Page 13 of Make Me Yours

He broke both legs and sustained a head injury serious enough to keep him in the hospital for weeks.

The therapist I talked to as a kid, after I moved in with Gramps and it became clear that I wasn’t snapping back from the family tragedy as quickly as he’d hoped, said it was possible the head injury was the reason my dad was so different after the accident than he’d been before. It wasn’t that he didn’t love me anymore, but that he simply wasn’t capable of taking care of me or communicating the way he had before he cracked his head open like an egg.

I wanted to believe her.

I really did.

But in my gut, I knew it was Mom leaving that closed my father’s heart to everything and everyone, including his own daughter. He loved hersomuch. Even when I was a toddler, I remember being a little jealous of the way he looked at my beautiful mama, like she was an angel come to earth, better than all the rest of the people in the world put together, too perfect to be real.

She wasn’t perfect, of course. She was justreallypretty, and men are dumb when it comes to beautiful women. I understood that sometime around thirteen or fourteen, and it made me have even less respect for my broken father.

You don’t stop being there for your child because you’re not with her mom anymore.

You should love and take care of your babies no matter what.

Gramps gets that. Gramps has never let me down or stopped loving me, even when I ruined his truck by putting diesel fuel in it instead of regular gas or when we had a knock-down-drag-out fight about me staying to help him on the boat instead of going to college. He wanted me to get out of Sea Breeze and “make something of myself.”

I told him the only thing I wanted to “make” of myself was to make myself useful to the people I love. Gramps needed me on the boat. His arthritis was getting too bad to haul traps in all day on his own, and I had good friends in Sea Breeze, friends as close to me as sisters. They weren’t going to college, either. Elaina was opening a cat café with an inheritance from her grandmother, and Maya was going to work for her parents in their rental property business. My family was here. No matter how much I loved taking pictures or how proud I was of landing a scholarship to art school, that made the decision not to go to college an easy one.

Eventually, Gramps came around to seeing my point of view and we’re even closer than we were when I was a kid. He’s not just my grandpa or surrogate parent, in many ways, he’s my best friend. He justgetsme, in a way not many people ever have.

Until this morning, I would have said nothing could come between us or damage the bond we’ve forged over the past sixteen years. But that was before I slept with a Tripp, the same Tripp who wrecked my family and ruined his son.

The thought makes my stomach roil again.

“Everything all right?” Gramps asks, frowning over the rim of his cup. “I haven’t seen you that green since I made liver for dinner last winter. You didn’t drink too much last night, did you?”

I shrug on my coat, averting my gaze. I don’t want him to see the guilt I’m sure is plain in my eyes. “Maybe a little. Elaina was making the hot toddies and she’s a heavy pour.”

He grunts, his sharp blue eyes still fixed on my face. I can feel his attention prickling across my skin, even though I keep my gaze lowered as I tuck my keys and wallet into my pockets. “You know better, Gert,” he says. “Don’t let anyone pour for you, not even a friend.”

Gramps and I both enjoy a pint at the pub after work as much as the next harvester, but we’re careful to drink in moderation. Neither one of us wants to be like my father. We leave the pub by no later than six most nights and have a three-beer maximum, even on Saturdays.

But better he thinks I drank too much whiskey than had kinky sex with our family’s sworn enemy.

“You’re right,” I say, nodding as I rake a hand through my hair. “I’ll be sure to mix my own drink next time. See you later. I’m going to run over to Elaina’s for breakfast and cat therapy.”

He grunts again, but seems mollified. “Be sure to use the lint roller in the carport before you come back inside.”

“I know, I know. See you later,” I say as I back through the door and pound down the stairs into the cool morning air.

Gramps’ alleged “cat allergies” are the reason I don’t have a cat of my own to love and spoil. Funny how his “allergies” didn’t act up when I snuck a cat-hair-covered pillow into his bedroom a few weeks ago. Gramps slept just fine that night, and when we headed out to the boat in the morning, there wasn’t a red eye or stuffy old man nose in sight.

I’m ninety percent sure he’s been lying to me about his allergies since I was a kid who begged him ceaselessly for a cat. But considering what I did last night, I’m in no position to throw stones.

Fuck. Just thinking about it sends shame flooding into my stomach, making it so tight and heavy, it feels like it’s dragging behind me as I hustle down the sidewalk toward downtown. I pass the fisherman’s memorial on the way, a circular arrangement of stone plaques with a giant, wrought-iron wave in the middle. These plaques list the names of all the men lost to the sea from 1795 all the way to modern times.

When I was little, Gramps would take me there every Memorial Day and read the names of all the Sullivans who went to a watery grave. He knew which Sullivans were “our” Sullivans and which were from the other Sullivan family in town, the one that left Sea Breeze in the 1930s, looking for a better life out west. From 1930 on, all the lost Sullivans are ours. There are only two—my great-uncle and a second cousin who drowned when I was just a baby, but still…

I feel the weight of my legacy every time I pass the memorial. My ancestors gave everything for our family, sometimes even their lives. They’re the reason Gramps has enough money to pay for Dad’s bills and mortgage payment, even though my father hasn’t held down a job in years. They’re the reason we have enough left over to keep our gorgeous old Victorian in the family, instead of being forced to sell like so many of our friends who used to own waterfront homes.

I’m sure all the dead Sullivans are rolling over in their graves right now, ashamed to be related to such a Tripp-sexing, trash heap of a human being.

I walk faster, speeding past the memorial and the entrance to the docks, careful to not so much as glance toward the ice cream shack or the yacht behind it.

Past the hardware store, the fish market, the souvenir shops and the upscale resale shop, I push into Elaina’s café, my shoulders sagging with relief when I see that she’s alone at the counter and no one occupies the tables near the front.

Crossing the softly gleaming hardwood floor, I brace my hands on the counter and ask in a harsh whisper, “Do you think ghosts can see who we fuck?”

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