Page 82 of Myla: The Hawthornes

“Good call sendin’ Myla back with Heather,” Gray said after we’d parked.

I glanced at him, wondering how he’d known I was thinking about her.

“Don’t got a good feelin’,” Gray said, pausing on the front porch.

“Why?”

“Not sure,” he mused. “Learned the hard way not to ignore it, though.”

“What do you want to do?” I asked, looking out at the neighborhood. There wasn’t anything out of place, no strange cars parked along the curbs, no strangers strolling down the sidewalks.

“Think we should head out in the mornin’,” Gray replied. “I’ll feel better on familiar ground. Can you make that happen?”

“I’ll tie their asses up if I need to.”

“Your brother still stayin behind?”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t like it.”

“I don’t either. He’s a grown man. Not much I can do about it.”

“He knows what we’re dealin’ with?”

“He knows enough.”

Gray let out a long breath. “All right. His choice.”

When we went inside, we were met with chaos. There were boxes everywhere.

“Bas said we couldn’t carry these to the RV,” Saoirse bitched, her hands on her hips. “So we’ve been leaving them here.Youcan carry them out.”

“Jesus, it’s an RV, not a moving truck.”

“They’ll fit,” Saoirse snapped. “Aoife also has room in her trunk, and so does Aisling.”

We spent the rest of the day getting shit ready to go. Ronan came for dinner—the last we’d have as a family for a while. Aoife moved around the house like a ghost. She was fully present for Sean, making sure that he was her top priority every moment, but otherwise she was off in her own head.

When I finally lay down on the couch that night, I pulled out my phone and called Myla. I didn’t like how we’d left it. Leaving shit half-finished had seemed to become a habit for us. The phone rang and rang, and I glanced at the clock, cursing when I saw how late it was. I was just about to hang up when she answered.

“Hello?”

“I was a dick,” I said immediately. “And I’m just now realizing how late it is, which makes me more of a dick. Did I wake you?”

“Nope, just got done watching a movie.”

“With who?” I rolled over and stuffed a pillow under my head, trying to imagine her curled up in front of the TV. It was the first time ever that I’d been home and wanted to be somewhere else.

“Who do you think?” she asked.

“Tell the girls I said hello.”

“Cian says hello,” Myla called.

“Fuck off, Cian,” Frankie yelled.

“Can’t say they’re not loyal,” I mused. Any time Myla and I argued, Frankie’s reaction was as predictable as the sunrise. The only thing that regularly surprised me was the fact that after she was done ripping me a new one, she went back to regular programming. Like showing up to support my family right after Myla and I had got into it a few days before.

---