Secrets Whispered from the Sea - Emma St. Clair Page 0,78

even like.

She lifted her chin, all the guilt gone. “I haven’t said anything that isn’t true.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Do tell, sister. If it’s all true, then you shouldn’t mind saying it to me directly.”

“I’ve only mentioned that I have a sister who’s nothing like me. One we hardly see because she’s busy moving around every few years when she gets bored.”

I stared at my sister, trying to understand her. We were blood. We’d grown up together, gone through the same struggles in our household with everything Mom put us all through. Maybe we didn’t have the same tastes and our personalities were different, but that didn’t make one good and the other bad. Yet, she clearly resented me. It was like she looked at me and only saw me as competition.

“Did I break your favorite toy?”

Ann blinked. “What?”

“Or, did I take all the attention away from you when I was born?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Why do you resent me so much?” I asked. “Help me understand. I know we’re pretty different. But we’re sisters. There has to be some common ground. Or something. I’m waving the white flag here. Maybe it’s time to start acting like we share the same DNA.”

Shaking her head, Ann smiled, but there was no love in it. No humor. No happiness. “Maybe we just don’t share enough DNA.” She turned and started up the steps.

I stood there, feeling totally deflated. I realized in that moment how much her opinion of me actually meant, and that I was probably never going to get whatever approval I secretly craved. Maybe it was time to give up hoping that we’d ever have the kind of sisterly closeness women seemed to always find in books and movies. We had more the soap opera kind of sisterhood, where one of us might literally stab the other in the back.

Tommy stepped out onto the porch just before Ann reached the top. As though he totally didn’t see the tension between us, he put an arm around Ann, basically holding her hostage. She wiggled in his grip, but he didn’t budge.

“Thanks for picking up the girls, Clem!” he called.

I waved. “No problem! I love spending time with the girls.”

Ann looked up at me then. “Have you told them yet that you’re planning to leave?”

My heartbeat slowed like it was filled with something thicker and heavier than blood. I couldn’t imagine telling the girls. In the past few weeks, we’d grown closer than we’d ever been. Maybe I still wasn’t sure that I ever wanted children of my own, but I loved being an aunt.

I also might have given Sophie and Camille the impression that I was planning to stay at Nana’s cottage. They’d been all excited to talk about house plans with me while we ate ice cream. It had been a perfect opportunity to tell them that I wasn’t planning to stay. And I hadn’t said a word.

“I won’t be the bad guy,” Ann said. “I think I’ve played that role enough in our family.”

Shrugging off Tommy’s arm, Ann disappeared inside the house. Tommy gave me a tight smile, but I could read the strain in his face.

“Sorry about that,” he said.

I waved a hand. “You’ve got brothers. You understand.”

From the look he gave me, this was not at all how things worked with Tommy and his brothers. It wasn’t the first time that I realized my family had been much more dysfunctional than so many others. Not that any family was normal or without its issues, but our normal seemed to be something else altogether.

Tommy thanked me again and followed Ann into the house, leaving me standing in their driveway, staring at the outside of their picture-perfect beach mansion.

26

I had been hoping to see Alec when I walked into the bar, not run into the cop who had handed me a ticket a few hours before. Without his uniform, I almost didn’t recognize him as we collided at the entrance. But when he apologized, that accent had me doing a double take.

“Sorry,” he said, moving to hold the door so I could step inside.

“It’s you,” I said, stopping right in the doorway. Loud voices and laughter filtered out from behind him, and he blinked at me. “Officer Cash. You gave me a ticket for an illegal U-turn in a school zone this afternoon.”

His blue eyes twinkled, but he didn’t quite smile. “And hopefully you’ve learned your lesson.”

I shook my head and thanked him for holding the door as I