up at the front of the property. When my parents bought the place, they’d refurbished an old garage in the back of the property into a guest house for our family to live in. A string of bedrooms ran along a veranda on one side of the upper floor, with the great room taking up the entire length of the building on the other side.
“How do I know she actually exists, then?” Em said with a grin. “This phantom dog of yours?”
“You can go visit her, if you like.” I walked over to the kitchen and grabbed a beer out of the fridge. I got one for Em, too. “No one’s stopping you.”
“Yeah, except with my luck, you’d be gone by the time I got back. Anyway, that’s not important. You still haven’t explained why you’re here.”
Em took the beer I offered him, passed it to Tate silently, and gave me an accusatory look before getting one of his own. I leaned against the kitchen island and tried not to look like I’d forgotten Tate on purpose. I didn’t even want to drink my beer, particularly. It was just nice to see him squirm.
“You haven’t even given me the chance.”
“Well, I’m giving you the chance now.” Em pointed his beer at me and narrowed his eyes. “Explain yourself.”
I had, actually, been avoiding explaining the situation, because—well, because nothing. I had no good reason not to tell them, other than a years-long habit of telling people as little about my life as possible. I sighed.
“I took a job working for that non-profit that’s trying to preserve McIntyre Beach. I’ll be here through the council vote, so, a couple of months. Doing clean-up work, sample collection, and trying to stop the vandalism that’s been happening. And liaising with whatever citizens’ committee is trying to save the beach too, though I hope not too much of that. I told Tom I wasn’t good with paperwork.”
Em’s eyes, which had gotten wider and wider as I talked, went saucer-round at the end, and cut quickly over to Deacon, who made a definite face, and shrugged back at Em, before he noticed I was watching.
“What?” I demanded.
“What do you mean, what?”
“What was that look for?” I glared at him, then at Em. “You guys just looked at each other like—well, I don’t know what. But it was something, and that’s why I’m asking.”
“Is that what you’re doing?” Deacon said mildly. “Asking? Gosh, I could have sworn it sounded more like accusing. Must have gotten my definitions mixed up.”
“Shut up. You know what I mean.”
“I really don’t,” he said, still infuriatingly calm. “I’m just surprised you decided to take a job on Summersea. Even a temporary one. Isn’t that enough reason for some kind of look, if that’s what it was?”
“Yeah, it is a little surprising,” Em chimed in quickly. Too quickly, if you asked me. “Aren’t you the same guy who vowed to like, never return to Summersea after you left it.”
“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