5. Bonnie
BONNIE
I was wiping down tables at the Grill when my phone buzzed in my back pocket. I almost let it go to voicemail—my hands were full, and Mila needed me to finish the lunch cleanup so the dinner prep could start—but something made me check.
Driftwood Cove High.
My stomach bottomed out. I set the rag down and answered.
“Miss Williams? This is Janet from the front office. We’re calling because Lawson has been absent for the third day in a row, and we haven’t received a call or a note from?—”
“Third day?” The words came out louder than I meant them to. A couple at a nearby table glanced over. I turned away and lowered my voice. “He left for school this morning. He’s been leaving every morning.”
A pause on the other end. “I’m sorry, but he hasn’t been in class since last Friday. His teachers have been marking him absent.”
Three days. He’d left the house every morning this week with his backpack, and for three days he’d gone somewhere else entirely. He’d looked me in the eye over his cereal bowl and lied to my face.
I hadn’t checked the app during the day this week. It hadn’t crossed my mind that he’d skip school again. I wasn’t sure why. I’d just been so damn busy and honestly, exhausted.
“I’ll handle it,” I said, my voice flat. “Thank you for calling.”
I hung up and stood there for a second, my pulse pounding in my ears.
Three days.
How had I missed that?
I needed to do better at this whole guardian thing.
Way better.
“Everything okay?” Mila asked from behind the counter when I entered the kitchen. She’d stopped prepping and was watching me.
“Yeah. Just a family thing,” I said.
She gave me that look she got when she knew someone wasn’t being straight with her. “You sure?”
“Yeah, it’s nothing major,” I insisted. “But I might need to head out a few minutes early.”
“Go.” She nodded toward the exit. “I’ve got the rest of this covered.”
“Are you sure? I can finish wiping the tables.”
She shook her head. “Go handle what you need to handle. If you need tomorrow off, just call me.”
“Thank you.”
I grabbed my stuff from the back and clocked out.
The entire drive home, I white-knuckled the steering wheel.
When I stepped inside the house, Lawson was sprawled out on the couch.
Backpack by the door like always, shoes kicked off, scrolling through his phone.
Same routine. Same performance. Except now I knew it was exactly that—a performance.
“Hey,” he said without looking up.
“Where were you today?”
Something flickered across his face. “School.”
“Try again.”
His thumb stopped scrolling. He looked at me, and I watched him calculate whether to keep lying or switch tactics. “What are you talking about?”
“The school called, Lawson. You haven’t been there since last Friday.”
The mask dropped. His jaw tensed, and his eyes went hard. He set his phone facedown on the cushion and sat up straighter. “So?”
“So? Where the hell have you been for three days?”
“Out.”
“Out where?”
“Does it matter?”
“Yes, it matters!” My voice came out shrill. I was shaking—not from anger, but from the fear underneath it that I couldn’t keep down anymore. “You’ve been lying to me. Every morning, you’ve walked out that door and lied to my face. Where have you been?”
He stood up. At fourteen, he was already taller than me, and when he squared his shoulders, he looked older than he was. Harder.
“I’ve been with Cade and Darren,” he said, like it was nothing. Like he was telling me he’d been at the park.
“Doing what?”
“Hanging out. Helping with stuff.”
“What kind of stuff?”
“Just stuff!” He threw his hands up. “Why do you always have to turn everything into an interrogation? I’m not a criminal.”
The word hit me square in the chest. Criminal. It was the word this whole town used when they talked about our father. The word I’d been running from since I came back.
“I never said you were,” I said, forcing my voice to soften. “But Darren?—”
“Here we go.” He crossed his arms, let his head fall back, and rolled his eyes. “Darren this, Darren that. You’ve never even talked to the guy, Bonnie. You don’t know him.”
“I know enough. I know he was involved in Dad’s operation. I know he was there when they were running pills out of the Tidal Caverns. He worked with Dad, Lawson. He was part of the whole thing.”
“So? He didn’t get arrested. Dad did.”
“Because Darren ran. That’s what he does. He uses people and then disappears when things go bad. Pins his shit on them.”
