Chapter 4 #4
“It is what it is,” Sabrina said. “She handles it better than I would. Better than most people would. She has her numbers, her ledgers, her chickens. She has us. It’s not enough, but it’s what she has, and she’s made something remarkable out of it.
” She glanced at me. “You saw that today, didn’t you? The remarkable part.”
“I saw it.”
We reached the end of the orchard path where it opened onto the eastern meadow, and stopped.
The meadow stretched away toward the island’s edge, pale and silver in the fading light, and beyond it the sky was deepening from blue to something closer to indigo, the first bright stars precise and cold overhead.
“Can I ask you something?” I said.
“Always.”
“This morning. When you and Gabriella were … whatever that was. Was I interrupting an argument?”
Sabrina laughed. “God, no. That wasn’t fighting. That was something else entirely.”
“Something else like what?”
She turned to face me, her expression doing that Sabrina thing where teasing and seriousness occupied the same space without contradicting each other. “You really don’t see it, do you?”
“See what?”
“How she looks at you.” She said it plainly, without embellishment, and the plainness made it land harder than any dramatic delivery could have.
“Gabriel, she’s had a thing for you since she was thirteen.
Possibly earlier. The fact that you’ve spent an entire day with her and haven’t noticed is either the most impressive display of obliviousness I’ve ever witnessed or proof that military training does permanent damage to the part of the brain that recognizes when a beautiful woman is staring at you like you hung the moon. ”
I stared at her. “That’s not … I grew up with her.”
“And that hasn’t made the slightest difference to how she feels, which should tell you something about the durability of whatever this is.
” Sabrina shook her head, her smile warm and exasperated.
“Look, I’m not saying you have to do anything about it.
I’m saying open your eyes. The sparks were flying this morning, and you were standing there looking confused, which is your default expression for approximately seventy percent of life’s complexities. ”
I opened my mouth but quickly closed it. Nothing useful emerged.
Sabrina patted my arm. “Don’t hurt yourself.
It’s a lot to process, and you’ve had a day.
” She turned and started walking back toward the farmhouse, her wings half-extended for balance on the uneven path.
“Tomorrow’s mine, by the way. You promised.
I’m taking you on the skybird. There are things beyond this farm you haven’t seen, places that grew while you were gone, and I want to show you all of it.
” She glanced back over her shoulder, her grin returning.
“Also I want to see if you scream when we bank. Military hero or not, everyone screams.”
“I don’t scream,” I said.
“We’ll see.”
We walked back through the darkening orchard, the trees black against the deepening blue, and I tried very hard to focus on the path under my feet and not on the thing Sabrina had just dropped into the center of my evening like a stone into still water.
Sparks. Gabriella looked at me. The morning’s tension between the sisters, which I had interpreted as sibling rivalry and which Sabrina was now suggesting had been something considerably more complicated.
It was ridiculous. Gabriella was the girl I’d grown up with. The idea that she saw me as anything other than the friend who’d left and come back was… it was… I wasn’t sure.
But I remembered the way she’d held my hand on the ridge. The way her eyes had found mine across the dinner table and held, just a beat too long, before she looked away.
I dismissed it. Of course I dismissed it.
Sabrina teased. It was what she did, what she’d always done, finding the pressure point and pressing it gently to see what happened.
This was no different. She’d seen an opportunity for mischief and taken it, and I’d fallen for it the way I always fell for it, with the dignity of a young man who should know better by now.
We reached the farmhouse. Lights burned in the kitchen windows, warm and golden against the gathering dark.
Upstairs, the bathroom pipes had gone quiet; Gabriella was either still soaking or had gone to her room.
The thought of her, alone in her room, turning over whatever we’d shared that day, made something in my chest tighten in a way I didn’t want to examine.
“Tomorrow,” Sabrina said, stopping at the porch steps. “Sunrise. Skybird. Don’t be late, and for God’s sake wear something that isn’t that shirt.”
“Which shirt?”
“Any of the shirts. All of the shirts. Your entire wardrobe is a cry for help.”
She kissed my cheek and disappeared into the house, her wings brushing the doorframe as she passed.
I stood on the porch for a while after she’d gone, listening to the night settle around the farm, and tried very hard not to think about sparks, or looks, or the way Gabriella’s hand had felt in mine as we walked back from the clearing.
The thought lingered anyway. Longer than it should have. Longer than I wanted it to.