“Then uncomplicate it.” Hayden sounded more angry than Mira had ever heard him.
“All right,” Mira’s dad agreed, his eyes locked on the trough like he was in a trance. “I was a rookie ballplayer in New York. I had only made it to the plate once that season with the Mets,” he said, grimacing at the memory. “I spent all my off-hours at this restaurant in Brooklyn where Chloe—Isabelle’s mom—was a waitress. We spent the summer together, and then I got traded. Naturally, we called things off,” his voice cracked. “I had no idea when I left for the Braves that she was pregnant.”
Mira had never seen her dad cry before—he said the only times he had ever shed real tears was when she and her brother were born and when the Braves lost the World Series to the Yankees. She didn’t want to see him cry now. She felt like hitting him till he hurt as much as she did.
“When I came back to North Carolina, your mom and I started dating again.” He smiled at her. “We were engaged within weeks, married within two months, and we had Mirabelle within the year.” He leaned against the barn. “Hayden was two when I officially became his dad.”
Mira knew her parents’ love story by heart. They’d dated through high school and broke up when they went to college, and her mom had met Hayden’s dad at Vanderbilt. After Hayden’s dad was killed in the line of duty when she was pregnant, Mira’s mom moved back in with her parents. That’s when she ran into their dad again and they got back together.
“Izzie’s mom never told you about her?” Hayden asked.
Mira’s dad shook his head. “I didn’t find out about Isabelle till this past winter. Her grandmother found Chloe’s old journals and read that I was Isabelle’s dad. I guess she knew her health was failing and Isabelle needed a home because she had Isabelle’s social worker call me.” He stared at the water trough Izzie had pushed Savannah in. “By the time we did a paternity test, her grandmother had slipped into a less lucid state. She couldn’t even remember telling the social worker the story.” Mira’s dad looked at Lucas. “We agreed not to tell Isabelle who I was till the time was right.”
“You mean till the election was over.” Mira simplified it.
“It was a shock for all of us.” Her mom’s voice was raspy. “And yes, it’s true, I hesitated to have Isabelle live with us at first. I stupidly worried that her upbringing would hurt our family, but then I got to know her and she’s a great girl.” Her voice trailed off. “How could we keep this from her? She’s going to run away this time for sure. We have to call the police.”
“Maureen, let’s think this thing through,” Lucas said. “If we get the press involved, this story could be misconstrued.” He sounded like a political aide on the verge of a major scandal. Suddenly Mira didn’t think he seemed so scary anymore. He was a twentysomething kid in way over his head.
“That’s what you’re worried about, Lucas?” Mira’s mom asked incredulously.
“You’re Lucas?” Violet stood behind them with Nicole and Brayden. Mira had forgotten they were there. She nudged Nicole. “This is the creep who has been blackmailing Izzie!”
Mira and Hayden looked at each other.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Lucas said, ushering Violet, Nicole, and Brayden away. “This is a private family matter, so we’d appreciate it if you’d leave and not repeat what you’ve heard here.”
Violet wasn’t afraid. “You threatened her! You said if she didn’t clean up her act, you were going to have her grandmother pulled out of her nursing home!”
Mira’s mom gasped. “What?”
Mira had never seen her father move so fast. He grabbed Lucas by the jacket. “Is this true?”
Lucas pushed him off and smoothed his jacket where her dad had just crumpled it. “Of course it’s true!” he shot back. “I’m the only one who is thinking clearly around here. If she kept screwing things up for you, the press would be all over it. If you can’t handle your own family, Bill, no one is going to trust you to help run the state. I was doing what was best for your career!”
“I want you to leave. Now.” Mira’s dad’s voice rocketed off the barn, scaring her. His face was dangerously close to Lucas’s. “And don’t ever think of coming back. Because if you do, or you tell anyone about Isabelle before I do, I will make sure every campaigning politician in the country knows what a stunt you pulled.”
Lucas straightened his tie and, without another word, disappeared around the corner of the barn. Mira’s mom went over to her dad and hugged him.
“I should have done that a long time ago,” Mira’s dad said.
“What are we going to do about Izzie?” Violet said, focusing on the big picture.
“She jumped into a carriage before we could catch her,” Nicole said. “She could be anywhere by now. She’s not answering her cell phone, either.”
Connor’s voice sounded so tiny. “Are we ever going to see Izzie again?”
