Page 36 of These Summer Storms

“While we’re talking about lies…” He looked over his shoulder. “Aren’t you engaged?”

The question was pointed. A reminder that she, too, might have lied the night before. That she, too, had a secret.

“The house is for family. You can sleep in the boathouse.”

He didn’t hesitate that time. He left, closing the door behind him, shutting her in. She listened as he descended the creaky wooden staircase, away from the tower.

Alice should have turned off the lights and gone to bed. Instead, she turned off the lights and went to the window to watch him moving like a shadow as he crossed the field of wild thyme that stretched down to the water, his long legs eating up ground as he made for the boathouse in the distance.

He paused inside the cone of yellow light on the dock, moths dancing around him, and turned back to look up at the house, his gaze tracking over the hulking mass of it, dark and gothic.

For a moment, she thought he lingered on the tower. Then he was gone, and Alice was alone again.

Chapter

7

Greta was sitting onthe porch steps off the kitchen, staring at the ocean, when Alice stepped outside the next morning, mug in hand, wearing the T-shirt and shorts she’d borrowed under duress the night before.

Realizing the steps were occupied, she caught the ancient screen door with her shoulder. “Is it okay if I—”

Her sister nodded, not looking away from the sea, where the sun glinted off the white waves in the distance. Alice sat next to her, and the morning silence settled around them, heavy with the promise of heat to come and the barely there scent of Greta’s Féminité du Bois.

Greta spoke first. “This sucks.”

“It absolutely does,” Alice agreed. Her sister looked over at the words, and Alice finally saw her face in the full sun. Bloodshot, swollen eyes, puffy cheeks, a red nose. “Whoa. You look like shit.”

“Thanks,” Greta replied, offended.

“No…no.” Alice reframed. “I mean…Did you even sleep last night?”

Greta looked down into her coffee cup. “No.”

Casting about for something that might make her sister feel better, Alice said, “Where’s Tony?”

It was the wrong thing to say. Greta closed her eyes and pressed her lips together for a moment and then whispered, “I can’t talk to Tony. Not about this.”

“Why not?” Alice’s brow furrowed at the tacit admission that her sister might talk to their father’s pilot about something other than a flight plan—the first time Greta had come close to openly admitting their relationship. “God, Greta. What was in your letter? Did he set you up with an arranged marriage or something?”

“No.” Greta laughed through her sadness. “That would be crazy.”

“And he’d never come up with something crazy. Not like prohibiting Sam from speaking for twelve hours a day.”

Greta turned, smile on her face. “That one is pretty great, isn’t it?”

“Diabolically great. Peak Dad.” Alice waited for a bit, staring out at the gleaming ocean—blue turned gold in the sun. “But it sounds like whatever he gave you is just plain diabolical. What do you have to do?”

Greta sighed and looked back at the ocean. “I’m supposed to end it. With Tony.”

Not diabolical. Cruel. “Ohno.”

“Exactly.” A long pause. “What an asshole.”

There was no disagreeing with that. “You know, he can’t control us from beyond the grave.”

“Of course he can,” Greta said in the way she said most things—as though there was truth and there was fiction and there was nothing more stupid than thinking one was the other. A beat, and then, “Tony wanted to tell him about us, you know. Ten years ago. Wanted to find another job and marry me. God, imagine what Dad would have done.”

Alice sighed and thought for a moment. Then, “Maybe he would have let you live your life.” The sisters side-eyed each other, and Alice laughed. “Okay. Maybe not.”