Restlessness drove me from the lighthouse on the point out into Sutter’s Ferry. Well, restlessness and the lingering threat that Mimi might corner me to ask more questions I didn’t have answers for. I didn’t like the knowing looks she and Mama Flo kept sharing over the subject of me and Willa. Like there was something there.
I mean, obviously, there was something there. We were friends. We had history. But it wasn’t like those looks were making it out to be. It couldn’t be.
The reading of the will was today. Obviously, I had no business being there. It wasn’t anything to do with me, and Willa hadn’t asked me to meet up with her after. But I couldn’t forget her grief and fear over what her parents would do with whatever they got, not to mention her stress over even being in the same room with them. I wanted to be there to help repair whatever additional damage they caused.
Because I had no idea how long the meeting would take, I decided to wander the village to see what had changed. Sure, I’d been back to Hatterwick some over the years. But those visits had been brief, and I hadn’t wanted to revisit the ghosts on memory lane. Maybe I’d been hiding.
My route took me past the marina. The noisy cry of gulls filled the salty air as they wheeled over the water. At this hour, all the fishing boats were already out on the open ocean. Despite the often backbreaking nature of the work, a faint pull of nostalgia had me smiling. Not that I wanted to go back to commercial fishing as an occupation. I just loved being out on the water. Fishing. The Navy. The one true constant in my life had been the ocean.
Moving on, I made my way into the residential part of town, where a row of modest rental houses had evidently been bought up and gentrified since I’d lived here with my dad. It looked so different that I walked right past the house at first. The eaves that used to sag were straight. The shutters that had once hung forever cattywampus on rusty hinges were neatly fastened against siding now painted a bright, sunshiny yellow. A pair of flowerbeds bursting with blooming butterfly bushes flanked a walkway of stone pavers that led up to the red front door. I might have thought it had been turned into a vacation rental but for a child’s bike that lay abandoned on its side in the front yard beside a swing that hung from a tree that hadn’t been big enough to support its weight when I’d left.
It had been made into a home.
It hadn’t been that when I’d lived here with my dad. Life would’ve been so much different had my mother and sister lived. It wasn’t something I dwelt on. What was the point? When they died and Dad fell into the bottle, I wasn’t enough to keep him afloat. He’d never been aggressive or problematic as a drunk. Never hurt anybody. He’d just drowned in his grief and heartbreak for the rest of his life. Which, really, hadn’t been all that long, considering. I’d had to grow up fast, and if not for the rest of the Wayward Sons, I didn’t know where I’d be. They were my family, and I was feeling the distance from all of them.
Without them, without a place here, a purpose—hell, even a damned job—I felt rootless and unmoored. Being there for Willa had distracted me from that, and maybe that was part of why I was so focused on her.
Right, Malone. Everybody believes that.
She pulled at me, even more than she always had. The past few days of being near her seemed to have rolled back some of the reserve that had built up like dunes between us. I knew none of that had been Jace’s intention when he’d asked me to come. If it had been Ford or Rios who’d been available, one of them would have been the stand-in for her brother. I wondered if Jace would’ve thought twice about asking if he knew the feelings I’d hidden about his sister all these years.
Didn’t matter. I was the one who was here, and I was the one who’d stand by her to help through whatever she needed. That sense of purpose wouldn’t last forever. I’d have to figure out what the hell to do with my life, sooner or later. Sort out what a sailor without ship actually was.
But it could wait.
I made my way downtown to Panadería de la Isla, which was conveniently located midway between Roland O’Shea’s law office and where Willa had parked her Jeep. I wasn’t especially hungry, as Mama Flo had made sure I ate before I left the house this morning, but I could go for a coffee.
Marisol Gutierrez smiled at me from behind the counter. “Sawyer, welcome home.”
“Thanks, Marisol. Can I get a large dark roast and one of your empanadas for here?”
“Of course. Would you like that heated?”
