Page 52 of Property of Prime
Because maybe she was.
Shay swallowed hard and whispered, “I don’t know what any of it means.”
I squeezed her knee.“We’ll figure it out.”
She was mine to protect.
And whatever the hell her past held, whatever darkness had followed her here… it would have to get through me first.
Chapter Twelve
Shay
Bernice’s cabin was quieter in the morning.
Not peaceful quiet, more like… waiting quiet.
The kind of quiet that wrapped around you and made you think too hard.Sunlight filtered through the curtains in soft, hazy stripes, and dust hung in the air like it hadn’t been disturbed in decades, even though we’d been crawling all over this place yesterday.
I sat on the floor with my back against the couch, legs crossed, with a shoebox of photos balanced on my thighs.Prime sat behind me on the couch with his legs on either side of my shoulders.Close enough that I could feel his warmth at my back.Every so often, his breath brushed the top of my head as he leaned in to look over my shoulder.I noticed it more than I wanted to admit.
Anchor sat in the recliner across the room with his eyes locked on the open door like he expected someone to come flying through it.He didn’t blink much.Didn’t talk much either.Just sat there, hands clasped loosely on his knees, with his jaw ticking every few seconds.
Pearl was curled up on the other end of the couch, thumbing through another cardboard box that held what looked like a lifetime’s worth of paper clutter.Receipts, torn envelopes, random lists, folded pages from old notebooks were all organized into piles that made sense only to Bernice.
It looked like chaos, but I had a feeling she had known exactly where everything was.
“Why did she keep this?”Pearl muttered, holding up a faded receipt.“It’s from 2001.She bought a wrench and a bag of marshmallows.”
Prime huffed.“Sounds like Bernice.”
Pearl shook her head and smiled a little.“She saved everything.I swear she kept every receipt she ever got.”
She set it aside and dug deeper.
“This one’s from 1997.Sardines and red nail polish.”She stared at the paper.“What the hell was she doing with that combination?”
A tiny laugh slipped out of me.“Pearl, you knew her better than I did.You tell me.”
Pearl paused at that, her mouth softening.“I’m… really sorry you never got to know her.”
The apology hit deeper than I expected.
I shook my head.“Don’t be.I’m not mad.I’m just… trying to figure out what I should feel.”
And how I should feel about all of this.My grandmother, this island, my mother, the lies, and the memories clawing at the edges of my mind.
Pearl reached out and brushed my arm.“She would’ve loved you.”
I swallowed hard and looked down at the pictures in my hands—photos of Bernice younger, holding me as a baby while laughing beside my mom.
“I wish I remembered her,” I whispered.
Prime’s hand came down gently on my shoulder.“You don’t have to force it,” he said quietly above my head.“Whatever you remember, you remember.Whatever you don’t… we’ll figure out.”
I nodded and let his voice soak into my skin.It helped—more than I wanted to admit.
I lifted another stack of photos, flipped through them slowly, and tried to take in faces I’d never known I was missing.My fingers brushed a picture of Bernice painting on a porch somewhere, her hair wild and her smile bright.
