“I didn’t vow. You don’t have to make it sound so dramatic.”
“Except it was sorta dramatic, though.”
“I just—you know what? It doesn’t matter.”
“Well, it kind of matters, if we’re trying to establish that you’re actually you, and not an alien who’s hijacked your body and is making you do things you’d never do normally,” Em said in an all-too-reasonable tone of voice.
“Jesus, it’s not that big a deal.” I glared at my brothers—and then at Tate, just for good measure. I spared Mal, partially because I didn’t want him to slip something poisonous into the otherwise heavenly-smelling meal he was making, but also because glaring at Mal felt a little bit like glaring at a baby deer. “There were budget cuts at my old job, I was going to be unemployed for the spring and summer anyway. It just made sense.”
“So you’re going to be working here—on Summersea—for the foreseeable future?” Deacon said.
“Yeah. Is that a crime?”
“And you’re going to be…living here? At the Wisteria?”
“Unless you tell me I can’t. What, it’s not enough for you two to have sex in Mom and Dad’s old room, you have to fuck in every room of the house?”
“Classy as ever. No, as a matter of fact, it has nothing to do with where we do or don’t—”
“I swear to God, if you say ‘make love,’ I will vomit.”
“—choose to be intimate,” Deacon finished. “I was merely expressing my surprise that you’re not concerned that by living and working on the island, you’re setting yourself up for having to, you know, interact with people on the island. People who, in the past, you’ve seemed eager to avoid.”
He tilted his head to the side like I was some kind of abstract painting in a museum that he couldn’t make sense of. I grimaced. I knew exactly what he was getting at, and it almost annoyed me more that he wouldn’t come right out and say it. Like he thought he was being cute, not saying Julian’s name.
Because yeah, fine, maybe avoiding Julian was part of the reason I hadn’t come back much to Summersea since I’d left, and fine, maybe I hadn’t quite worked out how to evade him successfully for the next few months that I’d be living here. But there were other reasons I didn’t like coming home, too. And anyway, Deacon didn’t have to rub it in.
I opened my mouth to retort something considerably less polite than Deacon’s delicately worded response, but Mal turned away from the stove with a smile before I could. He held up a wooden spoon in one hand.
“If we’re done speculating about everyone’s sex life,” he said, “I thought you guys might like to know that dinner’s ready. Deacon, do you want to go get Lily? And Tate, can you grab the olive oil from the cabinet over there? The rest of you guys, go sit down. It’s time to eat.”
Deciding it was probably best not to say what I’d been about to, I let Mal herd me to the table.
The Wisteria was a bed and breakfast that offered breakfast and lunch service, but guests had no idea what they were missing by not getting to eat dinners cooked by Mal. The meal he’d cooked that night—roast chicken, rice pilaf, and greens—sounded simple but trust me when I tell you, it was incredible. If Roxie had been in the room, she would have howled at the injustice of not getting any. I almost howled myself when I realized I couldn’t go back for fourths.
And even though I’d deny it under oath, it actually was nice to be there with everyone—even know-it-all Deacon, even too-handsome-and-rich-to-be-trusted Tate—and catch up. It helped that Em did eighty-five percent of the talking, and that Mal was a firm believer in accompanying dinner with multiple bottles of wine. I wasn’t a big drinker, but it mellowed everyone out a bit.
It wasn’t till I started gathering up plates at the end of the meal that I got put back on the spot. I’d walked a stack to the kitchen, then peered outside to see how light it still was. It had grown darker during dinner, but there was still enough light that I felt safe walking along the roads without getting run over.
“You have somewhere to be?” Em asked, noticing me eyeing the sky.
“Thought I might head out to McIntyre Beach tonight,” I said with a shrug. “Roxie’s been cooped up all day. We could both use the walk, and I could get the lay of the land.”
“It hasn’t changed much,” Em said.
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Deacon said, pulling an empty Tupperware container down from the shelf. Boxing up leftovers was the only food-related job he was safely allowed to do. “Have you been down there recently?”
Em frowned. “No. But nothing on Summersea ever changes.”
“McIntyre Park has,” Deacon said firmly. “A few months ago, I recommended it as a biking destination for some guests. When they came back, they told us it was filled with trash, and that it smelled like dead fish.”
“Seriously?”
Deacon nodded. “Yeah. I went down there the next day when I got some time off. It’s not great. I know the town never had any money to make it an official park, but they used to maintain some basic standards there. Now it looks like half the island is using it as a landfill.”
“Tom said something about that,” I muttered. “He thinks it’s targeted vandalism, and that it’s being directed by—”
“I don’t know if I’d go so far as that,” Deacon said, cutting me off without even realizing, which somehow made it worse. “This past summer, it was still fine. But ever since the election—”
“That’s something else Tom mentioned,” I broke in. If Deacon could cut me off, I could do the same to him. “How the hell were you guys stupid enough to vote for someone like Scott Nash? You have to know how much of an ass he is. He’s the one Tom thinks is behind the vandalism. Trying to lower the value of the land, get people to stop using it as a park.”
“Well, like I said, I don’t know if there’s any proof that Scott Nash is behind that,” Deacon replied. “But I do know that he’s an ass, and no, I didn’t vote for him. But most people in Adair don’t share your views of the Nash family—”
“Or they’re too scared of reprisal to say what they really think.”
“—and considering there’s been a Nash in local government since time immemorial, it’s not really all that surprising.”
“I still don’t see how more people don’t hate him.”
“Because most people didn’t go to high school with him, and don’t share your weird vendetta?” Em offered.
“It’s not a weird vendetta. The guy tried to frame me for arson. Not to mention the fact that he bullied half of my class into submission.”
“Well, that’ll explain the voting, then,” Deacon pointed out. “If people are still as scared of him as you say, they probably felt like they had to vote for him. And if you’re not personally affected by the chicanery Lyles & Blackstone has pulled to force residents off the island, the development probably sounds like a good deal.”
I ran a hand through my hair. “People are so fucking short-sighted. Don’t they realize this is just another step in pricing locals out of their own homes?”