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REVV

T he beach is very sandy, and it’s not the thick, muddy kind of sand that you could probably set up a bed on, even if it might sink a little. This sand is far too dry for that.

This is the wrong beach. I can feel it.

Lillian walks next to me very slowly. “I think it was around here.”

“I don’t think so.”

She stops and considers me with an amused smile. “And what makes you say that?”

“I think I would know that I belonged here.” Gray knew the second he saw Daddy’s pebble that it was his. I would know if the rest of Daddy’s pebbles were buried somewhere close. I’d sense them.

She takes in a deep breath. “Very well. We best head home, then.”

“But we have to find the beach where Chris buried his pebbles.” She’s the only one in the world who can help me with this. If she doesn’t remember, what am I going to do?

“We’ll come back to the beach later. But first, I think I need to tell you a story.”

I don’t have time for a story right now. I’m exhausted after my long flight, and I need to get my bed situated.

Unfortunately, Lillian is the only one who can help me. If she wants me to listen to a stupid story before she takes me to the right beach, I have no choice but to listen.

“Okay. But after your story, you’ll take me to the beach where the pebbles are buried?”

She presses her thin lips together. “After my story, I will take you to the beach where Chris buried them if that’s what you want.”

“Yes, that’s what I want.”

She lets out a throaty chuckle. “We will see.”

It takes us an extremely long time to walk back to her car, and once we get there, it won’t start, so we have to ask for a jump before we can finally drive to her house. Lillian is just as slow as she walks up the two steps to her porch and back inside her house. I follow her into a small living room where she sits in the rocking chair next to a basket of yarn.

“Before I tell you the story of Chris’s pebbles, I have to tell you a story of my own.”

So many stories. I sit on the loveseat across from her rocking chair. It’s a nice chair. Not particularly comfortable, but the olive-green cushions smell of lavender and creak under my weight. It reminds me of a deep-orange couch my grandpa Revv had when I was growing up.

Lillian pulls a slim wooden box out of the basket of yarn. “When I was a teenager, my mothers took me to the beach every weekend and told me to search for a pebble that spoke to my soul.” She opens the wooden box. Inside are dozens of crochet hooks. Some of them are as thin as chicken wire and others are as thick as my favorite vibrator. Underneath them is a small rock the size of a thimble. She picks it up and holds it out to me.

“Is that the pebble that spoke to your soul?” I ask.

She shakes her head. “No, Revv. This is nothing but a random rock I picked up the summer after my eighteenth birthday.”

I’m not sure I understand. “Why are you showing it to me, then?”

“Because I never found a pebble that spoke to my soul. I searched for years and years. During the height of day, in the middle of the night. I searched in my penguin form and in my human form. I even searched under water. Every weekend of my teenage years was consumed by the pursuit of a pebble I never found. My alpha mother claimed I wasn’t trying hard enough, and my omega mother told me it was because I cared more about my studies than I cared about my family. So I picked up a random rock and told them it spoke to my soul, even though it didn’t.”

I take the random rock from her and turn it over in my palm. “Why do you still have it?”

“Some lies end up defining us. And this lie… well, this lie changed my life forever.”