“I’m the one who is sorry.” Nancy patted her shoulder. “I never wanted you to know.”
Jenna glanced across the room and saw that her sister was crying, too. It was the first time she’d seen her sister cry since she’d lost Ed.
Lauren cleared her throat. “We’re glad you told us.”
“You probably think I was a fool.” Nancy fumbled in her purse and pulled out a tissue. “If the same thing ever happened to either of you two girls I would be the first to tell you to leave. Walk out. You deserve only the best. You deserve to be treated with love and respect. Anything less than that isn’t worth sticking around for. But it’s too late to wish I’d made different choices. All I can do is make the right choice
now. Selling The Captain’s House will mean I have enough money to buy a small place, and give the rest to you girls.” She blew her nose hard and looked at Lauren. “I can’t protect you from what you’re going through, but at least I should be able to help you financially.”
All this and sell her home?
Jenna wasn’t going to let that happen. There had to be another way.
Lauren obviously agreed. “You’re not selling this house, Mom, and that’s final. This time you’re not the provider.”
Nancy swallowed, visibly moved. “We don’t have any other option.”
It was the first time Jenna could remember hearing her mother say we.
The first time she’d ever turned to them for help in solving a problem.
She felt a warmth inside that she hadn’t felt before. For once her family felt like a unit instead of the sum of disparate parts.
It was funny how such a low point could also feel like a high.
“Maybe we do.” She let go of her mother and picked up Lauren’s pad of paper and a pen from the table. “We’re going to figure something out. Put the kettle on, Lauren. Let’s make a start.”
20
Mack
Rebellion: organized resistance or opposition
to an authority
Mack sat on the jetty in the marina with her arms looped round her knees. Her bike was propped against a wall in the harbor.
She didn’t even know what she was doing here. All she knew was that she didn’t want to spend another lonely weekend in the house trapped with her family. She couldn’t handle her own emotions, let alone theirs. It was like being caught in a flash flood. She couldn’t get her head above the surface to breathe. Something else had happened, although she had no idea what. She’d returned home from school a few days before to find her grandmother, her mother and her aunt huddled around the kitchen table. She couldn’t remember ever seeing them huddled before. It was clear she’d interrupted something big. She hadn’t hung around waiting for someone to tell her because no one in her family was big on confessions. Instead she’d grabbed milk from the fridge and gone straight to her room.
For once her mother hadn’t followed her. She’d told herself she was glad about that, but the truth was that she felt lonelier than she ever had in her life before.
Kennedy had ignored her since the incident on the beach, and because the other kids were terrified of Kennedy, they ignored her, too.
It didn’t matter so much during class, but at lunchtime she sat on her own at one of the lunch tables in the farthest corners of the cafeteria, wishing she could wind back time.
It felt as if every part of her life had gone wrong at the same time.
School was a nightmare. Home was a nightmare. She had no friends. No one to talk to. Which was why she was here now, on a Saturday morning, sitting on a dock that smelled of salt water and fish.
She missed her dad. Ed. She should be thinking of him as Ed. She missed their Saturday morning bike rides, their visits to the museums and the way he always managed to calm her mother down.
Mack felt desperately sad, and had no idea what to do with all the feelings inside her. And as for school—she had reinvented herself so many times in an attempt to be popular that she no longer knew who she was.
She saw Scott before he saw her. He walked with a loose, easy stride as if he was on the deck of a ship. His arms were loaded with bags and sailing gear and he was aiming for the big black inflatable boat moored right by her. Captain trotted alongside him, tail wagging.
Scott stopped when he saw her, but Captain bounded across and greeted her like a long-lost friend.
Mack buried her hands and face in his warm fur, grateful that at least someone loved her.