The only way to Synd Beach was by boat, which made it the perfect place for shady shit to go down. Small island. No actual police force. The highest property rates in the state.
Rich college students took their summer breaks there, throwing parties, dealing drugs, and fuck if I knew what else. Reed hanging there unsettled me. Ma would flip the second she found out. If she ever did.
I told myself I had to be here, waiting for a fucking boat to Synd, rather than in Blithe Beach with Emery. Reed had avoided this talk since Dad died, and it never exactly made the top of my to-do list.
Now that I learned Dad’s side of the story via Gideon, I at least had something true to tell him. Truth. Ha. I was trustworthy in the same way Richard Nixon was—not at all. I fucked over my parents. I fucked over my brother. And I literally fucked Emery.
The parking lot attendant gave me a retrieval ticket. I shoved it into my pocket and walked down the dock. I’d left my suit jacket and vest in the car, leaving me in a button-down and slacks.
It looked ridiculous as fuck, but I kept a baseball cap on my head. I didn’t need the press taking pictures of me headed to an island commonly referred to as Synd City. The boat ride splashed water all over the cockpit, ruining my Giannis and soaking my socks.
I spent it staring at the message Emery had sent me before everything went to shit.
Durga: Tell me your favorite thing in the world.
My fingers hovered over the keyboard. I typed out my answer and deleted it. I couldn’t send it until Gideon confessed and explained it all. If I thought it was better that she heard it from me, I would have spilled the second I identified Sir Balty as her sperm donor.
Until then, I’d be here for her.
I found Reed smoking a joint at the beach. As in, my salutatorian brother with the D1 football scholarship. I sat beside him, tore it from his fingers, brought it to my lips, and inhaled.
“Nice hat,” he greeted, shaking shit out of his hair.
The baseball cap had a bug-eyed gray squirrel above the bill, the North Carolina state animal. I’d bought it at a tourist stand.
I held up the joint. “The fuck are you doing with this, kid?”
“Not like it’s laced with LSD, Dad.” He paused, digging his heels into the sand. “The stash you stole from me, on the other hand…”
I noticed that shit smelled funny.
“You running with this crowd now?” I signaled to the group of over-privileged posers playing guitar next to a ten-foot-tall bonfire in broad fucking daylight.
“You said you wanted to meet.” He spread his arms wide, unapologetic and high out of his mind. “This is where I hang.”
“Does Emery know?”
“Know what?”
I gestured at him. “You’ve turned into this tool.”
Fuck, not how I expected this conversation to go.
“Emery doesn’t judge.” He muttered a curse, swiped the joint from me, and inhaled. “Nah, she doesn’t know.”
“What’s going on with you?”
“Don’t worry, I know what I’m doing.”
The least assuring words ever, since they implied he was currently doing or had done something shady.
I followed Reed’s line of sight directly to Basil. Jesus. “Seriously? All this for Basil Berkshire? Why?”
“If I told you, you wouldn’t believe me.”
“Try me.”
I sat back, listening as he spilled. By the end of his story, I sure as shit didn’t believe him. Katrina Berkshire’s tale of spending two months at band camp over the summer and returning with a new nose and double Ds was more likely.
Reed laughed, digging the tip of the joint in the sand. “You don’t believe me.”
“I do, but I don’t believe the situation.” Cursing, I snagged a water bottle from the bright blue cooler beside him.
“It’s vodka.”
“Fucking hell, Reed. Who are you?”
“Same person.” He shrugged. “Everyone considered me to be the golden boy, and I liked it that way. Easier to sneak around as I pleased.”
I nodded at Basil. “For her.”
“Yeah.” A smile softened his face, and it reminded me of us before Eastridge sunk its claws into my family. “You finally here to tell me the truth?”
It defied every instinct of mine, but I did.
We talked about Dad’s diagnosis, the fights I got into to raise cash, beating up Small Dick, the ledger, and how I’d unknowingly built my company on Gideon’s money.
By the time the sun set and his douche friends moved on from weed to harder drugs, Reed told me he didn’t agree with what happened the night of the cotillion, but he forgave me.
Reed swapped his soda for the vodka, pouring in Coke to chase it. “I knew about you and Emery on my bed.”
The fuck?
My water bottle hovered before my lips. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Figured having sex with you mortified her enough.” He stole my cap and used it as a trashcan for the junk food he’d eaten. “I saw her running from the cottage, half-naked. Then, she moaned your name one night. I’m talking full-blown moaned. I’d passed out on her floor after sneaking back from the Berkshires. Didn’t want Ma to find me.”
“Thanks for the play-by-play, Jerry Springer.” I pretended to check my watch, feeling some sort of cosmic. Like someone had rigged my life against me, and I somehow still had a shot at winning.
Reed tossed the cap, wrappers and all, into the bonfire like a frisbee. He pitched the vodka into it, forcing the flame higher. Tossing the bottle at my feet, he hovered over me. “Consider this your obligatory warning. Brother or not, I’ll happily burn your ass if you hurt my best friend.”
Too fucking late.
Emery
SWEAT SLICKED my palms.
I sat on the steps of his new house, debating whether to enter. I’d seen it in an email attachment, yet it surprised me. Smaller than the Prescotts’ cottage, it countered every definition I possessed of Dad.
