Secrets Whispered from the Sea - Emma St. Clair Page 0,11
me a little wave, and was gone. Chase waited until Tommy was gone before he touched my shoulder. I almost jumped out of my skin.
“Sorry,” he said in a quiet voice. “Are you okay?”
I wanted to laugh. Was I okay? Not really. Not at all.
As though she wanted to play one last game with us all, Nana said that Ann and I would share her full inheritance, but I got to make the final decisions. Essentially, everything was in my name, from her accounts to the house, and even the jeep.
Which Ann clearly didn’t appreciate. I understood. Because as much as her accusations and insults irritated me, I would have put Ann in charge. And while a tiny part of me—the bit that always felt like I lived in Ann’s shadow—felt oddly vindicated, I also felt overwhelmed. Ann got what I really wanted: a personal letter from Nana. One that she hadn’t wanted to open in front of me.
I shook my head. “I’m sorry—one more time, just to be clear. Nana didn’t leave me a letter? It didn’t just get lost or something?”
Chase shook his head. His bright blue eyes, which I would have appreciated in about any other circumstance, were understanding. “I’m sorry.”
I opened my mouth, then closed it again. That felt like an enormous weight to bear. One that I hardly felt capable of. Ann would have known just what to look at, and how to see things from all sides and angles, weighing the pros and cons. She would step back and see the big picture, then make the best decision.
Me? I felt like someone just handed me a tangled mess of cords and wished me good luck separating the strands.
“It’s just a lot to take in and handle. So many big decisions.”
Chase gave me a kind look. “Jo believed in you. I think you should look at this as her final gift. Not to be cliché, but maybe you should listen to your heart,” he said. “And if that fails, head down to the beach and listen to the sea. It’s never steered me wrong.”
6
“Listen to the sea,” I grumbled to myself as I stomped up the stairs to Nana’s porch. The late afternoon sun sifted through the trees and the breeze made shadows play over the wood. I slumped down on a wooden deck chair that I could only hope wouldn’t give me splinters.
Chase’s last words still played on repeat in my head. I should trust Nana and listen to my heart. Or the sea. Or both. Might as well go get Chinese food and make the decision based on the fortune cookie.
It was a gorgeous day, which irritated me. If nature matched my mood, we’d be having a nor’easter, one of the wicked storms that sometimes hit the coastline, blowing off roofs and taking a few precious feet of beach with them. But no, the sun shone warm on my cheeks, as though trying to coax me out of my bad mood.
It would take a lot more than the allure of the weather here to pull me out of my post-lawyer funk, though it was tempting to lean back and let the warmth and the scent and the breeze do its thing.
Why, Nana? Why make me choose?
I hadn’t thought much about the details and how it would work. I guess I’d assumed in the back of my mind that Ann and I would split everything. I would leave and let her handle things, then send me a check in the end. Nana didn’t have a lot of possessions that we would fight over. Her style wasn’t mine or Ann’s. We wouldn’t have those knock-down drag-out fights over things like lamps and fine china. Civilized people turned animal when it came to inheritances. Ann and I were barely civil as it was. Putting me in charge added a whole new layer of tension. Just what we needed.
As I watched, a woman and two little girls emerged from one of the larger, newer homes across the street. They had adorable matching bathing suits in a bright floral pattern. All three wore straw hats. Something in my chest seemed to seize up at the sight. Tucking the girls into a canvas wagon with an umbrella, the woman began the slow trek toward the beach at the end of the road. Adorable. And so far off from my own experience.
Would Ann and I have been different if we’d had a different mother, one who was nurturing instead of