Page 75 of Distress Signal

“You’re not moving, and that’s final,” Lane said.

“It’s not up to you,” Aria retorted.

“How come you guys didn’t put up this kind of fuss when Owen decided to stay in Michigan when he retired?” Aspen asked.

“Because Owen can take care of himself,” West said.

Aria reared back from him like she’d been slapped.

Angrily, she tossed down her fork and rose to her feet, lifting her hands in the air, middle fingers raised at her outspoken brothers.

“Fuck you.” She spared an apologetic glance for her mom, then Finn, Aspen, and me in turn. “Except you four.”

For the first time, I noticed Finn hadn’t uttered a word in all that chaos.

Then Aria swept from the room, and Birdie made to get up, but Finn waved her off.

“Stay, Mama. I’ve got it.”

With him gone, I wasn’t entirely sure what to do, so I sat there silently.

“I hope you’re happy with yourselves,” Birdie chastised her boys. “For that, you can clear the table.”

“Yes, Mama,” they mumbled, all of them rising and taking their plates to the kitchen before coming back to get the various serving dishes.

“C’mon, my dears,” Birdie said to me and Aspen, getting up and moving over to the small fridge in the corner of the room Ihadn’t noticed until now. She grabbed three wine glasses from a nearby sideboard, extracted the Sauvignon Blanc I’d brought, and inclined her head toward the exit.

Aspen and I dutifully followed behind her until we entered a large den-like room, filled with cozy, oversized furniture—likely in deference to the massive men she had for sons. The mantle above the unlit fireplace was lined with family photos, and I took a moment to study them, lingering on one of the twins as teens, arms slung around each other, dressed in dirty baseball uniforms and grinning ear to ear.

Hanging against the shiplap facade was a candid family portrait, all of them gathered around a football player in the center—Owen, I realized. The boys were tall, though all gangly limbs, and wide smiles. Aria was so cute and tiny, barely coming up to Lane’s waist, missing one of her front teeth, hair in little blonde pigtails. At Owen’s sides, bracketing him, were Birdie and Jace.

“That was the last one we took before Jace died,” Birdie said, catching my attention. “Owen played for the University of Oregon, and that was homecoming his junior season. Jace passed about a month later.”

“The boys look just like him,” I said. Then, glancing at her over my shoulder, added, “I’m sorry.”

“Thank you,” she said. “It happened a long time ago. Been twenty years now.”

“How did he…”

“Aneurysm. He was out putting up a new fence along one of the pastures with some of the ranch hands. There one second, gone the next.”

“Sudden.”

“Extremely.”

“My parents died suddenly too.”

“How?” Aspen asked.

“Car accident. I—” I hated admitting the next part.Survivor’s guilt was fucking brutal. “I was with them. I lived. They didn’t.”

Aspen gasped, and Birdie crossed the space to pull me into a hug.

“Seems we’ve all lost people we loved very much.”

When I broke from Birdie’s embrace, I nodded, blinking rapidly, willing myself not to cry.

“I don’t know what I’ll do if Lainey doesn’t come home,” I admitted.