Page 96 of Second Story

“They are. And they each have years of valuable subject knowledge and experience, yet each one of them was either sacked after high-profile incidents or was too burned out to stay in the profession. Some made quite violent departures from their vocations.” Luke turns to face the rock pools, so I abandon my watch on those closed curtains to check on Lenny.

I don’t need to—Mum already stands sentry for him. She watches every move my brother and his friends make like she has since she graduated her pattern-breaking course and stepped in to cover the house-parenting aspect of Ruth’s maternity leave. That frees me to refocus on Luke, who now leans on the sea wall, braced on both hands.

I do the same, the granite under my palms as rough as my question. “Violent? What kind of violent do you mean?”

I can’t help picturing blades, which is a reminder of a bedtime story Lenny hasn’t asked for in ages. That book promised wounds can heal and that scars can help to grow empathetic muscles, and in that way, Luke Lawson truly is a giant.

His shoulder knocks against mine more gently this time.

“Breathe.”

He continues as if I’m a normal person instead of someone on the tail end of his own sharp-edged healing. “Sorry, Isaac.Violent was a poor word choice. I only meant that some of today’s candidates fought for what their students needed and were subsequently forced out of the profession. Others stood up for children in emergency situations and paid a high price for how they responded to crises that other adults ran away from. I’ll risk recruiting that kind of bravery, even if it means dealing with some strong personalities. Or with supporting some bruised ones. Both can have potential, and everyone deserves a second chance, yes?”

I nod, voiceless for a moment. I also face the pub again in time to see those curtains open, and my head knows it isn’t Joe on the other side of the glass.

Tell that to my heart.

My head also knows that Lenny is the only Webber holding a crab line this morning. All the same, another line pulls tight inside me, tying me to someone tall, dark, and suspicious who has taken a year to believe I’m not about to breathe fire to incinerate him for what happened to my mother. Like the rest of us, Josh was scorched by a fire lit by other people.

He never intended to steal Mum from us.

Time, and some hard conversations, mean I’m increasingly certain she would have been silenced for good if she’d tried to kick that drug-dealing cuckoo out of her nest without a da Silva of her own to help fight that battle with her.

And if she’d been released any sooner, she could have been scarred like Noah or Joe as a warning. Without Josh’s gift for gathering data and the drive hardwired into his way of thinking, she might have been lost to me and Lenny for good. Now she has two da Silva men on her side. Or three, if I count my secret favourite, who I’m more than a little gutted couldn’t make it here for today’s beach celebration.

You see, Joe’s dad is my Aslan. Yeah, things got frosty for his family, but he roared to life to bring his sons back together via the shared car Joe swears got this story started.

As for the rest?

None of it is neat and tidy.

Top boys still run Wintergreen, where machetes continue to scare kids, but if I know anything about storytelling, it’s that happy endings don’t have to be perfect. The very best books have one thing in common: They always make me wish for a few more pages to turn.

That’s all I want with Joe—more pages with him featuring on each one, fromOnce upon a timeall the way toThe End.

I’m busy picturing that when Luke regains my attention with another nudge. “It was good of Josh to give career advice to our neurodiverse students yesterday. So aspirational. And for him to agree to come back with us today for another talk with the whole sixth-form while I’m busy interviewing for the summer school spots. Your mother as well. I know the students are looking forward to hearing her story. Everyone is so fond of her.” He eyes the open water beyond the harbour and makes what feels like an abrupt change of subject. “You know, it wouldn’t be a bad place for a honeymoon.”

“What wouldn’t?”

“Kara-Enys.” He points at a smudge on the horizon. “The island where we’ll run the summer school.”

“There’s thatweagain. And what honeymoon—” Realisation comes a beat too late. “Ruth told you.”

“Told me what?” I guess he’s fishing about what Ruth and her baby walked into the library to find me doing not long ago, then promised not to tell a soul. Luke adds some tasty bait to tempt more detail from me the same way Lenny does to his crab line below. “Because if you think she told me about what you’ve been searching online, it wasn’t Ruth who left those clues.”

I don’t bite until he sounds more serious instead of teasing. “But if a joint project is on your mind, and you’re at all worried, I’d listen.” He stops staring out to sea, gaze meeting with mine to hit me with a whole ocean of care. “You know that I didn’t only gain a storyteller and librarian when you joined us, right? Or a perfect houseparent when your mother stepped into Ruth’s houseparent shoes. Hadi gained another best friend.”

Luke proves again that he’s far from scary. He’s so soft about his children.

“You didn’t know him when he and Jamila were new to Britain and neither of them had any English. When Hadi couldn’t tell us where he or his sister were hurting. Seeing him and Lenny both find their voices?” He inhales deeply and then exhales slowly, the same way I’ve learned to do here in Cornwall. “Thank you for sharing your family, but I do need to share something with you too.”

“What?”

Luke’s shoulder is against mine again, as immovable as this sea wall. “The fact that I get a report of every search made on the school network. It’s amazing what the students decide might be fun to look up. Sometimes that’s entertaining. Occasionally, it’s concerning. Not a single one of them has ever searched how much Cornish gold it takes to make a ring for a man with large hands, or where to get that gold smelted. I liked your attention to detail—the engraving was a nice touch.”

I change the subject in a hurry. “How about you tell me about thisweyou keep mentioning? And what the island has to do with it.” I nudge him back way harder than past-me could ever have imagined. “Spill it, because I need to be somewhere.”

“Not until later, right? I could borrow you for a while until Joe gets back from London. I won’t keep you from going to the beach with him, where you may or may not have plans tosurprise him with something shiny. You do know it’s customary to receive gifts on your birthday, not give them out, right?”

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