Chapter 6 #3
“Hey.”
His eyes land on me. Assess. Dismiss. He nods once at Bodhi, the barest acknowledgment, and takes himself into the living room without a word.
“That’s Zade.” Shea hands me a salad bowl. “He’s… complicated.”
“I gathered.”
“Don’t take it personally. He’s like that with everyone.”
Except Mimi, I think, but don’t say it.
Dinner arrives in waves. Stew with dumplings. Bread still hot. Potatoes with garlic and too much butter. Henry opens wine and pours for anyone holding a glass.
The table is loud. Bodhi at one end, Henry at the other, Mimi beside Henry. Zade takes the seat farthest from everyone, back to the wall. Dean sits next to me, close enough that I can feel the heat of him through my sleeve.
Nobody asks about my followers. Nobody mentions the clip. Nobody wants to know what LA is like, or what happened with the morning show, or whether it’s true about the barista.
They ask if I like the stew. They ask about seeing the orcas and if I’d met Sir yet.
I glance at Dean. “Sir?”
“A sea lion,” Dean says, and I swear something almost like a smile touches his mouth before he looks down at his bowl. “He’s been begging tourists for fish since before I took over the tours. Fat old thing. Waddles up the dock like he owns it.”
“Like someone else I know,” Mimi says, jerking her chin at Doug, who has parked himself under the table with his head on Dean’s boot.
“Sir’s a menace,” Colter agrees. “Last summer he stole a kid’s hot dog right out of the bun. Kid ran away screaming.”
“Smart kid,” Zade says from the far end of the table. “Sir could’ve taken him too if he was inclined.”
The whole family turns to look at him. He doesn’t look up. Just eats.
Henry clears his throat and launches into a story about Dean falling off the dock at six years old and swimming back to shore under his own power, furious at the suggestion of rescue. Dean doesn’t stop him. Just shakes his head, the corner of his mouth doing that half smile again.
“You left out the part where you jumped in after me,” he says when Henry’s done. “Even though you can’t swim.”
“I can swim.”
“You dog-paddle. Badly.”
“It got the job done.”
“You nearly drowned us both.”
“Details.”
They grin at each other down the length of the table, and I set down my fork.
“How far apart are you two, exactly?”
The table laughs. All of them, at once.
“Why is that funny?”
“Everyone asks,” Colter says. “It’s become a running joke.”
“Not everyone,” Henry says. “Most just assume he’s my son from a previous relationship. I’m twenty-one years older. Our parents had me young, and then Dean was a—”
“Mistake,” Dean says.
“A happy surprise,” Henry corrects and turns back to me. “Mom was forty-five. Dad was forty-nine. They were shocked, but he kept them young.”
“I was trying to figure out the relationship, but I see it now.” I swing my spoon between the two of them. “It’s so obvious I’m kicking myself for not figuring it out. The last names threw me.”
Henry’s smile is warm and indulgent. “I took Lana’s name when we married. Our parents were good people, but the rest of the Kinsellas, not so much. I didn’t want to burden my kids with that legacy.”
Beside me, Dean keeps eating.
He’s the only Kinsella left at this table. Henry got out. The kids were born Havens. And Dean doesn’t give a word of protest when his brother called their name a burden.
You of all people, Kinsella. That’s what Curt said on the dock, and now I realize it had been meant as an insult.
I have so many questions.
But I don’t ask.
Not yet.
The pie Wren brings out for dessert is everything Henry promised and more—warm apple filling, a crust so flaky it shattered at the first touch of a fork, a scoop of vanilla ice cream melting into the crevices.
I eat two pieces before I catch myself and set the fork down, embarrassed by my own appetite.
Nobody comments on it. Nobody counts my calories with their eyes the way my mother used to.
Mimi just refills my wine without asking and keeps talking about the time someone with the unfortunate nickname Bilge ate an entire bag of Cheetos and got stuck in the bag, which sends the whole family into a fit of laughter when I ask how he managed that.
“Bilge is a rat,” Hazel squeals.
“A dock rat,” Colter clarifies, laughing. “Lives down at the marina. Somehow older than God and twice as ugly. Fish Monroe feeds him better than he feeds himself.”
“He’s not a rat, he’s a legend,” Mimi corrects, pointing her spoon at Colter. “That rat will outlive us all. Show some respect.”
“I have nothing but respect for Bilge,” Colter says solemnly, and the whole table dissolves into laughter again.
“Has anyone heard from Knox?” Zade asks suddenly, and the laughter goes quiet.
“And the killjoy strikes again,” Colter mutters.
Shea elbows him before answering Zade’s question. “Not since last week’s call.”
“He didn’t call this Sunday?”
“He’s on a line, Zade. There’s no signal on a line.”
“I know where he is.” Zade sets his fork down. “I’m asking if anyone’s heard from him.”
Nobody answers.
Henry gets his phone out and turns it around to show me a picture of a tall man with soot on his face, the Haven-Kinsella eyes, and a grin like Colter’s. Yellow shirt, hard hat, arms spread wide in front of a ridge that’s burning behind him.
“That’s my Knox,” he says. “The family’s daredevil.” Then adds for the table’s benefit, “He’ll call when he can.”
“Of course he’ll call.” Mimi sets her hand over Henry’s hand and squeezes. They stay like that a beat too long, and when Mimi looks at Henry, there’s a softness in her face that makes my chest hurt.
I glance around the table.
They’re all scared. Every one of them.
And that’s what finally breaks me open.
Not the food. Not the noise. Not eight people making room for a stranger without asking her a single question about the last eighteen months. This. A table full of people frightened for the same person at the same time, carrying it together.
When my mother had her stroke, I found out from her assistant. Four days after, and only because I had to make the decision to remove her from life support.
This family would never.
I set down my fork. “Excuse me,” I say, to no one in particular, and I’m out the door before anyone can ask if I’m all right.
The night is cold, salt-damp, thick with hay and the smell of water somewhere past the dark fields. The barn is a black shape against a sky with more stars in it than I have seen in twenty years.
I grip the porch rail and breathe.
The tears come without asking. Hot, silent, running down my face before I’ve decided anything. I don’t sob. I don’t make a sound. I just stand there in the dark with salt on my cheeks and a hole in my chest the exact size of everything I never had and didn’t know to miss.
Behind me, the screen door creaks open.