Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
The original plan was to get away from the crowds, our own included, and enjoy a relaxing day on the beach together before the wedding. Dahlia invited me. Theo invited Finn. And now, the two of us have a secret plan: get Theo to tell Dahlia the truth.
Dahlia’s in full sparkle mode as we ride the tender into Cozumel. She’s pointing out watercolors like a cruise commercial—“Look how turquoise!” I try to match her energy, and for the first time in what feels like months, I’m nearly successful.
At one point, she eyes me suspiciously, then glances at Finn, and panic climbs my spine. I shake my head, using our telepathic sister connection to convince her that nothing is happening with me and Finn.
She only raises an eyebrow. I ignore her, knowing from past experience that if I dig in, it’ll only solidify her theory. But as Finn makes some stupid joke about finding a topless beach to help Theo get over his fear of showing his nipples, my laugh is nearly giddy.
I kissed Finn Gallagher. For real. My teenage self would slap me. Out of jealousy, to be clear.
The Jeep Dahlia reserved is orange, dented, and older than any of us by the look of the literal silver key. The rental guy hands it to Theo like he's passing off his aging mother-in-law.
We all pile in, and Theo starts it up, test-revving the engine.
He adjusts the mirrors with two fingers, then pulls out onto the coast road.
The wind comes over the windshield and tears Dahlia's ponytail apart. She shrieks and grabs her hat as Theo laughs. For the first time in days, it’s as if the gap-toothed nine-year-old surfaces in his thirty-two-year-old face.
He yells over the engine, “STILL THE ONLY ONE OF US WHO CAN DRIVE STICK,” and Finn yells back, “I HIT ONE CURB!”
“I THOUGHT IT WAS A MAILBOX??” Dahlia cries out, still holding her hat down with both hands.
My recollection is that it was a curb and then a mailbox, but I keep that to myself.
The east side of the island is nothing like the port. Ten minutes out, the souvenir stands fall away, and everything around us becomes wild and empty. Scrub jungle on one side, crystal blue ocean on the other.
The waves turn white against the coast. No hotels.
No bars. Nobody but us, the pelicans, and an occasional taxi blasting cumbia, heading the other direction.
We stop at a beach that’s only a scoop of white sand between two shelves of black rock and a palapa shack at the tree line with smoke coming off a grill.
The four of us are in the water before the engine finishes ticking.
Dahlia wades in waist-deep with her hat still on. “Winner takes the front seats back to the ship. Loser buys lunch.”
I shake my head. “We're not doing this.”
Theo sinks so Dahlia can climb onto his shoulders in the surf. Her knee finds his hand like they've been rehearsing it since middle school, which, technically, they have.
Finn turns around in the water in front of me and crouches. Looks back over his shoulder. Raises an eyebrow.
I groan. “Don’t you think we’re a little old for this?”
“Fifteen years, Harper.” He says it like we’re standing at a war memorial. “Fifteen years they've been undefeated. The pool. The lake. Do you not remember Fourth of July?”
“We got banned, Finn. There's a lifeguard in Ohio who still has our photos up.”
“He retired. I checked.” He pats his own shoulder. “Get up here.”
It was one against three, and based on how this wedding was going so far, I definitely wasn’t winning that fight. So I climb on and Finn’s hands close around my shins, his thumb settling into the curve of my calf.
I yelp and grab onto his head as he pushes up out of the water in one motion. “Okay. Her whole game is the tickle feint. Don't defend the hands, defend the hat.”
I snort. “What?”
“Trust me. She can't lose the hat.”
It was the bride's hat. He probably had a point.
Across four feet of open water, Dahlia cracks her knuckles. “I want you both to know that I love you. No matter what happens.”
What happens next is violence. Dahlia opens with the tickle feint—Finn called it—and when I don't bite, she goes straight for my wrists. Theo staggers us in a slow circle, talking to her like a crew chief. “Left, LEFT, she's got no base on the left.”
Finn and Theo get battered with a wave, but somehow stay standing. “If the wave knocks us, it doesn’t count!” I say.
“Whatever! Totally counts!” Dahlia comes at me again, and then I twist my wrist, fake a jab to her ribs, then reach up and flick the brim of the bride hat.
Both her hands fly up to save it, and physics does the rest.
The splash is iconic. Dahlia surfaces spitting seawater and pointing at me like a betrayed monarch. “I can’t believe—!”
I’m laughing so hard, I don’t hear the end of that sentence. Theo holds the dumb hat aloft like a rescued flag, while Finn and I turn in drunk circles with all four fists in the air, bellowing variations of “VICTORY IS WON!” at the top of our lungs.
He backs up under a wave to dunk us both in celebration. We go down tangled. I come up salt-blind and laughing so hard I can't find my feet. He hauls me up by the waist with one arm like I'm a crab trap, and for a second, I forget every reason I've ever manufactured for existing away from this man.
* * *
We take out the snorkel equipment. My mask leaks so badly, I don’t last long. Especially after I spot miniature, electric-pink jellyfish in the water.
We dry off in stages. Theo finds the tide pools on the north rocks and calls us over to see a brittle star.
He points. “They drop their arms when they panic. Jettison a limb. Fully voluntarily. It grows back, but the new one's never quite—“
“Can I touch it?”
“No, Dahlia. Did you not hear what I just said?”
She tries anyway, and he wrestles her back, the two of them devolving into giggles, on Dahlia’s part, and kisses.
Finn crouches down, gazing into the pool. “Remember when you two used to pay us in candy for answers to your questions?”
It’s so unexpected, I guffaw. “When we were, like, five and six?”
