To Best the Boys(74)

“Can we forget this party and go?” I whisper.

He chuckles, then pulls back enough to peer down at me. “Even I have a healthy fear of your cousin. She’d skin our eyeballs, and Beryll would be appalled.” But even as he says it, I sense a change in his demeanor. In his tone. Something tenses. Tightens.

I frown and watch him pull back from me just a bit. With a nod I straighten and glance away, giving him distance. “How’s your mum and Ben?”

He shrugs. “Other than scared that I came home on a stretcher, they’re good. But the festival was about all the excitement Ben could handle for a few weeks.”

“How long are you home for?”

He doesn’t look at me. “Not long enough. I have to leave again tomorrow. The men are trying to get in as much fishing as we can in case those regulation negotiations go awry.” He starts to say more, but my aunt’s voice rings out in an incoherent exclamation, and when I look over, I see my parents. Mum is in a wheeling chair. Da is standing protectively, and uncomfortably, behind her.

Lute nods at them before he ducks to murmur in my ear. “I’d like to speak privately with you later if you have a minute.”

He excuses himself before I can respond, to allow them their space with me. And I nod because I’ve already read in his eyes what is on his mind. It’s the same as on mine. The question of whether or not we can make the complexities of our lives collide.

My breathing grows thin. I watch my aunt hug my mum and I choke down a lump of tears, because this is what we all keep coming back to, isn’t it? The pursuit of dreams and choices—my mum’s and her sister’s—their husbands and kids. Lute’s and mine. His to stay home and change the world for his mum and brother—mine to pursue university in hopes of changing the world for people like my mum.

I push those thoughts away even as the ache threatens to untether me. My mum and aunt are turning to me with eyes more full of tears than I knew either was capable of. Because Mum is home. In her first home.

I smile at the idea of that.

With a last look at Lute who’s gone to find Sam and Will, I stride over to the two women and hug my mum long and hard. Mum’s arms feel a bit stronger today. I glance up at Da. His serum seems to be holding off the disease’s progression. Maybe mine will be in time after all.

The expression on his face says he’d like to run out of here with all three of us. But he doesn’t.

He just stands there looking . . . alone.

Leaving Aunt Sara to show Mum off, I tug Da outside and over to the garden wall, where we can stand in some privacy staring at the sea, next to a newly planted rosebush with a well of dirt still freshly broken and sifted around it. I think it must look a bit like Da’s heart these days.

Without a word Da nods, as if he knows what I’m thinking about the fresh dirt and raw heart, then leans his arms on the wall. “I like your friend Lute, by the way.”

“So do I.”

“You were so busy telling me about Vincent earlier—who, by the way, I will be tearing his bloody limbs off—you forgot to say how the test went.”

“I knew maybe a fourth of the material. The rest I had to wrestle with.”

He eyes me. “A full quarter, eh? That’s my girl.”

My girl.

The fear from this morning rears its head. That I am his girl, and soon maybe the only one he’s got left. If I go to university, I’m not just losing Mum. I’m losing this life with him too. And Lute. I’m losing everything I’ve known in my pursuit of something we still don’t know if we can have. And if Mum passes . . . I’m causing Da to lose too.

“Da.” My voice breaks. “What if I’m wrong? What if it’s too late for Mum, and by going to university I’ll be leaving you alone?”

He pats my hand. “You follow your dreams, not your guilt, Rhen.”

“But what if my dreams aren’t that simple?” I almost say. “Maybe that’s the problem.” What if my dreams aren’t just one thing, but instead they are everything? They are education and Mum. They’re Da and Lute. They’re finding a cure while also holding on to what I have here. Why can’t the future, past, and present all be my dreams?

I slide my hand into his and face the ocean in all its blue and orange and floating seaweed stretching on to purple sky glory, and I swallow the mouthful of fears.

“I’ll miss doing this with you when you’re at university, kid.”

I grip his hand tighter. And make the hardest and yet easiest decision I’ve ever made.

“Da. I want to delay going.”

“It’ll—what? No.” He shakes his head. “They’re going to accept you—”

“Whether they do or not, I’m going to wait.” I squeeze his hand. “Going to university will take time away—and right now you and Mum need me more than ever. We both know the reality is that if my cure doesn’t work, I won’t learn enough in time to fix Mum.” I gulp. “The cure will be either what we’re developing now or not at all.”

He pulls his hand from mine so he can turn and face me straight on. “You listen here, Rhen. You are going to that university. Of course it takes time. What did you think you were getting into?”

“That’s not what I mean.” I look past him to the water, then inhale so my voice stays steady. I look back at this man who has been my father and friend my entire life. I’m already possibly losing Mum. I’m not ready to lose him too. Even if it’s in a different way. I’m not ready to lose him to his grief.