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“No one likes to be a puppet, least of all me. But if it’s not you, it has to be Papa. If not Papa, Mama. If not Mama, someone else has to make sure I don’t fuck up. I realized today that I’ll never be my own person, so I’d like to eat a bucket of candy floss and watch rom-coms, please.”
“No.”
“No?”
Eli takes my hand in his. “I have a better place in mind.”
33
ELI
I’m losing her.
Again.
She’s slipping between my fingers.
Again.
Her presence is diminishing.
Fuckingagain.
And yet I’m grabbing onto scraps of her consciousness, moments of her presence, and fighting the reality of her pending fall.
“This is the place?” Ava walks to the middle of the sitting room. “Your grandma’s island?”
My gaze tracks her movements—the swish of her vintage dress, the clicking of her white heels. The touch of her gloved fingers on the back of the sofa before she flashes me a mischievous grin. “I’ve always wondered what it looks like. I didn’t think it’d be this huge and beautiful. Your gran is a lucky woman.”
“You like it?”
“Yup.”
“It’s yours.”
“W-what?”
“The island is yours. It’s in my gran’s name and she said she’d give it to me, considering I’m her favorite grandchild.”
“And you’ll just hand it over?”
“If you want it.”
She twirls around and faces me, her head tilting to the side. “You’d give me anything I want?”
“Within reason.”
“What’s unreasonable for you?”
“You can’t have another man, drive a car, or ask for a divorce.”
“Yikes. And here I thought I could find a lover and drive into the sunset in a convertible.”
I narrow my eyes. “Not unless you wish to have his blood on your hands.”
“Relax, I was joking.” She walks around, checking the furniture and the different impressionist art paintings Mum and Gran added over the years.
A few of them are Bran’s and Glyn’s. The hideous sculpture of a devil is Lan’s. I make a mental note to smash it to pieces before we leave.
