40. Rosie

Chapter 40

Rosie

I sat in the parking lot of the dock as I listened to Dylan’s voicemail for the millionth time. Just a tinny recording of his voice was enough to make the endless well of tears stream again. My “Make Me Sob” playlist certainly wasn’t helping things either.

There hadn’t been any movement coming from my boat for the last hour I’d been sitting here. I was hoping Dad would come out, and I could give him the rest of my tips from last night. I needed to apologize for holding back on him. I’d ruined one person’s life. Maybe I could keep from ruining another.

When Celine Dion started to belt about how she was all by herself, I turned off the truck and killed the music. The walk down the dock seemed longer than usual. I knocked with purpose and waited, but Dad didn’t answer. I knocked again and then tried the handle. It was unlocked. I pushed the door open.

“Dad!” I called out. The lights were all off, and the boat smelled musty and moldy. Like old food and dirty laundry. There were new stains on the carpet, and dirty plates spilled out of the tiny sink. I wrinkled my nose.

It hadn’t looked like this the last time I’d dropped by. What in the world? The flooring was going to have to be replaced, and the cushions on the couch too.

I walked deeper into the house, almost dreading what I might find. Even though I was sure he was just walking around town, even though I’d begged him to stay inside, I was still filled with dread as I knocked on the bedroom door and then pushed it open. The bed was messy, but empty. The bathroom too.

“DAD!” I yelled louder this time, knowing I wasn’t going to get a response. I tried calling his phone number, but it went straight to voicemail. I went back into the living room, and I saw a sticky note on the counter. It had a number jotted down on it. It was as good a clue as any, so I dialed in the number. Maybe he had a doctor’s appointment. I’d suspected for a few weeks that he wasn’t feeling well.

A recording line picked up for Hot Goss Magazine. The online source that had put out the story on Dylan. One of the options was for a tip on a story, promising quick and immediate pay outs for celebrity information.

Footsteps sounded behind me. “Rosie.”

I stared at the paper as the recording played on my phone. A pair of arms went around me, and then another, and a third until I was in the center of my three brothers as my phone thunked to the floor.

They were so much taller than me that I was like the eye of a brother hurricane—only I felt like they alone were keeping all the pieces of me from flying everywhere.

“Cabin?” Jules said.

“Cabin,” the other two agreed.

Normally the salt spray on my face as we rode the dinghy to the cabin was my favorite feeling in the entire world. This time, though, it stung my skin in a way that felt deserved. Justified.

I couldn’t believe I’d trusted him. My brothers had told me Dad was bad news, but I hadn’t listened.

Apparently Jules was calling my work and getting people to take care of my shift while Haydn picked up a bag of my belongings from the Savage’s house and went shopping for food. They’d use my dinghy to come to the cabin later this afternoon.

Meanwhile, Bennett took the two of us out to the island. Around me, the world was a haze that even Bennett’s worried expression couldn’t penetrate.

Once at the cabin, Bennett convinced me to take a long, hot bath—and tracked down some sweats of my sister-in-law’s that had been left behind last time she was here—while he made hot chocolate and got a fire going.

I tucked my head under the bath water and let it muffle my senses. The world was so much calmer under here.

My family’s cabin was on an island a few hours away from Winterhaven. We owned the entire tiny island, so our cabin was the only house on it—unless you counted the abandoned cabin and its ghost residents.

Which I absolutely counted, for the record.

And avoided at all costs, for obvious reasons.

I loved coming here. It was the perfect escapist location. No wi-fi, cell service only in one high spot on the island (if the stars aligned and you were living your life right), and the closest neighbor was on an island several hundred yards across the bay. By the time I got dressed and went into the living room to drink my hot chocolate, Haydn and Jules were pulling up to the island’s dock. I wanted to tell Bennett everything first, because he was the calmest of my brothers.

“Dad’s been living in my houseboat.” I rushed the words out.

Bennett didn’t react at all, other than to take a leisurely sip of his raspberry hot chocolate. We all had our favorite flavors, and it was tradition to drink hot chocolate at the cabin on our first day there.

Maybe he didn’t understand what I’d said.

“Like, our dad. Orin Forrester.”

“I know,” he said. And the way he said it, I realized, he knew before I told him.

“How?”

This finally got a reaction out of him—a wince. “I’ll let Jules tell you.”

“Bennett,” I warned. “Tell me right now.” From the window, I saw Jules hop out of the dinghy and prepare to tie it off.

Bennett hesitated and darted a glance out the window next but then turned back to me with a sigh. “Fine. Last night at the restaurant, he came to find you, and he overheard your conversation with Dad.”

“Wait. The same one Dylan overheard?” I didn’t expect Bennett to know what I was talking about, but he nodded.

“The two of them followed Dad out and confronted him.”

“What?” Dylan hadn’t mentioned that part. Or that Jules had been with him. Pretty big conversational omissions.

“Dylan offered to pay Dad off to leave.”

“WHAT?” I jumped up, and some of my hot chocolate spilled over onto the wood floor. “He. Did. Not.”

Bennett grabbed a napkin from the coffee table and wiped up the spill. “It reminded me of that movie you made us watch. When Mr. DingDong pays off Wickham to save Elizabeth Bennet’s family.”

“It’s Mr. Darcy. From Pride and Prejudice.”

“I know—I watched six hours of it. I’m just teasing you.” He paused, then added, “But Dad didn’t take Dylan’s money.”

I let out a sigh. Of course Dad didn’t take his money and agree to leave. But the fact that Dylan even offered—I was going to kill him. Except, I didn’t plan on ever talking to him again for his own good, so … The thought had me sitting back down and slumping into the couch.

