Chapter Ten
Shay
Bernice’s cabin smelled like dust, pine, and old paint.
The kind of paint that had sunk deep into the wooden floorboards over the years and mingled with the island air until it became part of the walls.
Part of the place. I hadn’t had the chance to step inside before.
Now here I was, sitting cross-legged on the living room floor with Pearl, surrounded by boxes.
So. Many. Boxes.
Some open, some taped shut, some overflowing with canvases and half-finished sketches. It looked like Bernice had packed an entire lifetime into her short weeks here.
Pearl grabbed the nearest box and pulled it between us. Her fingers trembled slightly as she peeled back the folded flaps. “I don’t even know where to start.”
We sat in the middle of the small living room, just a few feet from the stone fireplace Bernice had apparently insisted on keeping stocked herself.
The place was tiny but warm, filled with mismatched furniture and thrift-store charm.
Curtains hand-stitched. A lamp that looked like it belonged in the seventies.
The kind of quirky stuff that built character in a space.
I glanced over my shoulder.
Prime stood on the front porch with the door propped open behind him, leaning one shoulder against the frame with his arms crossed over his chest. Lost hovered beside him like an unmoving statue. Their eyes scanned the treeline, the lake, the shadows, everything.
Prime met my gaze for a second and gave a single nod.
Safe. I was safe.
I turned back to Pearl, who was already pulling out the first stack of papers.
Sketches. Dozens of them.
Faces. Trees. Water. A cabin porch I recognized as the one Prime and Lost were on now. She’d sketched everything she saw from every angle, like she didn’t want to forget a single inch of this place.
I held up one, a charcoal drawing of the lake. “She was talented.”
“Bernice could draw an emotion,” Pearl murmured, her smile small and sad. “She said one time it was like the island just came out of her hands.”
I flipped through a few more sketches. A raven perched on a branch, the outline of the haunted house, a set of long shadows cast across the grass at sunset. She captured the eerie beauty of this place in a way I hadn’t seen before.
Pearl reached for another box. “Look at this one.”
She pulled out a canvas no bigger than a notebook. The painting was muted blues and warm browns. It was a pair of hands holding a coffee mug with steam swirling upward.
“It’s so… gentle,” I whispered.
“That’s Bernice.” Pearl set it aside carefully. “She collected gentle moments. And weird ones. And, well, she actually painted everything.”
She dug into the box again and pulled out framed pictures wrapped in paper. She set them in a pile between us, then slowly unwrapped the first one.
A faded photograph of a young woman. Bernice, but maybe sixty years younger, stood barefoot in the shallows of the lake with her jeans rolled up and her hair wild in the wind. She might’ve been in her twenties and smiled like she didn’t have a care in the world.
Pearl snorted softly. “Look at her. Carefree as hell.”
“She was beautiful,” I said.
“She still was,” Pearl answered, voice cracking. “Just… different.”
We set the photo aside with the others.
The next stack was more art. Some bright, some dark, some half-finished.
Portraits of people I didn’t know. Watercolors of leaves.
A surreal painting of a hand reaching out of the shadows.
A black-and-white piece that gave me goosebumps.
It was a little girl standing at the edge of the water and was turned slightly as if someone had just called her name.
I stared at that one longer than I meant to. Something about it tugged at my mind like a memory hiding behind a locked door.
I shook myself and dug into another box.
Pearl reached into one across from her and pulled out a picture wrapped in tissue paper. She unwrapped it and burst out laughing so hard she startled herself.
“What?” I leaned over.
“Oh my god, look.” She held up the photo.
It was Bernice, maybe fifty years ago, wearing high-waisted bell bottoms, a tie-dye crop top, and the world’s biggest sunglasses. She was flashing peace signs with both hands while standing in front of a van covered in flowers and stickers. Her hair was enormous. Like, defied-gravity enormous.
I snorted. “Stop. No way that’s her.”
“That’s her.” Pearl wiped tears of laughter. “She partied through the seventies like she invented them. My dad has a photo of her dancing on a picnic table at some festival. It’s framed in his office.”
I laughed harder than I thought I could today.
She set the photo aside, still smiling, and reached into the box again.
The next photo wasn’t funny.
At all.
Her expression changed instantly, smile fading. “What…?”
It was Bernice again. Older than in the hippie picture, but not by much.
She was pregnant.
Round belly. Soft expression. One hand pressed protectively underneath the curve of it.
Pearl stared, stunned. “She was… pregnant?”
“She had kids?” I asked.
“No,” Pearl whispered. “She never talked about having kids. Ever.”
The next photo was Bernice holding a baby.
Then another with Bernice sitting on the porch of some old cabin, baby on her lap, with sunlight in her hair.
More photos followed, showing the baby as it grew, still young, still small, always clinging to Bernice’s hand or sitting on her hip.
“She had a girl,” Pearl whispered, voice trembling.
