Brothers of Paradise Series

“She does,” I say. “Okay. I’ll think about calling the school. But Mom, don’t get your hopes up, okay? I don’t know what will happen with my job at the yacht club after high season. Business slows down.”

“People eat there year round,” she says.

“Yes, but less often.”

She smiles and looks back down at her old laptop. “We’ll figure something out.”

My beautiful, beautiful mother. Now it’s hard to imagine how I lived without her for so many years. The times we’d fought like cat and dog when I was a teenager, over curfews, my nose piercing, my first boyfriend, the time I re-painted my room black without asking her; it all feels so far ago. And such a waste. I hope Emma and I never fight like that.

“Thank you,” I say. “For everything, you know. I don’t think I’ve said it yet.”

Mom looks up at me, and she blinks twice, her eyes getting a bit glassy. “Anytime, sweetheart. Anytime.”

There’s still a lot we haven’t spoken about. But there’s time. I rest my head against my knees again and take a deep breath. It fills my lungs up completely, my chest expanding without constraint, and it’s enough. For now.

“Mommy?” a small voice asks. It’s thick with sleep.Content bel0ngs to Nôvel(D)r/a/ma.Org.

Emma is standing at the top of the stairs. Her hand is clasped around her stuffed rabbit, one of his ears draping to the floor. Her feet are bare beneath the hem of her pajamas.

I’m already moving toward her. “Yes, sweetie?”

“I had a bad dream,” she mumbles, hands reaching toward me. I lift her up. She’s getting heavy, and my back hurts from spending the day on my feet, but I carry her up to the second floor.

“I’m so sorry. But it was just a dream.”

She nods against my shoulder, eyes already drifting closed again. Her eyelashes are long against the pale cheeks. My beautiful, beautiful daughter. I have so much in this house, beneath this roof, and the completeness of it takes my breath away. “I love you,” I tell her.

She doesn’t answer, just nestles closer. I put her back in my bed and climb in after her. We’re both sleeping in Mom’s guest room at the moment. The queen bed is more than big enough, and with all the changes, I feel best having Emma close.

She mumbles something incoherent and turns over toward me, a hand settling on my chest. I tuck Mr. Rabbit away from where he’d been attacking my cheek and look at the alarm clock. It’s only nine p. m., but my eyelids are heavy.

I’d seen Lily today. Looking up at the ceiling, I stroke my hand over Emma’s fine hair. Lily had kept her part of the pact and named her son Jamie. I’d cried when she’d sent me the message. Don’t know if you’ll read this, but… and added a picture of little Jamie. He’d been a baby then, swaddled, with a dark mop of hair.

I’d kept my part of the old pact too. Two years before, when Emma was born. Emma Lily Moraine.

Lee had wanted her to have his last name.

But we weren’t married, and I’d resisted. I don’t know why, because back then I thought I was happy. But maybe some part of me had known we’d end up here.

Emma and I, together. And Lee miles away.

I hope he stays there.

Lily had asked questions I didn’t have an answer to. I’d seen it in her eyes, today. I hadn’t been able to give her any. She’s hurt. And I’m too embarrassed to explain it to her.

Emma’s breathing evens out, and the hand on my chest grows limp and heavy. I listen to the soft breathing and let my hand rest on her head.

Parker had stopped our conversation. He’d seen, somehow, and rescued me from it. That sends another pang of embarrassment through me.

As a friend of Lily’s, I’d been invited everywhere with them. Asked to join family sailing trips (I’d always said no) and to hang at her house after school (I’d always said yes). Her older brothers were often away, and eventually the oldest went to college, but Parker was often around.

He’d had his annoying group of guy friends, of course. They were loud jocks and too cocky for my liking. Parker had always been annoying. Sometimes on purpose. Most often by accident.

That’s the thing, really. So much of what he did and was seemed accidental and always, always effortless. The wide smile that charmed teachers. The wind-tousled hair as he leapt onto the dock or won the Paradise Shore Junior Regatta without breaking a sweat. Even falling down on the football field he looked self-assured, rising with a grin and a shrug that announced to the world that I’m here, and I’m myself, and I know who I am. Take me or leave me on my terms.

He couldn’t be that perfect-the Marchands couldn’t be that perfect, and I knew they weren’t, of course. Lily never faked perfection, and we’d spent too many nights comparing our families, our upbringings, sharing stories and heartaches, for me to think her parents were idols.

But it didn’t matter how close to Parker I got through her. He never became less of the golden boy, his shine never dimmed, even sprawled out on the Marchands’ couch with a root beer in hand, watching the NFL.

Too golden to touch. Too popular. Too put-together.

It had made me want to needle him. To see where the limits of the façade went. He rarely cracked, even when we’d argued incessantly. About the remote, the weather, politics. He rarely showed anything but the golden boy.

Now he’s a man, but he’s still golden… and I still want to needle him.

PARKER

The sun peeks out behind the clouds, shining down on Paradise, and the air outside my car window is calm. We’d caught the last of the winds this morning before the weather turned.

I tap my fingers against the steering wheel in tune to the radio. Every part of me feels light, despite the tiredness in my arms and my strained eyes. I always do after we’ve been at sea. Hayden and I had started early aboard the Frida, casting off from the marina as the day’s first rays crested.

I drive past the familiar little shops on Main Street. Some have their front doors open and wares displayed outside on the sidewalk. One shop sells giant, inflatable pool mattresses. Another has sculptures made out of driftwood and wind chimes with seashells made by a local.

My siblings couldn’t wait to leave this place, and I couldn’t wait to return.

Henry had seen sailing as a game to win, and he’d excelled. He always did.

Rhys had seen the boat as a poetic escape. More than once in our teenage years I’d seen him read dog-eared Hemingway paperbacks on the boat, sunglasses on his face while he ignored the rest of us.

Hayden had sailed with us a lot too, perhaps as a way to fit in. After he left Paradise it became a career move. He hadn’t sailed in the Navy so much as he’d been a sailor, following orders and executing them precisely.

My little sister had always loved to ride along, the wind in her hair and new freckles appearing on her cheeks from the sun. She still loves a good day on the water… If the weather is nice.

But me? I love sailing for its own sake.

I love it in good weather and I thrive off it in bad. I’d competed because it gave me more hours at sea, not more trophies. To feel the lines run in my hands and the boat speaking to me. The thrum of silent power as the wind catches ahold of the sail and the boat flies across the water without making a sound. Harnessing nature. The danger, too. The elemental nature of it.

I need the ocean like I need air.

I drum my fingers faster on the steering wheel. People are walking along the boardwalk, sundresses and shorts as far as the eye can see. The season is picking up.

The willowy shape of a familiar woman steps out of the gelato shop ahead. Her hair’s not braided this time. It’s loose, falling in brown waves down her back in a way I’ve never seen it before. She has an ice-cream cone in one hand.

And in the other, she’s holding the hand of a little girl.

There’s no mistaking the closeness as they walk side by side.

Stopping is an impulse decision. I find a spot and reverse park, a hand on the wheel and my eyes on Jamie. The girl is standing close, totally absorbed in her rapidly melting ice cream. She has the same color hair as Jamie.