“Please.” Spotting the trays full of big, beautiful cookies, I decided to grab one of those for Willa. Something sweet to take the sting out of whatever was happening in that meeting. “And a couple of the snickerdoodles to go.”
Her smile flashed again. “Seeing Willa later?” At my blank look, she explained, “They’re her favorite.”
“I know. And yes, thanks.”
As Marisol bustled behind the counter, I heard someone snort behind me. “As if sugar’s enough to buy his way into the good graces of someone like her.”
My shoulders went stiff. I told myself not to turn around. Whoever was opining about my purchase didn’t matter one iota.
Someone else continued, “Oh, you know Willa. Always a bleeding heart for a faithful dog.”
Marisol’s smile had slipped when she brought me my coffee and food, her heated gaze fixed somewhere over my left shoulder. When she opened her mouth as if to say something, I gave a bare shake of my head. It wasn’t worth it to draw attention to these jackasses. It might’ve been years since I’d been subjected to this kind of bullshit, but it was hardly the first time.
Marisol huffed and finished ringing me up.
I saluted her with my coffee. “Thanks. Have a good one.”
Deliberately keeping my back to the bakery at large, I headed out to the patio. Only once I’d found a table outside did I dare to glance in through the window to see who’d been running their mouths.
Marcus Hoffman and Chet Banks. Well on toward their fifties now, they gossiped worse than a bunch of old women. They’d once given Caroline all kinds of grief over Rios’s supposed crimes, so this didn’t surprise me a bit. It was always the small minded and the miserable who had to make themselves feel better by tearing others down, and as the son of the town drunk, I’d been a popular target growing up. I had kinda thought they’d have moved on to someone else by now. Dad had been dead for more than a decade.
Twitching my shoulders to rid myself of the itch of shame trying to claw its way up my back, I shifted focus down the street toward the law office. It didn’t take long. I’d barely brushed the pastry crumbs from my fingers before I saw Willa step out of the office.
I couldn’t get a clear read on her from here. Her movements were slow, almost confused. As if she were trapped underwater. I’d tossed my trash and crossed the street before she even turned toward her Jeep. The view up close didn’t tell me much more. She looked… shell shocked.
Bracing myself for her answer, I asked one of the world’s dumbest questions. “Hey. You okay?”
She turned instinctively toward the sound of my voice, looking up at me, but I didn’t think she really saw me. There were no tears. No rage. She didn’t have that haunted look I’d come to associate with whatever traumas she kept to herself. She simply appeared thunderstruck.
I glanced around. “Where are your parents?”
“Gone.” The single syllable came out quiet. Numb.
Something huge had just happened, and she was in the quiet before the storm of reaction. I needed to get her out of town before it hit.
“Okay. Come on.”
When she didn’t immediately follow, I grabbed her hand and tugged gently. She fell into vaguely stumbling step beside me. Oh, yeah. Major overwhelm here.
At her Jeep, I held out my free hand. “Keys?”
Wordlessly, she handed them over.
I bundled her into the passenger seat and circled around to climb in myself. This close to her, I could sense the frenetic energy under the surface of the emotions she simply couldn’t process. There was far too much input here. I could fix that, at least for a little while.
Quick and efficient, I navigated through the village, working my way off the main thoroughfares that were clogged with summer tourists, until we hit the coastal road that ran north, toward Sutter land. I drove by instinct as much as habit, leaving signs of civilization behind until, at last, we were parked near the dunes that marked the edge of the marshes beyond the woods. This had been our place when we were young. Where we’d hang out and talk and watch for the band of horses that brought her so much joy.
Too late, I second guessed my choice. If the worst had come to pass, seeing them might break her in ways I wasn’t prepared to handle. I hoped I wasn’t making a mistake bringing her here.
