• • •

I barely slept last night. I dragged myself back home when I was struggling to keep my eyes open in front of the TV but as soon as my head hit the pillow, I was wide awake and I couldn't stop thinking about Dad and all the what-ifs. What if Mom and I hadn't gone home early? What if he had taken an extra couple minutes to lock up? What if the police had looked harder?

When I finally did drift off at some godforsaken hour, I was thrown straight into a nightmare. I was at the building site where Dad died. I could see him alone and bleeding to death, but I couldn't get to him. I was trapped there for an eternity before I finally managed to wake myself up in a cold sweat, my lungs aching.

I ended up creeping into Mom's room. She was lying awake, trying to read, but I could see her heart wasn't in it, her eyes glazed over as she turned pages and failed to take in the words. When I crawled into her bed, she held my hand and dropped her book. It hit the floor with a thump, losing her page, but I doubt that mattered.

At four a.m., we ended up in the kitchen when we heard Kris up and about. He made hot chocolate and Mom cried when he used Dad's recipe. Kris cried too. I'm used to Mom's tears, but she hardly ever cried before Dad died. Everything used to make her laugh, but now it feels like everything makes her cry.

We talked for a bit. Nothing serious. We were all huddled up on the sofa together when Kris piped up with a memory of Dad. Something simple, an everyday anecdote that sparked an hour of sharing stories and smiles. I must've fallen asleep there before it's where I wake up, a blanket thrown over me even though it's seventy-five degrees out.

I'm totally disoriented, my head swimming and my throat burning. It's only when I register the open curtains and the heat of the sun on my face that I realize it's a lot later than I usually wake up. I'm used to early light and weak heat, a seven o'clock morning in Five Oaks, but this is hot and bright.

The clock on the mantelpiece says it's after eleven. I've been here for six hours. I've missed class. I've missed half the day. I should be flooded with panic, racing upstairs to change and drive to college before I miss my afternoon classes, but I'm not. I can't bring myself to move. I just don't care, too weighed down by the past twenty-four hours to give a crap that I slept through class.

"Morning, sleepyhead," comes a voice from behind. I struggle to haul myself up, my arms weak and my body heavy, to see Gray smiling down at me with two mugs in his hand. "Did I wake you up with the blender?"

"Huh?" My brain's foggy, my eyes a little blurry. I need a shower. "No, I don't think so."

"Oh, awesome." He grins. "I tried to make you a Frappuccino." He holds out one of the mugs, a mountain of whipped cream threatening to fall on me when he tilts the mug. "I've never made one before but your uncle had some and said it's good."

"Kris is here?" I can't shake this damn brain fog, and I'm still struggling to process Gray standing right in front of me until I take the cold mug and he sits down next to me.

"Yup. He said he's flying to La Guardia from Hopkins later, so he's here for a while. Dad took your mom to her doctor's appointment at nine and he said they should be back for one. I'm here ... well, forever, really." He holds out his arm and gives me that smile that convinces me everything's fine. "Whatever you need me for."

"How long have you been here?" I ask, then realize that I sound kinda rude when I haven't even said hi, so I say, "Hi, by the way. And thank you. For being here. For everything."

"Any time, Storie," he says. "I've been here since our parents left, so a couple hours?"

"Oh my God, I'm so sorry. I've been asleep the whole time. Have I been snoring?"

He shrugs. "A bit. Doesn't bother me though."

"I'm so sorry. You should've woken me up!"

"You shouldn't be," he says, "and I shouldn't have. Kris said you had a rough night so we let you sleep and we bonded."

"You bonded?" I ask, and I hate that half the words coming out of my mouth are questions, but I just feel confused, as though I've reached a tipping point and tripped off the edge, and now I'm just falling.

"Yup," Gray says with a yawn, stretching his arms so his t-shirt lifts and shows off a tanned strip of his stomach. "He taught me a whole bunch of strategies to deal with you, wild one."

I snort a tired laugh. "Very funny."

He beams, his whole face lighting up, but then his expression fades when he gets serious. "He told me everything," he says. "Just so you know. I know. So if you wanna talk, go ahead. If you want me to go, let me know. If you'd rather just have a mind-blowing mouth orgasm over my lovingly homemade Frappuccino, then by all means go ahead."

