22. Meredith
MEREDITH
Sophie is already out the door before we can agree to anything.
She rushes by in a flash, reaching for her bag, her phone, her shoes. “Ashton! It was great to see you again. I’m really sorry, Mom, but I have to go. I’ll catch up later, okay?”
I exchange a bewildered look with June before we run after her.
“Wait! Sophie!” I follow her into the hallway, June at my side. “What’s going on? Who was that?”
“I’ll explain in the car,” Sophie mutters, still not making eye contact. She throws open the front door and stumbles onto the porch, blinking hard against the sunlight.
June grabs her arm, stopping her at the top of the steps. “You’re not going anywhere until you tell us what’s happening.”
Sophie looks between us, breathless and wide-eyed. Her hand trembles at her side. “I need a ride to the airport. Please, June. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t—” Her voice gets caught, and she swallows hard. “It’s about Trent. He’s run away from camp.”
There’s a beat of silence.
I blink. “Trent?”
June frowns. “Wait…Trent, Trent? I thought—” She pauses. “Isn’t he…your boyfriend?”
Sophie shakes her head quickly. “No! I told you, he’s not my boyfriend.”
“So, he’s like a camp counselor or something?” I try because, suddenly, nothing is adding up anymore.
Sophie looks at me like I’m crazy, her impatience buzzing under her skin. “No. Trent is just a kid. I had to send him to summer camp in California last minute so I could come here. But he’s been acting out for weeks, and then somehow, he got on a plane, and he’s coming here.”
“What?” I manage.
Sophie’s panic flares into something like shame. “He doesn’t have anyone else,” she says. “And if he shows up here without me there—” She doesn’t finish the sentence. She doesn’t have to.
June’s keys are already in her hand. “Get in the car,” she says.
And just like that, we’re all piling into the back of the Land Cruiser.
June drives as if we’re in a heist movie.
The wind whips through the cracked windows, carrying the scent of sea air and the low groan of the engine straining under June’s enthusiasm.
She knows these roads better than anyone, and the twenty-minute trip to the airport will probably take us half that time.
I’m wedged in the back seat, my knees knocking against the back of Sophie’s seat, and I think, belatedly, that I probably didn’t need to come along. But Sophie’s phone is clenched in her lap like it might detonate, and there are far too many questions for me to be able to walk away now.
“So,” I say over the rush of wind and the growl of tires. “Do you care to explain who this kid actually is?”
Sophie doesn’t look at me. “I told you. His name is Trent. He’s sixteen. He ran away from camp and got on a plane. Alone.”
“That’s not what I’m asking,” I say, scooting to the middle seat and leaning forward so she can hear me. “Why do you care? Why would a teenager fly across the country to find you?”
I pause, but Sophie’s jaw is set stiff.
“Is he your…son?”
“What? No! God, no,” Sophie snaps, turning to shoot me a look over her shoulder. “Of course he’s not my son.”
“Okay, then what?—”
“I was going to tell you,” Sophie says, cutting me off, her voice rising. “About Trent. I was going to explain everything. But things got so complicated, and I didn’t want to drop another bombshell when things were already so tense between us, and Richard was selling the Shack and?—”
“But you are dropping a bombshell!” June barks, her knuckles white on the steering wheel. “You’re just dropping it in slow motion! You keep talking in riddles, Sophie. We’re not mind readers!”
Sophie visibly recoils. “What are you talking about?” she says, pulling out the letter I gave her from Dad. “Mer said you both read the letter.”
I stare at it, mouth agape. “What does Dad’s suicide note have anything to do with this?”
“Suicide?” Sophie’s voice goes up an octave. “What in the– No! Of course it’s not— You thought it was? Guys, this is Dad’s confession.”
“Okay, you really need to start making some sense, Sophie.”
“You seriously don’t know?” Her voice is suddenly so much quieter. “Holy… No. I didn’t want to do it like this. I can’t just… You have no idea what—” Suddenly, Sophie seems to struggle to get any air down. Gasping sounds come out of her mouth, setting off all my alarm bells.
