“We used to date.”
“Ooo-oooh!” the girls sang in unison.
Zadie blushed. Now itreallyfelt like a slumber party.
“How long for?” Hazel asked.
“About a year.”
“Who broke up with who?”
“She broke up with me,” Joel said, making an exaggerated sad face.
“Awwwww,” they all cooed in sympathy.
Well, I know whose side they’re on,Zadie thought. “He’s lying. It was mutual.”
“That’s not how I remember it,” Joel said. “I remember you stomping on my heart like one of those grape-stomping ladies.”
“Vintners,” Hazel corrected.
“What?”
“Vintners. That’s what they’re called.”
“How do you know that?”
Hazel shrugged. “I dunno.”
“Do you think you’ll ever get back together?” On Juniper’s island, no question was too personal.
Zadie and Joel locked eyes for one awkward second before Myron walked into the room, drying his hands on a dish towel. “All right, girls. It’s ten. Time for bed.”
“Nooooooo,” Juniper protested.
“Yeeeeesss.” Myron lifted his littlest by her underarms and placed her on her feet. “Go brush your teeth. With atoothbrushthis time.”
“But monkeys clean their teeth with feathers.”
“I don’t care how monkeys do it.” Myron gently shooed his youngest daughter away. “Now put your pajamas on.”
The youngest kids reluctantly obeyed, dragging their feet all the way up the stairs. Rowan was already ahead of them, because somewhere upstairs, water was running. When the stomping ceased and the bedroom doors clicked shut, Myron turned back to his guests and ushered them out onto the screened-in porch.
Much like the rest of the house, the porch was function over form. The screen itself had a few holes that had been temporarily—or perhaps permanently—mended with duct tape. The floor was covered in artificial turf and smelled faintly of mildew. An oil lantern hung from a bent nail in the ceiling. Zadie and Finn squeezed onto a wicker love seat while Joel stretched out on a chaise longue, kicking off his shoes as he did so.
“Anyone over twenty-one want a beer?” Myron walked in carrying a six-pack.
“I’ll take one,” Joel said.
He handed him a beer, then extended one to Zadie. She shook her head. “No, thank you.”
Myron sighed as he lowered himself into a rocking chair. “I love it out here,” he said, cracking open his bottle and peering out at the waning sunlight outlining the steeples of distant pines. Beyond that, a snow-kissed mountain glowed like a beacon. He rocked silently for a few moments, the floor creaking under his weight. Finn didn’t need to read his memories to guess that this is what he did every night after the kids went to bed. This was his quiet time.
“See that ledge way over there?” he said finally, pointing to a rocky cliff jutting out from the swath of green. “When it storms and the creek floods, it turns into a waterfall.”
Joel’s bottle hissed as he twisted the cap off. “Nice. Can you walk out there?”
“I wouldn’t recommend it. It’s shallow but slippery. One wrong step, and you’ll fall and bust your tail. Amy and I would go fly-fishing in the creek on Sundays. I fell once. Doctor said I’d broken my coccyx. We were both too embarrassed to ask what that was, so we googled it when we got home.” He laughed, but just barely. “Truth is, she was the real fisherman. I just keep all this fish stuff around ’cause she’d kill me if she knew I’d taken it down.”