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“Lorikeet! Wait!”

He catches up with me before I reach the water that laps ten feet away. The sand under my feet is warm and dry, I dig my toes in. “Why didn't you tell me?” I ask.

“Because it's a technicality. Dezmond isn't my biological son, but I still adopted him.”

My hands grip my skull. It doesn't stop my brain from knocking around, my head hurts terribly. “I don't understand. How did I not know any of this?”

“It wasn't meant to be a secret,” he explains. “Dezmond has never called me his father. I'm the closest thing he has to one, though.”

“You mean Deena, his mom, raised him by herself?”

“She never knew who the father was. She also never cared.” A warm fondness crosses his face, he's reliving a memory I can't see. “Being a single mom was fine for her. Deena did things her way, marched to the beat of her own drum, our parents used to say.”

Some of my shock fades. I straighten up in the sunlight, the way a flower straining for nutrients would. Jordan is my source of energy. He has answers I need. “Can I ask what happened to her?”

“You mean how she died.”

I wince. “Yes.”

“Car accident,” he says, rushing to get the words out, ready to drop the subject. There's no elaboration coming in the wings. He turns his body to let the wind brush over his bare chest, eyes shutting—he breathes deep.

I want to ask more. Rather, I face the water, sliding my feet through the sand next to his boots. “You should take those off.”

“Hm?”

“Your boots.” I point, then kick my heel in the sand to make a small dent. “You'll be cleaning them out for weeks.”

Jordan knits his brow. Some of his sternness slips away; he crouches to unlace his shoes. Lifting one leg, then the other, he removes the boots. I watch his naked back as he strides to my car to leave them by my front tires. He's stunning when he moves. It's a treat to see his shoulder blades shift under his skin or watch the lines of muscle along his ribs shift as he breathes.

I'm still staring when he returns to my side. “You don't have to tell me anything else, Jordan. I can't keep myself from asking, though.”

“I know,” he says solemnly.

“Deena … how did it happen?”

His chin juts forward, attention moving out over the waves. We're alone on this strip of beach, shielded from anyone driving by on the road. The echo of the water as it hits the shore, the cliffs, muffles the rest of the world. This could be a deserted island. We could be the last two people alive on Earth if we let ourselves forget about our troubles.

Jordan says, “It was seven years ago. Dezmond had just turned fifteen.”

“How old was she?”

“Thirty-eight, two years older than me. She had Dez when she was only twenty.”

She was so young.“I'm sorry, that's terrible.”

His smile is bittersweet. Jordan puts his thumbs in his pockets. “The only upside was that she died after our parents had. The horror of losing your own child, I can't imagine.”

It feels like there's a razor in my guts. Cold prickles along my spine.And I tried to kill your son,I think, eyeing him uneasily.But he isn't his son. Not really. Not that murdering a nephew is better somehow.“Why did you adopt him?” I ask.

Jordan tilts his head at me. “I wanted to. He had no one left in the world to care for him but me. What was I going to do? Cast him out of his home? The town he'd been living in?”

I'm a terrible person, and I know it, because inside I silently screamYes!God, the problems that would solve for me if Dezmond had left Crestwind seven years ago. “Wait. His home.” I squint as my brain works to connect threads. “You told my mom you designed that house. I saw the model in your locked room. You made it into a real place for Deena?”

That gets a dry laugh out of him, it sounds like nails in his throat. “I forgot you saw that doll house.”

“Doll house?”

“Yes. It's not one I made, like the others in that room. The house I designed for Deena was based on that damn doll house. She cherished it so much, refused to play any games that didn't involve it. She was my big sister and she got what she wanted. It wasn't the first building I designed when I graduated college, but it was my favorite.”