Bennett continued, his voice pained as he spoke. “Dad took Jules’s money, though, in exchange for leaving town.”

In exchange for leaving me . I felt like I’d been punched in the ribs.

So Dad had allowed himself to be paid off. And then he’d taken even more by selling our story to Hot Goss Magazine. He had to be the one who’d taken those pictures. He’d been around both days. Had he planned on selling us out all along, or was it just an idea he’d brewed up on his way out of town?

“I know you’re going to be angry,” Bennett said. He leaned toward me, his hands clasped together in front of him. “And you totally deserve to be. Just make sure you’re angry at the right person.”

The door opened, and Haydn and Jules strolled in with a gust of fresh forest air. Grocery bags and duffels hung from their arms as they closed the door and toed off their shoes in the entryway.

“So you all knew,” I said quietly. But loud enough for my brothers to pause. Bennett said something to them with his eyes, and they seemed to understand it.

“That’s why we were down at the boat this morning,” Jules said. “We’d come to make sure he’d left and found you there instead.”

I nodded. They must have thought I was so dumb, so incredibly stupid for believing that Dad might love me. For giving him so much money and my boat to live in and hoping with my whole soul that if I was enough, I could have my dad back again.

Haydn dropped onto the couch on one side of me, and Jules on the other. “You wear your expressions all over your face, sis,” Haydn said.

“So what? We all know I’m an idiot now. Fantastic,” I said bitterly.

“For what?” Bennett asked. “For loving Dad?”

“You all told me he was trouble, but I didn’t listen. I thought maybe you were just bitter, and I could make a difference.” I stared at my hands.

“I told her about Jules and Dad,” Bennett said quietly.

“Dad’s charming—except when he’s not,” Haydn said. “I probably remember him the best, since I’m the oldest, but Mom always forgave him. She’d be so upset when he left us high and dry, but then he’d blow back into town with his charm and his apologies, and it wouldn’t be long until we were repeating the same cycle once again.”

“He called me a sour lemon, once. I remember that.”

Jules frowned. “I hate that he said that to you. It’s not true.” He was using his lawyer voice, the one that demanded you listen to him and take note.

“You make our lives brighter, Rosie,” Haydn said, and the other two nodded in agreement.

“You have Mom’s big, generous heart.” Haydn tightened his arm around my shoulders. “And don’t even try to deny it. You love to tease us and give us a hard time, but in the end, you would do anything for the people you love.”

I let Haydn’s words sink in, and for once, my brothers allowed the four of us to sit in silence. It had always been the four of us against the world, and it always would be. Even when we added new partners and families and spread out across the world, we were family. Through and through.

“Why didn’t you tell us?” Haydn asked.

“I didn’t want you to keep me from seeing him.” I covered my face. “I’ve been keeping so many secrets.”

“You don’t have to keep secrets from us, Rosie,” Bennett said seriously.

“You guys don’t think I’m responsible or that I know how to live my own life. And who can blame you, especially after this week?”

“We don’t think that at all,” Jules said vehemently. “Rosie, you have your own successful business in your twenties. Making art. How many people can actually say that?”

I sniffled. “It’s not that successful. I have to have a second job and rent out the apartment to make ends meet. And you don’t even know the half of it.”

“So tell us,” Haydn said softly.

And since I didn’t have anything to lose, I did. I told them about my mural wall and how I wanted to be taken seriously but also wanted to paint animals in costumes and other whimsical things. I told them about how Dad hadn’t asked me for money right away, and that we’d had good moments too. I talked for ten minutes straight, unloading all the things I’d been holding back, and ending with my final confession as I stared into my lukewarm mug of hot chocolate. “I just want you guys to be proud of me.”

“We are.” Haydn kissed the side of my head. “None of us could imagine life without you.”

“It would be boring and colorless,” Bennett said.

“I wouldn’t have met Lia without you,” Haydn said, emotion thick in his voice.

“You’re the best of us,” Jules said simply. “And we’ll do better. I know we jump in to try to fix your problems, and it’s because we love you, not because we don’t think you can’t handle them.”

“And paint whatever you want to paint,” Bennett said. “We’ll love it because you did it.”

“Wherever life takes you, we’ll be right there with you,” Haydn said. “No matter what.”

I let their words settle on me like layers of paint. A highlight here, a shade there, another stroke for depth, and I felt the more dimensional image of myself forming.

They loved me whether I was successful or floundering. Whether I wanted to believe the best in someone who didn’t deserve it or set healthier boundaries. Whether my schemes worked out the way I intended or imploded in all our faces.

They loved me without condition. And even more, they believed in me, even when I didn’t believe in myself. For some reason, I hadn’t allowed myself to really trust that until now.

“So no more secrets?” Haydn asked.

I blew my nose in a loud, wet fashion. “No more secrets,” I agreed. “Oh, except one. Jules. I actually do remember painting on your white shoes.”

Jules huffed and pointed his finger at me accusingly. “I knew it!”

“I’m sorry, but also not actually sorry. They turned out cute.”

“No teenage boy wants red and pink kiss lips all over his shoes!” He stared me down hard. “You owe me a painting to put up in my office for that.”

“I have the perfect idea for one,” I said, thinking of my adorable elephant dancing at the underwater masquerade. A little whimsy would do my too-serious brother some good.

“Anything else?” Haydn asked.

I shook my head, and felt like I could finally really relax. I should have had this discussion with my brothers a long time ago. “Who wants to watch a movie?”

The boys exchanged a glance, and Haydn said slowly, “What movie are you thinking?”