“That’s not what happened.”
“That’s exactly what happened. It’s not the first time he’s skirted trouble with the law. Ask anyone in town.”
Lawson’s face flushed red. “I’m not going to ask anyone in town! The people in this town look at me like I’m trash. The only people who don’t are Cade and Darren. Cade’s my friend. He treats me like I’m not just some screwup kid with a convict for a dad.”
“He’s not your friend. He’s Darren’s little brother, and Darren is?—”
“Darren has been there for me!” Lawson’s voice rose another level—one he’d never used with me before. His fists clenched at his sides. “Where were you, Bonnie? Where were you when Dad got arrested? When they put him in handcuffs in the driveway and the whole neighborhood watched?”
My throat closed.
“I was six when Mom left,” he continued, his voice raw and shaking. “Six. And you were the one who was there. You made me dinner, helped me with homework, and told me everything would be okay when Dad fell apart. I remember that. All of it. But then you left too.”
“I went to college. That’s not?—”
“You left!” The words tore out of him filled with so much fury I took a step back.
“You packed up your car and you fucking drove away. You didn’t come back for two years.
Two years, Bonnie. Not for Christmas. Not for my birthday.
Do you know what that was like? Dad was either gone, high, or locked in his room, and I was alone.
Cade was the one who showed up. Darren was the one who checked on me. They were there. You weren’t.”
Every word was a knife cutting into me, and the worst part was that he was right about enough of it to make arguing impossible.
I had left. I had driven away. And whatever my reasons were—escape, survival, the desperate need to be something other than Gravis Williams’s daughter—none of them erased the fact that my little brother had been alone.
“I came back,” I whispered, tears pooling in my eyes.
“Because they made you. Because if you didn’t, I’d go into foster care.
Not because you wanted to. Not because you missed me.
” His chin trembled, and for a second, I could see a six-year-old little boy underneath his scowl.
Then, in a snap, the little boy was gone, replaced by the angry teen standing in front of me.
“At least Darren and Cade chose to be here for me. Nobody forced them.”
He turned and walked down the hallway toward his bedroom. The door slammed so hard it rattled the pictures on the wall.
Everything in me wanted to go after him.
To bang on his door and make him listen.
To make him understand that Darren wasn’t who he thought he was.
But his words were still ringing in my ears, and the truth in them made my chest ache too much to move.
I stayed where I was, staring at the empty space where he’d been standing.
A shaky breath escaped me, and then the tears began to fall.
Heading to the library crossed my mind.
Not for the free internet, or to get any studying done. Just the space itself. The quiet. The calm. The mug of tea that appeared without being asked for.
Him .
I shoved the thought away and wiped my eyes.
I didn’t get to think about him. I didn’t get to want things right now. My time for that had come and gone, and it hadn’t done me a damn bit of good.
Look at where I was.
My brother thought I’d left him.
He thought I’d abandoned him.
And the truth was—I had.
The thought looped through my head, feeding the guilt that had lived inside me for years, turning it into something tangible I couldn’t ignore any longer.
By the next day, I was running on two hours of sleep and a level of anxiety that made my hands unsteady enough for Mila to notice. I’d nearly dropped a plate of scallops during the rush, and when I fumbled a sweet tea refill at table four, she pulled me aside.
“Take your break early,” she said. It wasn’t a suggestion. When I opened my mouth to argue, she cut me off. “You’ve been running on fumes, and I need you in one piece. Go get some air. Eat something. The Grill will survive without you for an hour.”
So I did. I stepped out and walked down Main Street. The cool salt breeze off the ocean helped a little. The sound of the waves in the distance helped even more. Even so, nothing could fully quiet the tornado of chaos swirling through my mind.
The Crystal Cove Shop caught my eye. I’d walked past it a hundred times but never gone in. It was a small place with sea glass and crystal wind chimes hung out front. I didn’t believe in crystals or good luck charms, but at this point, I was willing to try anything.
A bell jingled softly when I pushed open the door.