I reach over to hold her shoulder firmly. “It’s okay, Sophie. You’re all right, just breathe. We’re almost at the airport, and we’ll be there in time to find Trent. He’ll be okay. Whatever is going on right now, we will always love you and support you, okay? No matter what.”
I keep talking, and she keeps breathing, and slowly but surely, it comes out a little easier.
Finally, her eyes meet mine. “We can’t tell Mom. Not with the dementia. It’s not fair.”
“We won’t,” June says as she miraculously pulls into the parking lot. “Maybe start from the beginning, though.”
Sophie swallows. “When I was still living in Nantucket, when we weren’t…” She looks over at June in the driver’s seat. “When we had that falling out, remember? Before I left?”
Strings of previous conversations begin to fall into place as I watch June nod. “Yeah. You flew out to California without saying goodbye.”
“I…found something in Dad’s fishing hut.
Documents and stuff. He was paying a lot of money to this woman in L.A.
and taking all these flights out there, and I thought, maybe…
” She runs her hands through her hair. “Well, I assumed the worst, right? And I was going to L.A. anyway, so I figured I’d look into it.
I thought maybe then you’d start treating me more seriously. ”
He was always a bit crazy about his tackle. Went over to the West Coast a few times to pick it up himself.
I freeze as Roland’s words wash over me.
June seems to come to the same conclusion when she whispers, “Old Pete used to give him grief for getting his tackle from Malibu.”
The dots connect faster than the synapses in my brain.
Sixty grand was a lot. But not enough.
Something he’d spend thousands of dollars on a month and not keep a record of.
“Sophie, you left for L.A. almost ten years ago.”
She nods, almost embarrassingly. “I know–
“Did you find her?”
Sophie swallows hard and shakes her head. “No.”
Before she can elaborate, the car comes to a stop and Sophie is out the door in a flash.
Nantucket Memorial isn’t a large place. In fact, the terminal is just about the size of a high school gym, but it’s busy—weekenders in white linen, toddlers clutching stuffed whales, retirees in matching windbreakers trying to find where baggage claim is. It’s chaos in a gentle, coastal style.
The kind that tries to convince you it’s charming while you’re quietly losing your mind. Especially when you’re trying to get somewhere fast.
June mutters something under her breath as a family of five cuts right in front of us, but up ahead, Sophie doesn’t even slow down.
Her eyes scan the crowd as if she’s searching for a ghost, and something about how her shoulders are set makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
I’ve seen her angry before, but this feels different.
She’s terrified.
Somewhere beyond the ferry posters and the wall of pamphlets for clambakes and lighthouses, someone pushes through the sliding doors from the tarmac into the heavily air-conditioned room.
Sophie doesn’t miss a beat.
“Trent! You stupid, idiotic boy! What were you thinking?”
Up ahead, we watch as Sophie barrels into a lanky, young figure and presses him to her chest. The rest of her admonishments are drowned out by the noise of the crowd until June and I can push through to join them.
When we do, the boy is already retaliating. “Me? You left me behind! What was I supposed to do?”
“You should have called me!”
“Soph?” June’s voice is shaking.
But Sophie isn’t looking at us. She’s pulled back from the boy, who is glaring at her with barely concealed distress.
“You hung up on me, remember? You said you wouldn’t leave, and then you just dumped me at camp like?—”
“I’m not arguing with you again about this. I told you, you couldn’t come here.”
“Well, I’m here now, aren’t I? So, you’re going to have to deal with it.”
The dark hair was familiar—long, just like he used to wear it. But his dark eyes confirm it. From the gasp next to me, June reaches the same conclusion at the same time I do.
Finally realizing we’re there, Sophie turns around to look at us. Two hands nervously clutching the boy’s shoulders as if ready to pull him behind her at the first sign of hostility.
“June, Meredith. Meet Trent.”
Trent’s eyes—Aiden’s eyes—widen at the sight of us.
“He’s our half-brother.”