Page 8 of P.S. I'm Still Yours

“You shouldn’t have done that,” Kane breathes, and call me crazy, but it sounds like he’s saying thank you.

I expect him to reject my embrace. Any second now. But he never does. He rests his chin on top of my head and circles my waist with his arms, his tall build swallowing me whole.

I’m hugging Kane.

Kane is hugging me.

Either I’m dreaming, or the fruit punch they were serving at the party wasn’t punch at all.

“I’m sorry,” I choke out.

“It’s okay, Hads.”

Images of his dad being violent toward him, mocking him for wanting to play music, burn before my eyes, and I wish for something so awful I’m pretty sure it goes against all the rules for making wishes.

For a fleeting moment, I wish Mr. Wilder would disappear.

I wish for a world where Kane’s father doesn’t exist.

Little did I know…

My wish would soon be granted.

Two months later…

HADLEY

“Kids, can you come down here for a second?” Mom’s request carries across the house like the walls are made of paper—I wish I was exaggerating.

Mom is watching the news downstairs, and I can hear every word the reporter is saying all the way from my bedroom on the second floor, even with the door closed. But hey, what else can you expect from a seventy-year-old house?

“Coming!” I push off my bed.

I stop at the door, glancing around a bedroom I barely recognize.

I can’t recall the last time my room was this clean. It took days, but we finally managed to make the house presentable for our guests.

Mom made us go through every nook and cranny of the house—seriously, we cleaned spots I didn’t even know existed—in expectation of their arrival today.

It’s like she thinks Evie and Kane are going to walk through the door and immediately start combing the place for dust.

I jog down the stairs, the past two months looping through my mind like a movie. Suffice to say, nothing about our stay in Golden Cove went according to plan.

We were having lunch on the patio, just two days after the cocktail party from hell, when Evie got the call telling her that her husband had died.

They said he was on his way back to New York when a suspected “mechanical failure” claimed his life.

We later found out that the pilot flying his private jet had a major drinking problem and was going through a particularly nasty divorce. Throw especially strong winds and thick fog into the mix, and you’ve got all the makings of a tragedy.

Mom said Mr. Wilder’s death was what the police call an “open-and-shut case.” A perfect example of pilot negligence. The investigation was over before we knew it.

But Evie and Kane’s nightmare was just beginning…

I can still see Evie’s face when she heard. There were no tears, no screaming, not even a sliver of pain in her voice as she spoke to the man on the phone.

Just shock.

I figured she needed a moment to wrap her head around it. I thought surely, once the initial shock wore off, she’d show sadness, but she never did.