Inside, it smelled like herbs and something floral I couldn’t name. Shelves lined with candles, crystals, and little trinkets filled the cozy space. A woman stood behind the counter—tall and willowy, with silver-streaked dark hair in a loose braid, and pale gray eyes that crinkled when she smiled.
“Welcome,” she said. “I’m Eleanor. Looking for anything in particular?”
“Just browsing.” I ran my fingers over a display of sea glass. “Thanks.”
Before Eleanor could say anything more, a voice came from the seating area near the front window.
“The wind has been restless about you for days, child.”
I turned. An elderly woman sat at a small table with a steaming teacup and a worn deck of Tarot cards in front of her. She had wild gray hair and wore a purple shawl draped over her shoulders.
“Excuse me?” I said.
“Sit.” She gestured to the empty chair across from her. “The cards have been waiting.”
“I don’t really...” I glanced at Eleanor, who smiled encouragingly.
“Maribel’s readings are always insightful,” she said. “Go on. Sit. You won’t regret it.”
I should have politely declined and gone back to work. I had twenty minutes left on my break and a mountain of problems to deal with, none of which would be solved by a Tarot reading from a stranger in a crystal shop. Even so, something about the old woman’s eyes pulled me in.
Before I knew what I was doing, I sat down in the chair across from her.
“I’m Maribel,” she said, shuffling the worn cards. “And you’ve been fighting alone for too long.”
My pulse quickened. “How did you?—”
“Cut the deck into three, and then stack them back together,” she instructed, holding it out to me.
My hands moved before I’d decided to cooperate. The cards felt warm beneath my fingertips. Goose bumps prickled across my skin as I touched them.
Maribel took the deck back and flipped the first card onto the table between us. A woman knelt beside a pool of water beneath a sky full of stars, pouring water from two pitchers.
“The Star,” she said, tracing the edge of the card with one finger. “Hope after devastation.” She looked up at me. “You’ve had everything stripped away—family, trust, stability. But you’re still here. Still fighting. This card says healing has already begun, even if you can’t feel it yet.”
My throat tightened.
She flipped the second card, and I leaned forward to see it better. The image made my stomach drop. There was a figure facedown on the ground with swords buried deep in their back.
“The Ten of Swords,” she said, her expression sobering.
Her head tilted as though listening to something I couldn’t hear.
“You’ve hit the bottom, child. You know it.
You feel it. But this card isn’t the curse people think it is.
” She tapped the image. “See the sky? The darkness is lifting. The Ten of Swords means the worst is already here. You’re living in it right now.
Which means the only direction left is up. ”
I stared at the card, not sure how to feel about that.
How was the worst almost over? What did that mean? What did it even look like at this point?
She flipped the third card. It revealed two figures facing each other, each holding a golden cup. Between them, a winged lion’s head hovered. There was something charged about the image—two people seeing each other clearly, choosing each other.
“The Two of Cups. Partnership. Trust. A connection between two people who see each other for who they truly are,” the woman said.
My heart kickstarted inside my chest.
“Someone is watching over you, child,” she said, her voice softer now. “Not from a distance, but from very close. Closer than you realize.” Her brown eyes locked with mine. “He sees you—not the name you carry or the past. Just you.”
My breath caught as Gray popped into my head.
Maribel gathered her cards with a satisfied smirk and tucked them back into the bag hidden beneath her shawl. She picked up her teacup and took a slow sip, watching me over the rim.
“That’s it?” I managed.
“That’s it.”
I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. She was already standing, moving toward the back of the shop like she had somewhere to be.
“I know,” Eleanor said, giving me a warm, knowing smile from behind the counter. “She has that effect on people.”
I sat at the table for another minute, staring at the empty chair across from me. The Star. The Ten of Swords. The Two of Cups. The cards flickered through my head—hope, rock bottom, partnership—as I stood and walked back out onto Main Street.
She was wrong. She had to be. I didn’t have room for hope or partnership or any of the things those cards promised. I had Lawson and work and a last name that made people cross the street to put distance between us.
Even so, as I walked back to the Grill, all I could think about was Gray and how maybe this whole mess that was my life was about to get better sometime soon.
A girl could hope.