"I love you," I say with a smile, and he nearly knocks over my mug when he hugs me.

"Love you too, Storie," he says. "Now drink up, and come outside. Kris made brunch and the weather's perfect so we figured we'd just relax."

I nod, because I don't know what else to do. I feel like I don't know my own body this morning. I feel like a total mess. "Is Kris outside?"

"Yup. I leant him a book. And some clothes, so don't be confused by the guy in my second-favorite Goodwill t-shirt, because it's not me."

"You mean the blonde, white guy I grew up with? How will I ever tell the difference between you two?"

Gray stands and pulls me to my feet. "There's the Storie I've been looking for. Come on," he says, squeezing my hand. "Let's go hang out with my identical twin, who doesn't look quite as good as I do in that polo."

"That's your future step-uncle you're talking about," I tease. "Don't get off on the wrong foot."

"Too late," Gray says. "He reads like a heathen."

"He grew up in a bookstore," I say. "He reads a lot."

"And terribly. Cracked spines and everything. This relationship is doomed." He lets out a heavy sigh and loops his arm through mine, jerking my elbow when I take a sip of my drinks so I get a noseful of cream.

Maybe things can go back to normal. This is just a blip on the radar of Mom and I pulling ourselves together. Maybe the truth is the last tie we needed to fasten.

• • •

At some point after a lazy brunch in the sun, the three of us reading with our feet in the kiddie pool, Gray leaves. He doesn't make a fuss of it, just takes our dishes inside and says there's some stuff he needs to catch up on, and he gives me a look and nods at Kris.

I guess there's a lot he and I need to catch up on too. He's sitting right there and I miss him. My stomach aches with the strength of my craving for our childhood days, when I was seven and he was about to graduate high school but he was still my best friend. He didn't care if people thought he was a loser.

Now there's all this space between us. Our lives went down different forks in the road and I want our paths to converge again. I wish he still lived with us.

"Come here, húg," Kris says, putting down his book and holding out his arm, which he settles around my shoulders when I scoot over to him as though I'm seven again. We sit like that for a while and I'm deafened by the sound of my own thoughts until the loudest falls out of my head.

"Is Mom gonna be ok?" I ask. Kris looks at me. He drops his arm and heaves a sigh and angles himself so he's facing me.

"Mom's gonna be fine," he says, and he half smiles when he catches himself. "Your mom's gonna be fine. I guess mine bit the dust already."

It feels like he just stabbed me in the chest when he says that, so casual about the fact that he's an orphan. I have to remind myself that he never knew his mom. Mine is all he's ever known.

"She's strong as hell, Storie," Kris says, squinting a little when the lazy sun shows itself from behind a cloud.

"Did you ever think she really was your mom?"

He laughs and nods. "Yup. I was convinced," he says. "I thought she was lying for years. I was convinced that it was one of those lifetime situations, y'know? I had this whole story in my head, that she was my mom and her parents kicked her out so she came her for the American Dream." He adds air quotes and rolls his eyes. "She used to say that she wished that was true."

"That you were hers?"

He shrugs. "I think she wished it was that simple," he says. "Honestly, Storie, as far as I'm concerned, we share a mom. Jen raised me. It feels weird even calling her Jen. I mean, she's my sister, but she's not. She's the only mother I've ever known. Your dad was the only father I ever really knew. At least, the only one I can remember." He shades his eyes and sighs, and he gives me a smile.

"That's really sad," I murmur, struck by how little I actually know about Kris's origins, about Mom's life before Dad.

"It's not," he says, then he stops himself. "I guess there's a part of me that's sad I never got to know my real mom. She and nővér were so close. Like you two are." He interlocks his fingers. "I think she was a really special person, but our dad was a bad guy." He wrinkles his nose and leans back on his elbows, and I don't want him to stop.

Mom rarely talks about her own parents. I mean, her mom died thirty years ago, and she never talked to her dad after she left Hungary in the eighties. I know she adored her mom. I know she hated her dad.

"He was abusive," Kris said. "I hardly remember a thing about him, but I remember being scared of him. I was only, what, three? I couldn't stand to be around my own father, and he blamed me for my mom's death."

