Secrets Whispered from the Sea - Emma St. Clair Page 0,36

But I’ll park myself right there on the sand with snacks. I also brought a few games.”

“Games?” Camille wrinkled her nose, while Sophie looked excited. “What kind of games?”

“I’ll show you when you two popsicles are ready to come out and thaw.”

I slogged through the waves, enjoying the contrast of the hot sun on my icy skin. The wind made goose bumps stand up on my arms and legs, only reminding me that I hadn’t shaved in at least a week. Good thing I had no one but the girls to impress. They weren’t shaving yet, so probably wouldn’t notice or care about my prickly legs.

For the second time that day, I was reminded that soon they’d be older. Shaving. Or waxing? I didn’t know what teens did these days. Nor did I really want to. I’d prefer to stop time, keeping Sophie and Camille at this age, right now, forever.

Maybe it wasn’t fair to them, but this was my make-believe universe. One where they didn’t grow up and I didn’t find any more random gray hairs mixed with my red.

It didn’t take long for the girls to join me on the beach, shivering and dripping. I shook out the flat sheet I found in Nana’s linen closet, one part of her house that wasn’t covered in stuff. It smelled a little musty, but out here on the sand, it didn’t matter. And if I wanted to throw it in a trash bin on the way out, that was one less thing to clean out of Nana’s house. The girls joined me not long after, dripping all over me and the sheet. By then I was hot again, and it felt nice.

Sophie tapped me on the shoulder with a tube of sunscreen. “Mom thought you’d forget,” she said.

I stared into her blue eyes, the same color as Ann’s. Her words could have been an accusation, and from anyone else, they might have been. But I knew Sophie. She was covering my butt, making sure I didn’t actually forget sunscreen. She didn’t want to give her mom any ammo against me. It was an act of love.

“Of course I wouldn’t forget,” I said, winking. Her grin, with those two front teeth still too big for her mouth, melted my heart a little. This. This is what I had been missing in my life in Texas. And before that, in DC. I’d been ignoring the tug of my heart toward family.

The friendships and relationships I’d built for the last decade had been so superficial. Everything up on the surface, where it was easy. Nothing deep. Nothing that mattered. No one who could disarm me with something so simple as reminding me about sunscreen to keep me from getting in trouble with my sister.

Whom I loved, despite the constant tension between us.

After I slathered both the girls until they had a white sheen to their skin, I let them go to work on my shoulders and back. Unlike the stereotypical redhead, my creamy skin would tan to a nice golden brown. But it had been too long since I’d seen the sun on much of my body.

I went to the beach once in Texas. Once. That’s all it took. There was stinky seaweed on the beach. The white trim on my bathing suit turned permanently brown after. And I had seen a sign that warned of venomous snakes in the dunes. Snakes.

“Done yet?”

The girls giggled, and I got the distinct impression that they may have drawn designs on my skin rather than rubbing it in evenly. Oh, well.

I pulled out three decks of cards and quickly taught them to play triple solitaire. Which was basically solitaire, but the aces in the middle were a free-for-all. Whoever got rid of all their cards first won. It involved a lot of slapping down cards (and sometimes each other), laughing, and a few protests by Camille when she lost twice. By the third loss, I could see she was about to throw her cards into the sea, so I stuck them all back in the plastic bag I’d brought, not bothering to count or shuffle.

“What next, Auntie Clem?” Sophie asked.

Camille was still trying to pull herself out of a pout.

“Well …” I reached into my big bag, feeling around. “How do you like unicorns?”

I couldn’t help but laugh at their disgusted expressions. More than once, Ann had called or texted to give me hints or things I needed to know about the twins. One of those