I smiled at her. “You’re different,” I told her. “And I only want to see them again the once, to know they’re all doing okay. Maybe, when I’m lady of the house, I can change the rules alittle.”
As I snuggled back under the duvet, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d just told at least one morelie.
Chapter Three
Kyler
In the bright sun shining over the town square, my late night rendezvous with Rose felt even more unreal than it had when I’d headed home last night. But it definitely hadn’t been a dream. I’d held that ribbon in my hand. I’d scraped my thumb clambering up thattree.
“So you can make it, right?” I said. “Tomorrow at noon, coming in through the hardwarestore?”
Beside me, Jin nodded languidly, which was kind of how he did almost everything. “My schedule is pretty flexible,” he said with a grin. The grin was languid too. His dark eyes had lit up a bit when I’d explained the reason I’d called this little meeting at the fountain in the middle of the square, but he seemed awfully chill about the whole “Rose returning home”news.
Of course, I couldn’t remember when I’d ever seen anything really faze that guy. The way he moved through life with that perpetual dreamy expression, I’d almost have thought he was on some kind of illicit substance. Well, actually, when we were still in high school Ihadthought he must be on something, until I’d looked at every Drug Abuse Warning Signs website out there and concluded Jin didn’t show any of the symptoms. He was just naturally flyinghigh.
Our twelfth grade history teacher, on the other hand, had clearly been into some unusual recreationalactivities.
Seth scooped a couple pebbles off the rim of the fountain and tossed one across the rippling surface of the water. It skipped with a fewplinksbefore sinking. My twin frowned at the statue overhead, a bronze woman pouring water from a bucket while perched on a horse’s back. The broad cascade sent cool flecks onto myskin.
Don’t ask me why anyone would go around carrying buckets of water on horseback. I’d tried to look up the history of that statue more than once, but it was one mystery that even the internet couldn’t shed lighton.
“You know I can be there,” Seth said. “But are you sure Rose is really on board? We’re risking getting her into who knows what kind of trouble all overagain.”
“Of course she’s on board,” I said, suppressing my exasperation as well as I could. Trust my brother to find the most negative way to view the situation. He might be my twin, but some days it was hard to believe we’d come out of the same womb, let alone nearly simultaneously. “It was her idea. I mean, the seeing all of us part. She didn’t leave her ribbon on the gate because she figured it needed someair.”
Seth gave me a baleful look. “I’m just remembering that thelasttime we got her in trouble, her family dragged her away from her home for more than a decade. If she gets caught mixing with us again, what do you think they’ll do toher?”
“I don’t know,” I said. I’d rather not think about that. “I do know that Rose can figure out how big a risk it is and whether she’s willing to take it all by herself. She’s not a kid now any more than we are. Don’t youwantto seeher?”
My brother glanced away. His jaw worked. “Yeah,” he said, a little hoarsely. “Of course Ido.”
Footsteps scraped the ground behind us at a careless rhythm. I knew Damon had finally shown up before I turned around, partly because of that brash swagger and partly because of the whiff of cigarette smoke that reached mynose.
Damon flicked the half-finished cigarette into the fountain and glowered at me, as if I’d already managed to offend him without even opening my mouth. He shrugged the collar of his beaten leather jacket higher against his neck. “So what’s the big news you justhadto tell me in person, Mr.Brainiac?”
Somehow he made the idea of having a well-oiled brain sound insulting. Maybe that’s why I tossed the information at him with no preamble atall.
“Rose isback.”
I’d bet you could have gotten years of study out of the complex shift of emotions those three words provoked in Damon’s body. The twitch of his eyes, the sudden distance in his gaze, the tensing of his mouth as his hand fell loose to his side. He let out a sound that might have been a laugh or a cry, but either way he caught it before more than a hint of it escaped him. Then he shoved his fingers back through his spiky coffee-brown hair, gatheringhimself.
“What’s it to me?” he said, his usual cool annoyance falling back intoplace.
Right. Maybe he could fool the idiots he hung around with now, but he didn’t really think that act worked onus, did he? Damon had become a lot of things in the last several years that I didn’t like at all, but the last thing I’d suspect him of was indifference. Especially on thissubject.
So I just ignored the tenor of that question. “She wants to see us. All of us. Well, obviously Gabriel won’t be there. Anyway, she’s going to meet us out back of Lennox Hardware at noon tomorrow. If you feel like showingup.”
Damon’s lip curled in a sneer. “She breezes back into town after all this time and wants to pick up right where we left off? It doesn’t work thatway.”
My mind slid back to last night, to Rose’s hesitation as we figured out what to say to each other. We could get past that, get back to something like it’d used to be. I had to believe it. But still… “I’m sure she knows that. Andyouknow she didn’t leave here because she wantedto.”
“In eleven years she never got the chance to swing by for a visit and now she’s here? Whatchanged?”
My gut twisted. “She’s engaged,” I said. “She’s come back to get married and take over the estate, is the impression Igot.”
For the second time, I saw a crack in Damon’s front. He blinked at me for a second before shaking his head. Jin and Seth were staring at me too. I might have neglected to mention that little detailearlier.
Mostly because I’d known they’d react like this. I knew how I’d felt when she’d said those words. Even after all this timeapart.