"Oh my God. Kris..."

He presses his lips together. "I barely remember him," he says. "Nővér barely mentioned him until she kind of snapped one day. Well, you know how she snaps. She doesn't really snap." He lets out a quiet chuckle and I don't want to say a word to interrupt his flow. "I was ... I must've been eleven. You were really little. I was just joking around about some dramatic reveal when she comes out as my real mom, and she lost it."

"She got mad?" I've only seen Mom mad a couple times. It's absolutely terrifying. Maybe because it never happens, and usually she's mostly mad at herself. Kris shakes his head a bit, and I'm kind of relieved.

"She broke down," he says. "She sent your dad off to take you for a walk and she told me everything. About our mom dying and how our dad would hurt her and how she spent three years working her ass off to get me away from him, and how she brought me here as soon as she could afford to get away."

"Oh, God. That must've been awful."

He grimaces. "Yup. I cried because I had no idea how bad she'd had it, and she cried because she made me cry, and she kept saying how much she wished she was my mom and that our dad wasn't our dad, and then your dad came back and you were crying, and that made nővér cry even more."

My eyes are wet. I don't know why, but I don't try to hide it when I rub them to scare off my tears before they can fall. I'm not sure I even can cry anymore, not after last night.

"He just, kind of, mopped us all up," he says with a smile. "He got you settled and he hugged me, and he scooped up your mom and he just ... well, you know how he was. He had this incredible knack for picking up the pieces."

"He was really good at that," I say, holding back a sniff.

"He was an amazing guy. He was a fantastic dad," Kris says. "The second we moved in with him, he treated me like his kid. I loved him so much."

"Me too." My voice is hardly more than a murmur. Kris scoots closer again to hold me in a half hug and I can feel his smile when he presses his cheek to my temple.

"My favourite moment ... I probably already told you, didn't I? When I came out to him?"

"No." I sit a little straighter. I want to see him for this. I want to see the look in his eyes when he talks about my dad.

"I was having a rough time at college," Kris says. "Things just weren't going well and one night I came home in a really bad mood, and nővér got annoyed because I was upsetting you and you were having some kind of school problems, I don't know." He waves his hand and shakes his hand.

"Anyway, he took me out for dinner," he says. "Just the two of us. I thought he was gonna tell me to check my attitude or something, but he just wanted to know what was up and if I was in a bad place and if he could help. It all came out." The corner of his mouth twitches at the inadvertent pun. "I rambled on for forever, I swear, and he just listened the whole time."

"Dad was an amazing listener."

"He really was," Kris says, and he hums his agreement. "He didn't say much until I was done and he asked if I felt better, and I really did. Then we hugged and talked more coherently, and I felt on top of the world by the time we went home. He was the most incredible guy."

I nod because I can't speak because my throat has closed up and my eyes are blurred, my nostrils flaring with the effort of holding it together. I feel like I've lost a limb and I don't know how to function without it, stumbling at every hurdle. I thought I was done feeling like this but two years of repressed feelings are bubbling to the surface now.

Until now, I never felt like I really had the right to grieve. It felt selfish and premature. But now I know; now I can. And I am.

"Anyway," Kris says after a while, his voice brighter. "I guess the point is, your dad was incredible and we were so freaking lucky to know him for as long as we did, and your mom is the strongest woman I know. So whatever's going on with her, whatever this doctor says, or the next doctor, or the next, I know she's going to be fine."

He squeezes my hand and I squeeze back, drowning the voice that whispers you never know on a loop, trying to drive me to distraction with nightmares of losing Mom. For the next hour, he distracts me with positivity instead, illustrating examples of Mom-strength from the big stuff right down to the tiny things, like how she can always open pickle jars.

We're laughing when she and Tad get back and my heart sinks, but she looks, well, relaxed when she comes through to the garden with him by her side. When our eyes meet, she smiles and holds up her crossed fingers.

"The doctor didn't think I was crazy," she says when she sits down next to me, her cool toes nudging my calf. "He listened to me and he ran a lot of tests and took my blood, and he said we'll get to the bottom of this." Her smile widens a fraction and she tucks her hair behind her ears, a little blonder after so much sun. "He's confident."

