Sissy and Danny stared at me. Sissy like she was waiting for something, Danny like that something was a detonation.
I picked up my slack jaw, caught in the thought mid-way through a sentence. “I-I was saying, you know, to take her around the island.”
Holly watched my hands as she listened to the plan. By the way she turned herself towards me, I could tell she wasn’t opposed to it.
Encouraged, I listed off some of my favorite places. “If it’s still standing, I could take her to the old pier—”
“Oh, it’s still up somehow,” Sissy chuckled.
“From all the splinters it gave me,” Danny said, “I’d just assume spite is stronger than storms.”
I laughed, the tension leaving my shoulders. “God, I remember . . . Was it Trixy that sat down on it? And Dio had to spend an hour picking wood chips out of her ass?”
That got the rest of them laughing.
“Who else?” Sissy shook her head. “Would’ve helped if she wore more than panties everywhere.”
Danny snorted into his cup and choked.
“I love that girl like she’s my own,” Sissy said, “but I’ve never seen a woman more ready to walk out of the house with more skin showing than clothes in the dead of winter.” She sighed.
“I could ask Stella to go beachcombing with us.” I turned to Holly and pointed out a couple of shadowboxes on the wall that she filled with her findings. “The beaches here are pebbles instead of sand. She used to make bracelets for us out of the sea glass we found.”
Danny slipped his off and handed it to me. “She made me that one when we were kids,” he said, watching me show Holly the wire-wrapped charms with soft eyes. “Her old metal detector broke down a few years ago, but she used to find jewelry too.”
“Mostly just bottle caps and fishing weights,” Sissy said, pulling her necklace out to show us. “But she’s found older things.” She bent down to show Holly the pendant, a gold locket with a delicate flower bunch on the face. “Never could get it open, but a jeweler told me it was around two hundred years old by the style.”
“I wouldn’t mind a tour of the Manse if anyone’s willing. I’d do it myself, but it’s been so long I doubt I’d remember everything.”
Sissy nodded, but I’d expected more enthusiasm from the family’s diligent historian.
Danny looked to Sissy. “Ama’s always walking the grounds,” he said.
Her lips scrunched to the side and she shook her head. “Mama . . . she was having memory issues even before you left. Nowadays she spends more time in the past than in the present. I think it would be better if you went around with one of us instead.”
“Ok,” I nodded, “is she . . .” I wasn’t sure what to say.
“Oh, she still knows this place like the back of her hand,” she said. “And by god can that woman run circles around me. It’s just the times she mixes up. Some days I’m her daughter, others I’m her mother.” She shrugged, but there was a heaviness to it. A world-weariness that she’d lived with long enough for the pain to dull.
“I could take you down to the park one day,” Danny offered as I handed him back his bracelet. “I work with the woman that takes care of the place.”
“‘Bout time someone did. Can’t tell you how many close calls Trix and I had with tetanus there.”
“All the old playground equipment . . . well, ‘taken down’ isn’t really accurate. Disintegrated, maybe?”
Sissy nodded at Danny’s explanation. “That garbage was a death trap when I was growing up. Can’t imagine how it lasted as long as it did.”
“Black magic,” I joked.
Sissy and Danny shared a quick look but no one laughed. Not so much as a giggle to humor me. I coughed and moved on.
“Oh, and I definitely want to take Holly to the caves—”
“No!” they both shouted.
Holly and I flinched from the sudden volume in the tiny, previously calm kitchen. I was shocked by the outburst, but they were just as surprised by their reactions as I was. Danny sputtered an apology the second he realized how loud he’d been.
“I-I’m so sorry! I just—it’s just that . . .”
“The caves aren’t safe,” Sissy explained. She refilled my cup and sat at the table with us, a stern set to her brows. “We’ve had some bad storms these past few years and they’ve weathered the caverns to the point of collapse. No one goes in there anymore.”