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Our parents moved us here because our mom loved being near the ocean, and our dad liked the friendly people. He said it was a place he felt at home. By contrast, I’ve always been an alien in the middle of a family of extroverted siblings.
Jack is the most like me, but Garrett started talking and never stopped. I’ve never known anyone with a personality as big as his body, and he’s massive.
My siblings got it honest from our dad, but Mom understood me.
She told me it was okay to be alone, to read, to walk away from the noise when the house got too busy. Sometimes she’d walk with me along the bay. We’d watch the waves rippling on the quiet shore. We’d stop and watch the turtles sunning on logs.
We’d watch the huge silver and black egrets slowly spread their wings wide and lift off the ground like massive gliders over the water.
Mom said I reminded her of her father, but I didn’t understand. Weren’t girls supposed to grow up and marry men like their dads? I’d read that somewhere. She said not to believe everything I read.
As always in November, my thoughts go to that Thanksgiving-Day football game, and my shoulders tense. We were having fun, goofing off, but every time, I beat myself up for not being smarter.
Dylan shouldn’t have been out there. She was too small to be on that field with all of us towering over her. It’s a rough game, and to make matters worse, she was as competitive as Garrett and Hendrix.
When Jack passed me the ball, I didn’t even see her right beside me. She shouldn’t have been able to keep up with me, but she was so strong. She had worked so hard.
I can still hear the crunch of bone when we hit the ground. I can still hear her cries of pain and loss.
They were the same cries I made when I was caught under a three-hundred-pound lineman in the fake field goal play that ended my football career.
When I broke Dylan, ending her dreams of dancing forever, I said I’d never forgive myself. I couldn’t forget the look on her face when the doctor told her she could still dance, but goingen pointeor completing the elaborate jumps and fouettés she had to do as a professional were now impossible.
Lying in my own hospital bed in Baltimore twelve years later, her soulful brown eyes fighting tears were all I could see when the doctor told me my career as a kicker was done.
Dylan says she never held what happened against me, but I knew it was only a matter of time before karma evened the score. It hurt, but nothing hurt as much as that Thanksgiving Day.
I didn’t lose a dream, but I did lose the only thing I knew how to do.
The sound of dance music wafts through the front doorof our house when I pull into the gravel driveway and put the Jeep in park. I’d only planned to stop by and pick up my tools, but Jack’s truck is parked out front with several boxes stacked in the bed.
Rachel’s brother Edward has a small one in his arms, and he’s frowning as he carries it into the house.
The tightness in my shoulders hasn’t eased from my unwelcome trip down memory lane, and I’m still limping when I follow him inside to where the music is playing louder. It’s some kind of dance song with trumpets and voices shouting like a cheer.
“Why are we moving all our things in here if we’re only staying a few days?” Edward’s tone is flat.
I’ve only met the kid one other time at Halloween, when he and his sister stopped by the house during trick or treating.
Rachel had just returned from an emergency trip to Birmingham with her brother in tow and nowhere to put him. Dylan offered to let them stay with us in our big family home until they could find their own place.
It’s only Dylan, me, and Dylan’s fiancé Logan Murphy here now. I didn’t want Rachel sleeping across the hall from me, but I’ve given up on arguing with my little sister.
When her dancing dreams ended, she pivoted to running our family restaurant Cooters & Shooters and helping or finding help for anyone and everyone in need.
“We’re not moving everything—just the things we need until we find our own place.” Rachel appears in the hallway and my stomach tightens.
She’s really pretty, and she has an annoying habit of asking questions and offering to help fix everything. It’s bad enough when Dylan does it, but Rachel is new and new is irritating.
“We don’t need all these books.” Edward looks into the box, and Rachel lifts out a tattered, black paperback with pale hands holding an apple andTwilighton the cover. “Au contraire, mon frere—books are life!”
“Are you speaking French?” His nose curls, and I notice he doesn’t meet her gaze.
I hadn’t picked up on that when they stopped by at Halloween. I only noticed he talked quickly, as if he were an actor in an old-timey gangster movie. He’d called himself Eddie Nashville.
Rachel said he had gotten into some kind of trouble at school, and her grandmother couldn’t keep him anymore. Naturally, my little sister swooped in for the rescue.
“Zane! What are you doing here?” Rachel startles, taking a step back.