"Are you?" Kris asks. Mom nods. I could cry all over again. I want whatever this is to be gone. I want Mom to be Mom again, without worrying that she's going to drop down and hurt herself, that something worse is lingering under the surface.

"I feel good," she says, and she pulls me into a hug when she sees me crumpling up on the verge of another bout of ugly crying. I'm just not that in control of my emotions right now. I hate not being in control, but I've given up caring. Mom and Kris have seen me at my worst and if Tad plans to stick around, he's just going to have to get used to it. But that doesn't sound fair. He's already seen us at some of our lowest points, and he's never been anything but wonderful.

• • •

I don't even think of Liam until he turns up in my back yard and steals my words after Mom's gone to bed for an early night. It's only then that I realize it's hours past our scheduled date, that my phone has been in my room all day, and a wave of guilt chokes me when I see him outside my house. I never told him where I live but he's here. I never told my mom about him, but he's here.

"Hey," he says with that intoxicating smile. "Found you." He pushes his keys into his pocket when he sees me, his eyes flitting over Kris. The two of us were enjoying the last of the sun together until the sound of a car outside pulled me to my feet.

"Liam." It's the only word I can think of in the moment. "What're you doing here?"

His eyes linger on Kris for just a moment. Maybe he's trying to figure out if he's a relative or someone I'm seeing on the side. We don't exactly look related. "You didn't show up for our date," he says. "I texted and called but I couldn't get through to you and no-one I asked had seen you all day." He tucks his thumb in his pocket.

"You know where I live?"

"You told me you live in Five Oaks with the four oaks," he says. "I recognized your car out front. I was worried about you." He looks like he's not sure what to say next, like he's waiting for me to say something, but my words are gone. Instead, I hug him.

At first, he seems surprised but then he hugs me back. We haven't hugged like this before but it feels so good to have his arms around me, and he doesn't try to pull away until I do first. I'm painfully aware of my bloodshot eyes and the audience behind me, and the fact that I don't even know what we are. I have to introduce him now, and I don't know how.

"My uncle," I whisper when my words come back.

There's a flicker of something in his eyes. Relief?

"Want me to go?" he asks. "I just wanted to make sure you're ok. Are you ok?"

I nod, but that feels like a betrayal. "My dad died," I say, blunt words dropping out. Confusion crosses his face.

"I thought-"

"Long story," I say. It's not a long story. I've never heard that saying followed by an actual long story. Usually, it takes less than a minute to recount whatever it is that's supposedly so long. I could tell Liam in a matter of seconds. My dad disappeared. I figured he was dead. Now I know he was.

"Ok." He squeezes my hand. "By the way, your uncle is totally staring me down." He keeps his eyes fixed on me. "Is this going to be awkward?"

"That depends. Am I introducing you as some guy I'm seeing or as my boyfriend?" I ask. Might as well get that roadblock out of the way while my head's enough of a mess not to overthink the question.

"Well, boyfriend sounds better," he says, and he gives me that smile, and I melt.

He charms Kris. Skeptical Kris, who doesn't trust any guy's intentions, is charmed by Liam. Liam, who I introduce as my boyfriend. Liam, who stays long enough to down a glass of water I offer him and give me a piece of cake.

I'm torn. Elated that he's here; over the moon that he cares so much; terrified that Mom's going to come downstairs and find him in the kitchen with Kris and me and ask a million questions. I'm not ready for that yet. She didn't tell me about Tad until she was ready; I need a little more time to figure things out before I tell her about Liam. My boyfriend.

When he leaves, thirty minutes after he got here, he takes my hand and pulls me close and kisses me as though we've kissed a million times, as though it's nothing to new. It still feels kind of new to me, and still electrifyingly amazing.

He pulls away and gives me that knee-weakening smile and he waves goodbye to Kris, and he leaves. He drove ninety minutes just to check I'm ok. He cares that much. He wants me to be his girlfriend. I am his girlfriend.

My heart is thudding, my skin alive with the fizz of the thrill, the aftertaste of his kiss. I can't tear my eyes from his car until it disappears around the corner and I manage not to sink to the soft grass.