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“Guess I didn’t. Harry’s away for another week, so I’ll have to try YouTube again. Or take it to the mainland.”
“Will it make it that far?”
The kid shrugged.
“It’s probably a blocked jet in the carburetor,” Hawk murmured. “Or moisture in the fuel system. Or a dead spark plug. Looks like a nice old bike apart from that.”
“Why don’t you go tell him?”
Hawk looked down at our joined hands. “You wouldn’t mind?”
I’d actually be grateful. The conversation had been getting too heavy, stirring up feelings I didn’t want to unpack.
“I could do with checking my emails, so…”
“It won’t take long.”
Turned out the café was a family business, and the teenager was the waitress’s brother. He worked part-time in the hotel when he wasn’t at school, helping to keep the grounds tidy. Poor kid. He was scheduled to work this weekend when Odette would absolutely go full Bridezilla.
Hawk spent the rest of the morning and part of the afternoon helping to take the bike’s engine apart while I read my own emails, plus those from the Steppen Island Lodge. The nightmare had already started. Odette was having a hissy fit because rain had been forecast for Saturday, and although the hotel offered the option of an indoor ceremony in the ballroom that overlooked the bay, she was insisting they source a new gazebo instead. The one they already had wasn’t good enough. Too small and the wrong colour, apparently.
Hawk seemed happy tinkering, and his efforts earned us a free lunch and as much coffee as we could drink. Secretly, I enjoyed watching him in his element, sitting on the ground surrounded by tools and engine parts, his shoulders relaxed as the tension melted away.
The bike was running smoothly when the time came for us to leave. Dinner was waiting, and so was my family.
9
AGATHA
“So, Kellan, what do you do for a living?” Stu asked.
His pink polo shirt matched Clarice’s palazzo pants, my nieces’ dresses, and the bloom on Buckley’s cheeks that came from one too many glasses of wine. My older sister had styled her mahogany hair into a sleek chignon I’d never be able to master, and Odette wore her highlighted locks piled on top of her head in an intricate bun. Both were walking ads for Sephora, airbrushed to within an inch of their lives, while I considered dark lipstick and eyeliner to be perfectly adequate. Not for this event, clearly, but on a normal day. This weekend, I’d settled for pale-pink lip gloss and gritted teeth. Meanwhile, Charity and Chastity were seated at their own table on the far side of the dining room, picking at their dinner and playing games on their phones. Out of sight, out of mind. Earlier, Chas had asked if they could visit the petting zoo on the mainland, but Buckley had dismissed the suggestion out of hand.
“I’m an operations executive at Blackwood,” Hawk told Stu.
“That’s the place Aggie works at, right?”
Oh, how I hated being called Aggie.
“Yes, but we’re in different departments.”
“How much does that bring in?” Buckley asked. “Ballpark?”
Odette giggled as she took a tiny bottle of Tabasco sauce out of her purse and sprinkled it all over her beef Wellington. What the…? When we were fifteen, she’d freaked out at Mom’s birthday dinner because a waiter ground black pepper on her steak without being asked, and it was too spicy.
“Sweetie, you shouldn’t ask people to discuss their salaries,” she told Stu.
Hawk just shrugged. “I make about the same as Agatha does.”
Oops, wrong thing to say. Clarice looked at him with pity.
“Maybe someday, when you have more experience, you’ll earn a promotion. Did you go to college?”
I wanted to sink into the floor, right through the layers of bedrock to the earth’s molten core. Hawk’s shoulders were rigid again.
“No, I didn’t.”
“I guess not everybody can have the opportunity.”
