Family For Beginners

He stared across the lake and she could almost feel his mind working. “When did she tell you all this? Why did she confide in you all of a sudden?”

“It doesn’t matter.” This wasn’t the time to talk about her trip across the lake. “And I don’t understand it either, to be honest. Unless—” She hesitated, torn between the need for confidentiality and her anxiety for Izzy. “Did Izzy and Becca fight a lot?”

“Fight?”

“Was Izzy often mad at her mom?”

He gave a brief shake of his head. “No more than the average teenage girl is with her mother. Why?”

“Did she—” She hated asking because it felt intrusive. “I remember once overhearing my aunt on the phone to someone just after I went to live with her. She was talking about how this wasn’t what she wanted but she was making the best of it. She said she’d been left her sister’s baggage.” She stepped back when he reached out to pull her into his arms. She couldn’t let him hug her. Not right now. If she couldn’t be fully part of his family, she wasn’t sure what the future held for them.

He looked shattered. “Flora—”

“Did you and Becca have a fight? Something Izzy might have overheard that would have worried her?”

“No.” He seemed shaken by her rejection. “No fight.”

“Then I don’t know why Izzy would feel so insecure. Perhaps there was no reason.”

“There could have been a reason.” Jack’s voice was hoarse, and his skin had turned ghastly pale. “We didn’t fight, but there were other things.”

She wanted to yell What things? She’d wondered, of course, if it was something more than grief that had kept him silent on the subject of Becca, but she hadn’t wanted to think it. And yet now she had the confirmation. Here was something else he hadn’t shared.

Her heart plummeted. Fractured.

“Go and talk to her, Jack.” Her lips were stiff and her legs felt shaky.

“Flora—”

“Go, Jack!”

He looked torn. “You and I need to talk. Th

ere are things I need to tell you, but you’re right I need to see Izzy.” He glanced at her face and then back toward the house, weighing his options. “Just tell me we’re not over. I can’t let that happen.”

Couldn’t he see that their relationship couldn’t be separated from his family? She’d started to feel like part of that family, but it was obvious she wasn’t.

Where did that leave their relationship?

Unable to answer his question, she walked back along the trail to the garden. Her shirt clung to her skin and her hair curled wildly. She knew she probably looked a total mess.

As they emerged from the trees she noticed that the rain had stopped and sun was peeping through a gap in the clouds.

Someone emerged from the house but it wasn’t Izzy, it was Clare.

Her face was devoid of color. Either she’d received a terrible shock or was about to deliver one. “Jack. Where have you been? Goodness, the pair of you are soaked! I’d suggest you go and dry off, but we need to talk.”

“Later.” Jack was already striding past her toward the Lodge. “I need to find Izzy.”

Clare reached out and caught his arm, her grip so tight her fingers whitened. “It’s important, Jack.”

“If it’s about Izzy then I already—”

“It’s about Becca.”

The air left Flora’s lungs in a rush. Clare wanted to talk about Becca?

Now what?