The Cousins(78)

“It’s not all that ridiculous,” I admit. “I might’ve helped if you’d told me.”

“I should have.” He faces me head-on, and the sudden intensity of his expression makes my breath catch. “But I kept getting distracted by my third secret, which was that I thought you were the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen. So, you see,” he says, his hand brushing mine, “I remember everything.”



The combination of his words and his touch make my skin buzz, but I draw back. “You don’t want to get mixed up with a Story,” I tell him. “We’re a mess.”

He smiles crookedly. “Yeah, well, so am I. I even failed at being one of you. And I got us kicked out of the Summer Gala because of it.”

Yes, and no. What did Uncle Archer say earlier? Give some thought to forgiveness too, okay? If there’s one characteristic I wish the Story family had more of, it’s that. He was right, but it hits me all of a sudden that he didn’t only mean that we should forgive other people—the way Mildred never could. Based on the exchange he and Oona had earlier, I think he was also talking about forgiving yourself. And you can’t do that without acknowledging you did something wrong in the first place.

“That was my fault, too,” I admit. “I threw myself at you when you were just trying to help me. I mean, Uncle Anders was coming along to ruin everything anyway, so we would’ve been toast no matter what. But things would have been a lot less embarrassing if I hadn’t planted one on you in the middle of my grandmother’s party.”

Jonah grins. “That’s the only part of the night I don’t regret.”

My pulse picks up as I reach out and play with the hem of his T-shirt. “I don’t regret it either, except for the overdose of champagne. And the audience.”

“Well, nobody’s here now.” His thumb traces my cheekbone and sends a chill down my back. “If you happen to feel like trying again.”

And I do.





As soon as I slip between the sheets in Uncle Archer’s spare room, I can tell I won’t be able to fall asleep right away. That happens to me sometimes; I get so overtired that an unwelcome second wind kicks in, keeping my eyes open even when I desperately need them to close. But I don’t want to go back outside, since I’m pretty sure Milly and Jonah would rather be alone.

I pick my phone up from the nightstand. The battery’s low, and I didn’t bring a charger with me. I can probably make it through one phone call. It should be to my mom, to explain everything that’s happened and make arrangements to get home. Especially since I need to give her time to figure out travel logistics. My plane ticket back to Oregon isn’t until late August, and I have no idea how easy it will be to change.

But my frustrated tiredness fuels a low, buzzing resentment that makes me dial a different number. I’m even glad when he answers. “Well, this is a surprise,” he says.



“Hi, Dad,” I say, propping the thin pillow against the headboard so I can sit up. “I wanted to tell you that I’m really angry at you for cheating on Mom, and for doing it with my swim coach. I think you should apologize to me. If you would do that—and mean it—then maybe I could start trying to forgive you.”

“You have no idea the complexity of the situation,” my father says. Just like I knew he would, but my chest still tightens at his tone. “It takes more than one person to keep a marriage going, and your mother—”

“No.” I cut him off without hesitation, which is something I’d never have dared to do a month ago. It feels good. “You don’t get to blame her.”

“If you’re not going to listen—”

“I’m not.” I interrupt again and I’m strangely calm, my heart thumping steadily instead of pounding like it did the last time I spoke to him. “What did you do to Gran?”

“Excuse me?”

“What did you do to make her disown you?”

A bitter edge creeps into his voice. “I’ve told you a hundred times. Not a damn thing.”

“I don’t believe you.” My mind’s eye is split in two; on one side, I see that old picture of Dad and Gran from Sweetfern, her smile glowing with maternal love and pride. On the other, I see Gran like she was today on the deck, her face full of remembered pain even before I spilled scalding coffee all over her. Do you think your father is a man worth knowing? “What happened to Kayla Dugas?”

“How the hell do you know who Kayla Dugas is?” he demands.

“People here keep talking about her.”



“She got drunk and crashed her car into a tree,” Dad says. He sounds impatient and irritable at the question, but not particularly rattled. So I try a different tack.

“What happened at Cutty Beach?” I ask.

A pause. “What happened—where? You’re all over the place tonight, Aubrey. You must be overtired. I think you should go to bed.”

“You put a beach just like it in your book. It’s the only place on Gull Cove Island you’ve ever written about. Why is that? Does it have anything to do with Matt Ryan drowning?”

Dad’s sharp, shocked inhale is loud in my ear. “How do you—? Aubrey, you need to get a grip. I don’t know why you’re suddenly fixating on decades-old tragedies, but what happened to Matt was a terrible accident and has nothing to do with my mother.”