Page 120 of These Summer Storms

She didn’t have to. “Oliver took your clothes, and it was so stupid—like not having clothes was going to keep you here. It was so childish.” Alice hid her smile at the assessment. “But I guess thinking that I could lock you in the pantry and that would make you stay was, too.”

“Not that childish,” Alice said. “After all, I thought it was your dad.”

“What about me?” Sam entered the conversation from a distance as he came through the front door of the house. His gaze fell to Saoirse. “Your mom is looking for you and your brother.”

Saoirse looked to Alice, who read her nervousness—the universal fear that a grown-up would tell your parents about your mistake. Alice shook her head.Don’t worry about it.

“Go,” Sam said. “I have to talk to your aunt.”

Saoirse pressed her lips together, like she had more to say. And then she nodded once, and said, softly, “Okay.”

She left the room, feet dragging.

“Where are you going?” Sam asked Alice, nodding at the bag on her shoulder.

She straightened her spine, knowing what she was in for. “I’m leaving.”

He shook his head. “No, you’re not.”

“Yes. Sam, I know you think you need the inheritance. But you don’t.”

“I do, though.Youdon’t, but I do need it.” He tilted his head in the direction of Saoirse’s departure. “Do you know what it costs to keep them happy?”

“They’d be happy if you loved them.”

“Please.” He scoffed. “You were raised smarter. You can’t leave. So Dad sent Jack to buy off your idiot fiancé. So you had a bad week. So you don’t like us. Alice—” He paused. “You’re not leaving.”

“I don’t want to be manipulated anymore.” Surely he could understand that. “I don’t want Dad running this show anymore. He’s controlled us for our whole lives. He’s controlledmywhole life. And I’m done.”

“So get the money and get gone; what’s a day or two?”

How many times had she thought that herself? A week was nothing in the grand scheme of things. In another family. In another circumstance. “What if these are the days that matter?” she asked herself, as much as Sam. “What if letting him control us now, like he did before, is the thing that makes it impossible to chart the After?”

“Then we have all the money we need to pay for therapy.” It was supposed to be funny, but it wasn’t.

“You’ll already have the money you need for therapy, Sam. You’re going to be CEO.”

“Actually, I’m not.” She went still as he slashed a hand through the air. “I’m not going to be anything. Because he fired me. I’m fuckingfired.”

“What? When?”

“The Fourth of July. Would you believe it? Summoned us all here forthe usual nightmarish games, and on the last night called me into his office andfiredme. I worked for that asshole for twenty years, and there it was, his dying wish.”

Oh, shit.

She couldn’t believe it. No. Actually, she really, really could. “Jesus, Sam.” A beat while they stared each other down. “This game isn’t good for us.”

“And still, it is the game.”

“What if it isn’t? What if he died, and we’re supposed to choose a new path?” She sighed. “God, I’m so sick of the secrets, the lies, the constant hope, the ever-present disappointment. I just want to be done with it. With the doubt. With the past.”

While her thoughts rioted through her, Sam stayed silent, and she couldn’t read him. Defying instinct, she spoke, pleading with him. “Sam, please. Try to understand. I don’t want the burden of it. It feels wrong. You have to feel that, too, right? How wrong it feels?”

Silence stretched between them, long enough that Alice gave up, grabbing the handle of her suitcase and heading past him, making for the kitchen, heart pounding.

He might never speak to her again, she thought, but he hadn’t spoken to her in five years, so it wouldn’t be much of a change.

He didn’t have a choice. But she did.