I grabbed another stack of photos from a nearby box and flipped through them one by one. The images blurred together until I stopped breathing.
There.
Right there.
My world tipped sideways.
It was my mother.
My actual mother.
Thirty years younger, smiling, with her head thrown back, and her hair tumbled down her shoulders in wild curls.
My mouth dropped open. “No. No, no, no, this… this can’t be—”
Pearl looked over, confused. “Shay?”
I couldn’t answer. The room felt hot. Too hot.
Why the hell did Bernice have a picture of my mother?
Why was my mother standing in front of that same old cabin Bernice was photographed in?
My heart beat so hard I could hear it pounding in my ears.
Pearl grabbed the photo from my shaking hand. “Do you know her?” she asked.
“My mom,” I whispered, voice breaking.
Prime must’ve been listening to us because he stepped inside instantly. “Lost, stay at the door,” he ordered without looking back.
Lost shifted his weight and planted himself in the doorway like a human barricade.
Prime crouched beside me, his hand brushing my knee. “What happened? What’s going on?”
I handed him the picture. My fingers felt numb. “That’s my mom.”
He stared at the photo a long moment.
The woman in the picture, my mother, was young, smiling wide, wearing cutoff shorts and a tank top. She leaned against a birch tree with painted nails and bare feet. She looked free. Happier than I’d ever seen her in real life.
Prime lifted his gaze slowly to me. “Yeah. I can see it.”
The room spun.
I reached for the next picture in the stack, my hands barely cooperating.
Another cabin. Another day.
My mom, smiling again, held a baby swaddled in a pale blanket. And standing next to her was Bernice.
Bernice, younger but still unmistakably Bernice, with her arm around my mom’s shoulders, looking proud.
My breath left me in a single, painful whoosh.
Pearl sucked in a gasp. “Oh my god…”
My fingers shook as I flipped the photo over.
There, scribbled in black ink, was a date.
1999.
I felt the blood drain from my face.
“No,” I whispered, chest tightening. “No, this, this can’t be.”
“Shay,” Prime said gently as his hand moved to my back. “Breathe.”
“It can’t be,” I choked out. “This isn’t… that’s not me. That baby, it can’t be me.”
“Shay…” Pearl said softly, “look.”
“Look at what?” My voice was raw.
“Your mom.” Pearl held the photo up next to my face. “Same eyes. Same mouth. Same shape.”
I wanted to argue.
I wanted to deny it.
But my throat closed around the truth.
Prime took the photo and studied it carefully.
And then he looked at me.
His voice was quiet. Unshakable. “It’s you.”
I felt my stomach drop.
He set that photo aside and lifted one of Bernice holding the baby. “Look at this one.”
Bernice was young, maybe late forties, early fifties, holding baby me with a tenderness that went beyond caretaker. Beyond friend.
Pearl scooted closer, and her shoulder touched mine. “Shay… you look like her.”
“What?” My voice cracked.
“Look.” She handed me the picture of Bernice again. This one with her laughing. “Your cheekbones. Your nose. Your jawline. You… you resemble her. Just—”
“With red hair,” Prime finished for her.
My heartbeat rattled in my chest.
My vision blurred.
“Holy shit.” My voice didn’t sound like mine. “If… if that’s my mom, and if Bernice is with her, and if she’s holding a baby—”
Prime’s hand covered mine. “Say it, Shay.”
I swallowed hard. “If Bernice is my mom’s mom…” My throat tightened. “That means Bernice was my grandmother.”
Pearl’s eyes filled with tears. “Oh my god.”
The cabin fell silent.
The kind of silence that didn’t just settle, it slammed into place.
Pieces clicked together.
Slotted in.
Found their home.
My mother had always told me she never knew her parents.
Never had family.
Never had anyone.
She lied. God, she lied.
Bernice wasn’t just some kind woman on this island who painted creepy shit and made people laugh.
Bernice was my blood.
My grandmother.
I felt something crack open inside me. Not grief. Not fear. Something deeper. Something that felt like a missing piece had finally returned after being gone my entire life.
Pearl wiped her eyes and whispered, “I wonder…”
I looked up at her.
She held the first photo, the one of young Bernice holding me, against her chest.
“I wonder,” Pearl said softly, “if you were the her Bernice wanted us to find.”
My breath caught.
The words hit me straight in the center of my chest, spreading outward like a shockwave.
The “her.” The cryptic message Bernice had said to Pearl before she died. The last thing she ever said.
Find her.
Pearl stared at me wide-eyed. “Shay… I think Bernice meant you.”
I didn’t have words.
I couldn’t breathe.
Bernice had died thinking of me.
Her granddaughter.
The one she lost.
With my pulse racing and my chest tight, I looked at the photos spread across the floor.
My mom.
Bernice.
Me.
All connected. All here. All hidden until now.