He looks up at me. “Gummy worms, wasn’t it?”
“For you. Theo was chocolate kisses.” One gummy worm per question, payable in advance, no refunds if the answer was disappointing, which they often were.
Why is the sky blue? Do fish sleep? What happens if you swallow gum?
I plant my hands on my hips. “You were older and wiser, and you took advantage of us.”
He laughs. “You negotiated a bulk rate. Ten questions for seven worms.”
“I had questions. You had a monopoly. I regret nothing.”
“You were in kindergarten, and you used the words volume discount.”
I stare at him, amazed that he still remembers all of this. He stands and picks up one of the rocks below the point. They’re flat and gray and made for skipping.
“Style points count!” Dahlia shouts, wobbling over the rocks to join us.
* * *
The woman at the food stand takes one look at us and doesn't ask what we want. She brings us fish tacos and Cokes, and the childhood stories that started on the rocks come out like the tide coming in, one lapping over the last.
The Halloween the four of us went as a caterpillar. Dahlia's creative vision: a green bedsheet, four hula hoops, and me at the back in charge of wiggling the butt.
Theo laughs so hard he has to put his taco down when Dahlia tells him our mom still has the video. His hand’s wrapped around her ankle like it's the most natural thing his hand has ever done, thumb moving in absent arcs.
I look up and catch Finn’s eye, motioning to the beach. Maybe if we give them some time alone—
“C’mon, Harp. Sister time.” Dahlia grabs her Coke and loops her arm through mine, dragging me to the water.
I look back at Finn and mouth, “Sorry,” then jog with Dahlia over the sand. As soon as we stop, our feet in the waves, I feel it coming. Like the smell you catch before it rains.
“I know you’re ticked about the rehearsal,” Dahlia says.
“What? I’m not—”
“About Denny and Rose?” She turns to me, her face half shaded by her hat.
I open my mouth to refute it, but don’t know what to say.
Dahlia blows out a breath. “I know it was stupid. But he was just standing there, looking at me like I was six and he was about to teach me to ride a bike. And I couldn't do it. I couldn't be the person to publicly humiliate him in front of—”
“Wait, you couldn’t embarrass him? That’s what you’re telling me?” I step closer. “Do you not remember how it was after he was convicted?”
She holds up her hands. “No, I know, but . . . “
“But what?”
“I don’t know! Maybe I’m a little confused! Maybe I wish my dad could be the one walking me down the aisle, and so it’s easier to pretend than remember?”
The water comes up over our ankles, warm as bathwater, and takes the sand out from under our heels grain by grain.
Dahlia draws a breath. “You want to know the actual reason I voted to invite him?”
“Because Mom—“
“Because I got tired of him being huge.” Her chin trembles.
“Every wedding I've ever imagined, there’s this hole.
This Dad-shaped hole, eating away at the decorations.
The cake. Everything. I'd have felt him not-there all day, Harp. Either way, he was going to ruin my wedding.” She turns to me, her eyes glassy.
“At least this way, he's just . . . a guy. A middle-aged guy at Table Eleven.” She swipes at her eye with a wrist. “It was working, too.
Until he got up out of his chair at the welcome dinner, and . . . “
My eyes well with tears. Not just because I completely understand what she’s saying, but because her fiancé—soon-to-be husband—is sitting over there with Finn with a secret that is going to crush her.
“Hey. HEY!” we hear behind us, and both spin to see Theo stumbling back from the table. Finn looks like he’s in a standoff, and as Dahlia and I run up to see what’s going on, I realize that’s not far from the truth.
The single most self-possessed animal I’ve ever seen stands on the picnic table. It looks like a raccoon, but smaller and insultingly cute. And it has Theo's dry bag in its jaws.
The dry bag containing his phone, wallet, and the key to the orange Jeep.
“Pygmy raccoon,” Theo says, in a strangled voice. “They're endemic. Critically endangered. There's maybe three hundred of—”
“I don't care about his conservation status, Theo,” Dahlia shouts. “He has the car key!”
The raccoon, unhurried, backs toward the scrub line with the bag. Finn tries the slow approach, grabbing whatever leftover food he can find, holding it out. I swear, the animal looks at him with something like boredom before it turns and disappears into the jungle.
Finn crashes in after it and comes back with scratches, leaves in his hair, and no bag.
“Okay.” Dahlia spins in a slow circle. “So the raccoon has our key.”
“And my phone,” Theo adds.
“Less important right now, babe.”
“Maybe Dad’s raccoon story wasn’t so exaggerated after all,” I murmur, and Dahlia shoots me a look.
I jog back to our towels and pull out my phone. 3:12. All aboard is 5 o’clock. We’re fifty-one minutes away with a Jeep that is now a sculpture on the empty side of an island. And my phone says NO SERVICE.
The next twenty minutes are straight from a movie.
Theo and Dahlia jog north up the road to flag anything with wheels.
The woman at the food stand lets Finn use her landline to call who we think might be her cousin, but since we don’t have a translation app, he has to try and make do with whatever he remembers from high school Spanish.
I search every inch of the Jeep to see if there’s a spare key stashed somewhere. I’m completely defeated when Finn walks back over.
“Do you know how to hotwire?” I call to him.
“Yeah, thanks for asking. Didn’t want to offer prematurely.”
I turn and lean against the door. “What are we going to do?”
He looks up and down the dirt road. No sign of Dahlia and Theo. “Well. We’re either going find our way back to town and get a hotel, or we’ll be hunting down the trafficking ring that took your sister and my best friend.”