remembering how he’d felt, flying along on his bike beside his big brother. Once he was grown, he learned that most older brothers considered their siblings pests. Not Gavin. He’d always treated Burke like his best friend, even more so after their parents were gone. A painful lump lodged itself in his throat. He should have spent more time with his brother while he had the chance. Now he’d never have the opportunity again.
“Did you get mad at him?”
“Hmm?” Burke had to reorient himself to understand Kitt’s question.
“Did you get mad at him? For playing tricks on you?”
Burke thought about it. “Not really,” he softly admitted. “It might sound weird, but all his teasing made me feel, I don’t know, special. Like he did that stuff because he wanted to make me laugh. I don’t know how to explain it.”
Burke tried to find the right words so he could explain to Kitt that was just how his dad was. There was no malice in Gavin’s pranks. He did those things to lift people’s spirits. His brother had been one of the most bighearted people he’d ever known.
“No one laughs anymore, now that he’s gone,” Kitt said.
The words were like an arrow, straight through Burke’s heart. “It’s hard, losing someone you love. Your dad and I lost both our mom and dad. We were older than you when it happened though. It takes time, but I promise, Kitt, you will learn to laugh again.”
Kitt didn’t look convinced. “What about my mom?”
“Your mom?”
“Yeah, will she learn to laugh again, too?”
Burke frowned. He hadn’t noticed it, but now that Kitt brought it up, he realized Erin’s laughter had been a rare thing in the last year and a half that he’d been back in Findlay Roads. If Gavin had been here, that would have been his top priority.
Making Erin laugh again.
“One day, she will, Kitt. I promise.”
But nearly two whole years had passed since Gavin’s death. How long would it take for Erin to laugh again?
* * *
BURKE WAITED UNTIL after dinner to approach Erin. He volunteered to do the dishes while Aunt Lenora took Kitt into the living room. Erin helped finish tidying up a few things and then disappeared. Burke took his time, rinsing off dishes and loading them into the dishwasher, then wiping down the counters and table. When he felt everything was sufficiently in order, he went in search of Erin.
He found her curled up in an armchair on the inn’s veranda, staring out at the backyard. She didn’t even look up as he took the seat next to her.
He sat in silence, listening to the chirp of crickets and the distant sounds of the nearby bay. The air was tinged with damp, and there was the faint scent of burning wood in the air, probably from someone’s bonfire. He closed his eyes for a moment, remembering many evenings much like this one, with him and Erin sitting in companionable silence. But then he remembered how long gone those days were, and he opened his eyes.
“I’m sorry about earlier today, letting Kitt handle the utility knife.”
She didn’t speak, but he caught the faintest shift in her posture, a flicker of interest at his apology.
“You were right, I need to be more careful.”
She relaxed, some of the stiffness leaving her shoulders, but she didn’t look at him. “Thank you. I appreciate that.”
Burke let silence fall for a few minutes before speaking again.
“You know, he said something to me today. Kitt did, I mean.”
She cocked her head in his direction without shifting to face him.
“He asked me if you were ever going to laugh again,” Burke said.
This statement finally drew her full attention. She turned to look at him.
“I didn’t realize it until he asked me that, but he’s right. You never laugh anymore.”
Erin winced. “There’s no timetable for grief. I can’t just will myself to laugh again.”
“I know, I know,” Burke hastened to reassure her, noting her slightly bitter tone. “But Aunt Lenora is concerned, too. She said you don’t get out enough.”
“What? Am I supposed to play the part of the merry widow?”
She was even more prickly than usual tonight. He wondered what had put her in such a foul mood. Maybe it was him. He knew she wasn’t comfortable with him staying here.
“Erin, I’m not trying to be critical. You’ve lost a lot, and no one expects you to just shake that off and be happy again. But for Kitt’s sake—” It was the wrong thing to say, and he knew it the instant the words left his mouth.
She stood to her feet with sharp, abrupt movements and stepped past where he was sitting. “Don’t tell me how to raise my son. You barely know him.”
“But I’d like to know him.”
That brought her up short. She froze, halfway to the inn’s back door, but she didn’t turn around.
“I know I wasn’t around much, after he was born, but now that I’m here—”
She whirled on her heel, eyes sparking. “And why are you here?”
He blinked. “Excuse me?”
“Why are you here, Burke?”
He felt a prickle of irritation. Did she want him to relive the humiliation of his failed wedding from the day before?
“You know why. I had nowhere to go, after Tessa...left.”
She made a quick, impatient gesture with her hand, dismissing this explanation. “Not now. Why did you come back to Findlay Roads at all? You missed Gavin’s funeral. You sent an impersonal card to us and wrote only one sentence. One. So sorry for your loss. And then, six months later, you show up here, as if nothing had changed.”
“That is not fair,” he snapped, rising to his feet. “Everything had changed.”
“Not for you! You’d barely been home in years—”
“I lost my brother!” he cut her off. “I lost my best friend! You think you’re the only one who has grief to manage? You’re not alone in this, Erin. You’re not the only one who misses him.”
He could see her jaw working, teeth grinding beneath the skin. He couldn’t tell if she was searching for words or simply trying to contain her emotions.
“But don’t you see?” she murmured, her voice raspy. “You’d left years ago, you had all this time and distance already. How can you possibly know what it felt like to lose him, without a choice?”
Burke’s tone turned cool, the words low but hard. “But I do know. You forget that I lost both my parents without a choice. And then my brother, too. Without a choice.”
Erin’s jaw clenched tight, and he could tell she was holding back the things she wanted to say. He knew the expression well. It had haunted him for a long time. It was the same countenance she’d worn over the years, during the handful of times he’d come back to town. It was part of the reason he visited so little—it was a look he hated because it only emphasized the distance that had grown between them when they had once been so close.
When she finally spoke, she said nothing more about Gavin but rather warned, “Just don’t get so close to Kitt that you break his heart when you leave.”
With that, she turned on her heel and headed back inside, leaving him to wonder just whose heart she was really worried about him breaking.