Of Gideon.
What else has changed?
I doubted he still dressed in the suits. A sensible Toyota parked in the driveway. The foliage seemed maintained but not immaculately groomed. This wasn’t a three-piece bespoke suit kind of place.
Truthfully, I feared looking at my dad and seeing a stranger.
Because if I didn’t have blood to bond us, what else was there?
“You coming in or what, sweetheart?”
Querencia.
It came to me with the force of a battle cry. Overwhelming and fierce. The urge to shout it gripped my vocal cords, but I suffered in silence. I mouthed the word, taking in Gideon, who stood near the bend of the house.
He wore a plain white t-shirt, faded blue jeans, a Hornets baseball cap, and a pair of Timberlands. My querencia disguised as a regular guy. He tore off his gardening gloves and tossed them into the nearest topiary.
A smile crinkled the corner of his eyes. “What’s the magic word this time?”
He still understood me.
I wanted to fall against him and finally, finally shed the tears I’d kept at bay for four years. Relief wobbled my feet forward like a rickety rocking chair. Dad caught me before I fell off the steps.
I clung to his arms, breathed him in, and released my grip on him with the exhale. “Querencia.”
“You’ll have to explain to an old man what it means.” He tapped his temple. “Mind’s not what it used to be.”
Being near him seemed surreal, like returning home after a long vacation to see all your furniture gone. I still recognized him, but the memories came to me slowly as I pieced together what went where.
“In bullfighting, it’s the part of the ring where the bull feels strongest and safest. The place he gravitates to and makes his home. It develops as the fight progresses and becomes the place he is most dangerous, where he is impossible to kill.”
He flashed me a brilliant smile, one that had always convinced me of how proud he was that I existed. “I’ve missed you, Em.”
“You’re happy,” I replied, not a statement or a question. More like an accusation or demand, except I didn’t understand what I’d asked of him.
I saw it in the deeper laugh lines. The carefree demeanor. How he’d stopped graying. If being in Eastridge had sucked the life out of him, living in Blithe Beach had granted him more.
It was callous, but I wanted none of this fanfare. I wanted to cut straight to the problem and fix it. “Virginia told me Balthazar Van Doren is my father.”
“He’s not your father.” Gideon’s jaw ticked. He pulled back a step. “He’s a sperm donor at best.”
“Why did you keep this from me?”
“I planned on telling you when you turned eighteen, but the scandal happened.”
“Nash told me Balthazar blackmailed you into giving him a share of the company.”
“He and Virginia embezzled from it. She needed a cushion in case I divorced her. I found out, so they cut Eric Cartwright into their scam.” He swiped his jaw, eyes fixated in the distance. “They had him draw up parental rights papers and threatened me with them. You were a minor. If I told anyone about the embezzlement, I would have lost you.”
“And now? I’m twenty-three.”
“I’ve been emailing you every week, trying to talk to you, waiting for you to come see me, so we can do this in person.” He clasped onto my hands, drawing me nearer. “I’m not blaming you. It’s not your fault. But I need you to realize I tried. Even when you saw me outside your diner and called the cops on me, I kept showing up. I love you. Far as I’m concerned, you’re my daughter.”
I swallowed, squinting into the distance to avoid looking at him. Did this make me the architect of my misery? I didn’t feel like the girl who chased storms. I felt like the girl who ran from them.
“Will you tell me about the rest? I want to know what happened to you after the scandal. I want to know why Virginia isn’t in jail. Was there no proof? Was it your word against hers? I want to know how Nash is involved. I want to know how I am involved.”
“I’ll tell you.” He flipped the bill of his hat and covered the top step of his porch. “Every Saturday, we can meet up, and I’ll explain it piece by piece. I promise.”
I sat beside him. “You can’t explain it now?”
“I could, but how else am I gonna get you to meet me?” He nudged my arm with his shoulder.
Biting back a smile, I considered the reception he’d get anywhere but Blithe. “I’ll come here.”
“You sure? I can drive to Haling Cove.”
“Yeah, I’m sure. Can we meet at Hank’s grave next time?”
“Of course.” He appraised me, taking in my black hair and the t-shirt. “I want to know everything about you.”
I shrugged and tapped my foot on the step. “There’s not much to know. I can write everything on a sheet of paper and have most of the white space left over.”
Except Demi.
My penance.
Why did it feel less meaningful suddenly? Why did it feel different?
My eyes widened. I ducked my head down, processing. Perhaps I hadn’t been trying to alleviate my guilt. I was trying to alleviate Dad’s culpability. If he could make things right, maybe I could see him again. Maybe I could have a dad.
“What’s eating at you?” Dad tapped my shoulder. “There’s something else.”
“It’s a lot to take in.” I considered lying, but went with the ugly, painful truth. “And mostly… In the past four years, I knew we weren’t talking, but I never felt like I didn’t belong here. And now… I’m not sure.”
He folded me into his arms and squeezed me into a bear hug, one he used to give me as a kid. Even when he’d known I didn’t share the same blood.
“You think I send weekly unanswered postcards to just anyone? You’re my daughter, Emery Winthrop. Always have been. Always will be. We don’t need blood to bond us when we’ve got love.”
