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“I always thought it would be so fun to do this,” she mumbled as she packed the sweater.
“It is fun.”
The final step was sunscreen on all of them before he secured Storm into the seat of the backpack. He strapped Storm onto his back, then checked the fit of Cloe’s.
“If it starts to rub anywhere, let me know.” He ran his fingers under the straps and made a few adjustments to the fit.
He left her tingling with the mere brush of his fingers, but she shrugged and nodded, hoping her light blush wasn’t obvious.
“Let’s hit the trail.”
“I have to pee,” she said, waiting for him to turn back before she added, “Kidding!”
He smirked and shook his head at her, then held the door.
They didn’t go toward the village. They followed a thin track through the tall grass behind the house, down the hill to what appeared to be someone’s backyard.
“Sophie’s house,” he said with a nod at what looked like a hundred-year-old farmhouse. It was in good repair, but couldn’t help showing its age with subtle slopes and a patch of moss on the roof. There was a tidy vegetable garden and a large open-fronted shed nearby.
They moved toward the shoreline and followed the edge of the grass where it hung like a bad haircut over the undercut of the beach. The sand was gray and rocky and strewn with bleached driftwood. The sky was more cloud than not, but it was pretty enough to make her pause to appreciate the view.
“Okay?” Trystan noticed she wasn’t behind him and stopped to look back.
“Just thinking how lucky you were to grow up with this as your backyard.” She moved to catch up with him.
“California has some amazing parks and trails. You didn’t get out on them?”
“Not really. I went to the beach with friends sometimes and took a wine tour once. Mostly I was trying to survive the concrete jungle.”
“That struggle is real,” he said without irony. “You said Storm is your only family now? No cousins or…?”
“Not really.” The meadow was wide enough here that they could walk side by side as she spoke. “My mom’s family turned her out when she got pregnant by Tiffany’s dad and married him. She didn’t talk about him much, but he sounded like a rough character. She stayed too long with him because she had a baby to feed, but he’s the reason she developed a drug problem.”
His only response was a concerned frown, no harsh judgment, which encouraged her to continue.
“She met my dad while she was in recovery. Not that he was in rehab with her, I just mean during her first recovery. He was married. Separated, but there was a family emergency so he went back to Florida and only called her the once to say he was getting back with his wife so Mom didn’t tell him she was pregnant. That’s why Mom didn’t stay in touch or why I never reached out. Why mess with his other family, right? So I don’t actually know much about him except that his mother was Cuban and his father was Jamaican, I think? I’ve thought a few times about doing one of those ancestry tests, to see if that opened any doors, but…”
“But?” he prompted.
“I don’t know.” She hooked her thumbs into her shoulder straps. “I thought about it a lot while I was in foster care, after Mom died, but a lot of that was just, you know, grief and feelings of abandonment. Tiffany lived a perfectly good life without knowing her father so I figured I should be able to do the same.”
“It’s okay for you to want different things from your sister. My brothers and I are very different.”
Were they? Because she saw a lot of similarities.
“I wanted to go to school first. I always thought that if I met him, I didn’t want him to think I was looking for more than answers about my heritage.” Like money. “I wanted to be…” She swallowed, choking slightly. “Someone he could be proud of. But the whole thing with Ivan made me pretty ashamed so… Long story short, I’m an orphan.”
“And now you’ve lost your sister. That’s rough.”
“Yeah. Tiff was only six years older, but given Mom’s struggles, Tiff was also kind of my parent. She helped us make rent and made sure I got fed. She was just a kid, though, doing all of that. I couldn’t blame her when she moved to San Francisco with a rich guy who promised her a job. She still sent us money and we talked pretty much every day. It was my turn to look after Mom, was the way I looked at it.”
“But you were also just a kid.”
“I know, but…” She shrugged. “I didn’t actually feel abandoned by her until she got off a sailboat here and decided to stay with Wilf. That might have contributed to why I was such an easy mark for Ivan.” She only realized it as she articulated it and sent a self-conscious glance up to Trystan, hating herself for being so gullible.
He was watching her in a way that made her heart tremble in her chest, so she tried to deflect the conversation away from herself.
“It’s nice to see how close you guys all are.”
