Page 29 of For Fox Sake

She groans, slamming her juice box on the small table between us. “Death is fucking stupid. I have to say it sometimes. It’s the worst. It’s impossible to fathom that someone who means so much can just be gone. Forever. Someone said to me once that grief is love with nowhere to go. I know you can’t have one without the other, but it fucking hurts. It sucks.”

Truer words have never been spoken. “It really does suck.” My fingers drum on the arm rest. “After the car accident, it was a rough few years. My dad never quite recovered from the loss.”

“And then you took care of him when he had cancer.”

I nod.

“You said you had other family too?”

“Sisters. Four of them.”

Her brows lift. “Wow, four sisters? Are they older or younger?”

“All older than me. Finley, Mindy, Piper, and Taylor. Finley is the eldest. She raised the rest of us. Our mom took off when I was one. Finley was eight at the time. After Dad died, she ran our family property singlehandedly. I helped, but I was mostly a burden.”

“I’m sure that’s not true.”

I hold up a hand. “Oh, it’s very true. I was coping with everything that had happened by swimming to the bottom of every bottle I could find. And it’s like they say, first you take a drink and then the drink takes you. We almost lost the property.”

“I’m sure that was due to more than just you.”

I dip my head in acknowledgment. “That’s true, but I didn’t help. We were struggling to keep it afloat. We had a bunch of cabin rentals, kind of like you have going on here, but in the woods. They were old and outdated and falling apart. Then some of the nearby ski resorts upgraded and we had almost nothing to offer paying customers in comparison. Finley refused to let it go, even when we were up to our eyeballs in debt. Then this completely ridiculous New York City billionaire pressured her to sell and offered a boatload of cash.”

“You’re smiling. There’s definitely a story there. You told me your family runs a kids’ camp or something?”

I nod. “Yeah. The ridiculous billionaire, his name’s Oliver Nichols, and he’s a giant pain in my ass.” A giant pain that is likely even now getting ready to send in some of his henchmen to locate me. “Oliver and Finley eventually negotiated a joint-ownership agreement for the land and converted it to the camp. Finley manages the camp, and Oliver provides the funding. And he’s going to marry my other sister, Piper.”

“Wait.” She straightens in her seat. “Piper? Piper Fox? The artist? Your sister is Piper Fox?”

“Yep.”

Her mouth drops open. “Stop it. No way! I’ve seen some of her work. It’s incredible. She did an installation for the school of medicine at Ithaca. It was a miniature bronze sculpture, with two figures, and one had broken off a piece of their heart and was sticking it in the other one’s chest. It sounds weird and gross, but it was really cool. It was representative of the pieces of ourselves we give up helping others. I’ve never forgotten it. Is all your family living in New York?”

“All except Mindy. She’s on the road right now with her boyfriend, Luke Fletcher. She owns a record label, so she stays pretty busy.”

She lifts a hand up, her palm flat in a stopping motion. “Okay, hold on. I’ve heard of Luke Fletcher and Mindy Fox. You have a lot of famous sisters.”

“They are incredible. But don’t ever tell them I said so.”

She angles her legs toward me. “If your whole family is all there, why did you leave? And come to Dull, of all places?”

I don’t want to lie to her. But how can I tell her the truth? I came looking for you. I can’t tell her. Not yet. But I can give her a partial truth. “I’ve lived there my whole life. I’ve never left except for vacations. I needed to experience something new, have a change of scenery. You said you lived in Ithaca. Why did you leave to move here?”

“I moved back home after Mia got pregnant.”

I prop my elbow on the armrest, leaning closer. “That had to be hard. You said you lived in Ithaca since middle school and so you were, what, early twenties when Mia was pregnant?”

“Yeah. I had just finished college. I had planned on going into a nursing program in the fall at Cornell. I received my acceptance letter right before Ari was born and Mia died.”

“Well, fuck.”

She chuckles and points at me. “Yep. There it is again.”

“Appropriate in all kinds of fuckworthy situations.”

“So many of those in my life,” she murmurs and then pushes to her feet. “Did you want more juice?”

I stand and take a step toward her, the space between us shrinking to inches. “Thanks, but I better not. Too much sugar and I’ll be taking everyone out with me like Bruce.”

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