Page 76 of The Autumn We Fell in Love

“You okay?” Tristan asks, closing the door from the patio as he joins me in the kitchen.

“Yeah,” I mutter. “Where’s that booze you mentioned?”

“Uh, right here.” I turn to see him nudge a cooler on the floor with his toe.

I scowl. “A cooler? Why not put whatever’s in there in the fridge?”

He shrugs. “Brought it from my place. Figured I’ll be bringing it back later, might as well leave it where it is.”

Shaking my head, I cross the kitchen to where he stands and throw back the cooler lid. Bottles of beer and a few wine selections glimmer up from their bed of ice. I select a locally brewed porter, slam the cooler shut, and start hauling open drawers, looking for a bottle opener.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” my brother asks again. “Because you’re acting all . . .” He waves a hand at me. “All persnickety.”

I glare at him. “I’m not persnickety, I’m thirsty.” Scouring the counters, I see what I’m looking for resting on the drainboard. In a flash I’ve got the top off my beer and am gulping down a steadying swallow of the cool bitter.

“Geez, Isla,” Tristan says, watching me. “Slow down.”

I come up for air and realize I’ve already downed half of my beer. “Mind your own business.”

“Oh,” he says, and the hairs on my neck bristle as his tone sprouts thorns, “like you have, since leaving Edgewood?”

“I left Edgewood because I had to,” I round on him. “You know that.”

“You had to? Why, because there were too many of the people who love you and Guin here?”

I shake my head. “Don’t you dare.” My voice is a hiss. It would startle me if I wasn’t so angry. “Don’t you fucking dare.”

“You know, I think I get to dare. I think I’ve earned it for being the one who stayed, the one who watched Mom lose more and more of herself. For being the one to listen to Dad sobbing when he thought no one was paying attention.”

“Don’t —“ I begin, but Tristan shakes his head, cutting me off.

“I know you remember me as the golden child, the one with no real sense of responsibility. An oblivious guy with his head in the clouds. But that was me in high school. A lot has changed in Edgewood since you left, including me.”

I catch a note of hurt in my brother’s voice, and suddenly I have a hard time maintaining the anger burning in my chest.

But perversely I want to, so I change the topic. “Why didn’t you tell me Ash would be here tonight?”

He blinks. I’m successful in catching him off guard. “I didn’t think it mattered.”

“He was here when —" the words catch in my throat, and I have to take another swig of beer to continue. “He was here when everything went wrong for me. Seeing him . . .” I trail off. I don’t know how to explain to my brother how seeing one of the few friendly faces from high school still hurts, still brings back memories I’d rather forget.

Tristan shakes his head, curls bouncing around his chin. “Ash is family. Always has been in my opinion, but he’s earned it extra in recent years. He’s part of the family, and we’re having a family gathering. Therefore he’s here. It’s logic.”

“If you say so,” I say more to myself than to him, but he hears it.

“I do,” he growls, a sudden fierceness entering his voice. “I do say so, and I’m the one who gets to, along with Mom and Dad. Because you took Guin and ran with hardly a warning, leaving the rest of us to wonder what the hell we fucking did to chase you away.”

A chill runs over my skin that the bitterness of the beer can do nothing to cut. “You didn’t chase me away,” I breathe, fear clutching at my heart. Is that what my family thinks, that I left Edgewood because of them?

Tristan’s pacing the length of the kitchen now. “Did you know,” he says, stabbing a pointed finger out at the patio, “that Mom asks me every fucking day what she did that made you run away? Even when she’s not herself, she still asks.”

I wrap my fingers around the beer bottle in an attempt to stop my hands from trembling. “I didn’t know that,” I whisper.

“Damn right you didn’t, because Dad wouldn’t let me tell you. I wanted to, but he was afraid it would stop you from ever letting them visit you and Guin again.”

“I would never —“ I begin, but Tristan cuts me off.

“Don’t you see, though? We don’t know what you would and would not do anymore. Not since you left and never came back. Not since you decided every-other-year visits at your place were enough of a substitute for getting to watch the baby we all helped raise grow up. And I know you could — I know your job lets you work from anywhere.”

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