Page 96 of A Quick Stop in Paradise

“Don’t quote me on this or expect me to ever say this again, but I love you. Thanks for standing up for me.”

She choked out a laugh. “You do not. You can barely stand me.”

“That too, but I also love you at the same time. Siblings, and all that.”

She stepped back from the hug, wiping her eyes, before, with a wobbly voice, she said, “Yeah.” And then, “Love you too. This sucks. But I feel like I at least got a cool sister out of it.”

Ugh. As if I wasn’t already ready to cry at the littlest thing because of everything with Brooklyn. I swallowed, trying to put on a smile, and I squeezed her arm. “You can go back, you know,” I said. “I’m not going to make you rough it finding a way home together with me.”

“I cannot be on the same plane as those people,” she said, her voice low, wobbly. “I’ll figure it out. We’ll both figure it out.”

Two pairs of footsteps came down the hall after us—arrivals was quiet enough I tightened up expecting Aunt Helena dragging her husband along to actually throw hands at me or Shane bringing a lackey to take another shot at demeaning me, but it was Mom and Oscar instead, Mom with tears thick in her eyes and lighting up when she saw the two of us, making a beeline our way. Oscar, for his part, looked like he’d just seen a mediocre movie. I didn’t think he knew how to make another face.

“Oh, sweethearts,” Mom said, coming over and pulling me and Stella into a hug together. “Oh, am I glad you didn’t already leave the airport. I’m so sorry. Oscar and I tried to smooth things over—”

Oscar spoke lightly. “Turns out sarcasm wasn’t the approach.”

“—but I should have come right along with you,” Mom said, and I laughed thickly, shaking my head.

“Okay, honestly—all of you, thank you, but I’m not making all of you miss your flight. Flights out of here are so small they might just cancel the flight if four of us skip it.”

Mom shook her head. “I’m not letting them demean my daughters and just taking it lying down.”

Stella made a face. “Are you just trying to avoid Dad?”

Mom waved her off. “Your father and I arefine,Stella, relax.”

I put a hand on Mom’s arm. “Mom, I’m serious,” I said softly. “Thank you. But I really just don’t want to cause more problems for more people. I don’t think there’s any use standing up for me in the family at this point. They’ve made up their minds about me, and honestly, it doesn’t bother me.”

“Ryan…” Mom looked down, her expression furrowed and distant. “I just want to… I want to do better than I have been. You felt like you weren’t loved and appreciated because of your career change. I don’t want to make those mistakes again.”

“Mom—” I pursed my lips, pushing back the tears, and I strained a smile. “I know. Thank you. I love you. But please. This is what I want—for everybody to be okay. I can find my way back. I don’t want to be worrying about everybody else at the same time.”

“But—” Mom started, and Stella spoke up.

“You heard her, Mom. It’s about respecting her wishes, right?”

Mom visibly struggled for a minute before—I saw the change, nearly imperceptible, in the precise moment where she realized she wasn’t talking me down, and I wondered briefly if I was always going to push everyone away.

∞∞∞

“So that doesn’t explain why you’re here,” I said as Stella eased herself by her knees onto the sofa bed in the hotel room, testing it.

“My heart would explode if I had to look at Grandma for one more second,” she said. I turned on the AC, and it rattled to life with that distinctive smell of cheap hotel AC. Drew the thin, generic blinds closed, and I sat on the foot of a soft mattress, my feet aching as I peeled my shoes off.

“And yet you come out swinging telling everybody else to go home…”

“I’ll be hearing about it for ages if people do stay here because of us.” Still, she wouldn’t look at me, making a bigger production of testing a sofa bed, as if she expected it to break when she lay on it. I watched her for a minute before I said,

“Just go ahead and tell me what it’s actually about.”

She sighed hard, flopping onto the sofa bed, tugging off her glasses and dropping them on the side table. “You get it.”

“I really don’t.”

“No, I’m answering the question. I just… thought this would be easier if it was me and you. I don’t know.”

I felt something sinking in my chest—not because she was wrong, but because she was all too right. And I’d been hoping we weren’t talking about it. I set my shoes down next to where I’d propped up my suitcase, lying back on the bed. The air tasted like Lysol and air conditioning. Like every hotel I’d been in. A hundred hotels all across the world, a trail in my wake, like I was running. From what?

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