Before I could do anything else, she’d climbed out and moved toward the edge of the woods, where the thick, low branches of a live oak stretched gnarled, twisted arms and made a convenient hiding spot to sit unobserved. Unerringly, she climbed into one of the crooks. I followed suit, wedging myself a little less easily into the opposite curve of the branch than I had when I’d been younger. She stared out at the marsh, and I waited. Eventually, the frantic energy I sensed pumping off her began to calm, the panic she hadn’t acknowledged waning. I’d done at least one thing right in bringing her here.
“They left me everything.”
I jerked to look at her, not a hundred percent certain I’d heard her right over the whisper of wind and the distant roar of the surf. “They what?”
“They left me everything. There’s some stuff that’s been earmarked for Jace, and a trust to go toward the betterment of the island. But the ferry company, the land, the house, the assets—they left them all to me.”
Something in me unclenched. I hadn’t dared hope for this for her, but after all the stories I’d heard at the memorial, I wasn’t surprised.
She finally looked at me, those hazel eyes almost luminous. “What were they thinking?”
“That you were the best of the Sutters, and that you’d do right by all of it.”
Willa huffed a laugh. “That’s what Mr. O’Shea said, too.”
I nudged her foot with mine. “See? Majority rules.”
With a helpless shrug, she scooped a hand through the hair the wind had determinedly tugged from her braid. “But I don’t know anything about how to run a ferry company or how to do any of this stuff. There are going to be all these people counting on me and looking to me for leadership. I’m not prepared for any of that.”
Ah. And here was the sticking point for the overwhelm.
Leaning toward her, I offered the bag with the cookies I’d bought. “Here.”
Her brows drew together. “What’s this?”
“Fortification.”
She opened it, her expression lightening as she pulled out a cookie. “You got me snickerdoodles?”
“You used to say they helped everything.”
A smile fluttered at the corners of her mouth. “So I did. Here, you have one, too.”
She handed me the cookie, then pulled out the other.
I took a bite and leaned back against the tree. “So, shit’s got to go through probate, right? There’s time to figure out the rest. The ferry company has been running perfectly fine on its own. Your grandparents have people in place who’ve been running the day-to-day of it for a long time. There’s no reason to change the setup just because you’re going to be the CEO or president or whatever the hell.”
A little of the tension seemed to bleed out of her shoulders. “I suppose you’re right on that. I’ve got time.”
We sat a while in silence as that sank in.
“What do you want to do? I remember growing up how much you loved their house. Do you plan to move up there?”
“I hardly know. I mean, I’ve been living with Bree for years now. She doesn’t need the money for rent necessarily. I guess I could. I don’t know. That’s… Nothing went the way I thought.”
Understatement of the century. “I bet your parents were pretty pissed.”
Her laugh this time held a harsh edge. “Oh, my parents. Yeah. So my grandfather decided since he was dead, he was absolutely going to tell them exactly what he thought of them, in no uncertain terms, before announcing they weren’t getting a penny.”
“Seriously?”
I listened as she reeled off what she could remember of the letter the lawyer had been required to read aloud. Then I whistled. “Damn. I mean, most of us have wanted to say the same, but never had the opportunity. So I say, good on Granddaddy Henry. Your parents needed to hear all that.”
Willa shook her head. “I don’t know that they did. It’s not going to change anything. We’re not going to suddenly not be estranged. And now it’s infuriated my father. He insists he’s going to contest the will. Mr. O’Shea says that there’s no way to contest it—that it’s solid—so if they want to waste their time and money on attorneys, then okay. Apparently, that’s not going to change anything for me.”
I hoped Roland O’Shea was as good an attorney as he thought he was and that he’d run interference, so whatever legal tactics her parents employed wouldn’t touch her.
“I still say that it’s nice for somebody to have called them out for being shits as parents.” I could think of a laundry list of other infractions from growing up. Things I wished I could have done something more about back then. I was so fucking grateful she was no longer in a position where she had to be protected from her parents.
“You’re your own woman, Wren. And you’re going to do amazing things with every single asset you inherited. I have faith in you.”
She shot me a rueful smile that finally looked a little more like the woman I knew. “Well, that makes one of us.”