The Long and Winding Road (The Seafare Chronicles 4)

“Oh, I don’t know, Otter. Maybe it’s the fact that I come home and my mother’s dead and my little sister is here and you’re fucking pregnant with twins.”

“I’m not pregnant,” Otter reassures him. “Megan is. I thought that was obvious.”

The Kid sputters at him, and I have to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing maniacally.

“You’re not funny,” the Kid says. “I’m serious.”

“Hi, Serious. I’m Otter.”

I laugh but cover it up by coughing up a lung.

I can see the Kid’s lips quirking just a little, but he’s trying to hold on to his anger. “Is this going to be a thing for you now? Dad jokes? Because if it is, I’m moving back to New Hampshire. I swear to god.”

“Yeah,” Otter says, scratching the back of his neck. “I don’t know why I keep doing that.”

“It’s the hormones,” I tell them both. “Otter tells dad jokes, and I have to buy things with elephants on them. Megan is infecting us all.”

The Kid sighs. “I’m an asshole.”

“A little.”

“I just… it’s—ugh. I just don’t like it when things change.”

“Kicking and screaming into the future as always,” Otter says.

“I just wish you’d told me.”

“I get that,” I say. “But what we wanted was for you to focus on yourself, which was the whole reason for you going to New Hampshire to begin with. You made that choice, and we respected that—”

“Bullshit you did. You let the air out of one of the tires on the SUV the night before I left and said I’d just have to stay.”

“—respected your choice, because we knew it was the right thing for you. And think about how you’re acting now, okay? Because yes, you are being an asshole, but at least you’re here and being an asshole to our faces instead of across the country. I can deal with it here. I can see you. I can yell at you. I don’t have to wonder what’s going on while I was here and you were there. We didn’t tell you because again, we were thinking of you. Even when we were making a decision for ourselves, we were still thinking of you. If anything, you’re the one being unfair here. This is supposed to be good. This is what we want.”

“And it’s not going to change everything,” Otter says.

The Kid snorts. “Yeah, I don’t believe that.”

“Okay,” Otter says. “Maybe a little. Maybe a lot. But you? Us? That’s not going to change. You mean exactly the same. Nothing is going to take away from that. No one ever could.”

The Kid rolls his eyes, like he thinks Otter’s full of shit, but I can see it, on his face and in the way he’s holding himself. When you spend half your life monitoring every little expression, every little tic because you’re worried that something bad could happen, you recognize things for what they are. Because Otter has nailed it exactly. Things are changing. And that’s what the Kid is worried about.

“You’re fucking stupid,” I tell him, instead of saying something nicer.

Otter says, “Bear—”

“Excuse me?” Ty asks, eyebrows climbing.

“No. That’s what this is about. You’re being fucking stupid. We’re not leaving you behind, you idiot. We’re not going to love you any fucking less just because we’re having a kid—”

“Two kids,” Otter reminds me.

“Two kids,” I say and try desperately not to let that overwhelm me. “This is your home too, and it always will be.”

“And Izzie?” he asks, deflecting like an expert. “What about her?”

“What about her?”

“Is this her home too?”