. Sunblock, bug spray, hats, snacks, drinks, life vests, swim shoes, beach towels, buckets, and shovels… I’m not sure how I’ll ever walk all of these supplies down the craggy hill to the beach below.
“Well, dragons aren’t real,” I tell him. “But castles are. This isn’t a castle, though. Just a big house.”
But when I look up at Kirill’s house, there is something fantastical about it. The walls of windows peer out over the water, reflecting the sky back at us. Too bad the man inside is no storybook prince. More of a dragon, actually. Maybe Brady isn’t so far off after all.
“Whose house is it?” Lily asks. “Do you know them? Are they your friend?”
I slam the trunk shut with my elbow and jostle all of the supplies in my arms. “It’s no one’s house. Let’s just go play, yeah?”
Lily seems reluctant, but as soon as I challenge them to a race, Lily and Brady take off down the hill, their bodies flying faster than their legs can carry them.
I can’t see my own feet and trip a couple times, narrowly saving myself from sprawling across the sand. I’m grateful no one is around to see me struggle.
But technically, Kirill could be up there looking down at me right now. Maybe the security guard called Kirill after he scanned my ID to report me showing up here on his day off. That seems like the kind of thing Kirill would instruct his staff to do. He is probably tuned into everything that happens at this house.
Then again, considering the guy at the gate didn’t take his eyes off his phone as he scanned my badge, I have a feeling I’m in the clear.