Mira tried to think. If she was Izzie and had gotten the shock of her life, where would she go? “Maybe she went home,” Mira guessed, and everyone looked at her. “To Harborside, I mean.”
“But where in Harborside?” Hayden asked. “It’s not like the town is a block wide.”
“The boardwalk, maybe?” Mira guessed. “There are probably dozens of stores or places she could be….” Her voice trailed off. Izzie really could be anywhere at the moment, and Mira didn’t know her well enough to know where to look.
“If she’s in Harborside, then she’s probably at her old house,” Brayden said. “I know where it is. I went there when I found out Iz had left Harborside, but her grandmother had already been moved out.”
Mira tried to piece his story together. “You knew Izzie before she moved here?”
“Yeah,” Brayden said, not giving much else away. “I know where she hung out, too.”
“You should come with us, then,” said Hayden, standing up. “Let’s go.”
“We’ll go, too,” Violet and Nicole agreed.
Mira shook her head. “No. I know you guys are her friends, but I think we have to do this on our own.” She looked at Hayden. “We don’t want to ambush her.”
“We’re coming with you,” Mira’s dad said, and pulled out his car keys.
“No,” Mira pressed. “The last person she wants to see is you, Dad. I think Mom, Connor, and you should try her grandmother’s nursing home. Maybe she went to see her.”
“All right,” he said, sounding anxious. “We’ll split up, but if Izzie is not there and we don’t hear from you within the hour, we’re coming to Harborside, too. Understood?” Mira and Hayden nodded.
Her father’s hazel eyes looked pained. Mira had the same eyes he did. So did Izzie, she realized.
“Pea,” her dad said, his voice strangled, “I’m so sorry.”
“I know,” she said, even though she didn’t want to. “I can sort of wrap my head around why you kept things from us, but how could you do this to Izzie?” His face crumbled, but there was no time to hear more apologies. Izzie needed her, wherever she was.
Twenty-Six
Izzie lay on the swing on Grams’s darkened porch and stared at the cobwebs on the ceiling. She still had on her blue cocktail dress, but it had a huge gash from where it got caught on the porch steps. She knew her face had to be just as messy. The tears kept coming, and she didn’t have the strength to brush them away. She still wasn’t sure how she got to 22 Hancock Street. She remembered jumping in one of the horse-drawn carriages and then grabbing a cab at EP’s main gate, but the ride to Harborside was still a big blur. Her uncle’s words stuck in her mouth like taffy. “You’re not my niece, Isabelle. You’re my daughter.”
Uncle Bill was her dad.
Mira was her sister.
Hayden was… what did that make Hayden, anyway? Her stepbrother?
Izzie wasn’t sure, and she didn’t care. She was never going to see anyone in Emerald Cove again.
She wanted to get as far away from the lifestyles of the rich and fam
ous as possible. That’s why she had gone to the only home she ever knew: Grams’s. Technically she was trespassing. The For Sale sign on the lawn said Under Contract.
The house she had called home for fifteen years was no longer hers, and Grams was a shell of her former vibrant self. She had thought about going straight to Grams’s nursing home from the event, but visiting hours ended at six. Even if she had shown up there, Grams wouldn’t have had any answers for her. The two times she’d visited, Grams had spent the entire visit looking out the room window as Izzie told her stories. The one time Grams made eye contact with her, she had called her Chloe.
The tears spilled down Izzie’s face, and for the first time she audibly sobbed. The sound was so surprising; she sat up, pulled her bare legs to her chest, and hugged her knees. What was she going to do?
Barbara wasn’t going to help her. If Izzie’s uncle was actually her dad, then Barbara would say that’s where Izzie belonged. Kylie probably didn’t even know Izzie had left the party. She was in one of the tents readying food, and even if she had reached her, she knew Kylie couldn’t do much to help. Kylie’s family barely had enough room in their apartment as it was. Pete slept under the boardwalk to avoid going home most nights, so that wouldn’t have worked, either. What was she going to do about food? Clothes? School? Turned out coming back to Harborside wasn’t a good idea, either. Even this town held nothing for her anymore. She covered her face with her hands and cried so hard she didn’t hear the car screech to a stop at the curb.
“Izzie? Izzie! It’s her! Guys, it’s her!” Mira exclaimed. She jumped out of the car before Hayden had even turned off the engine. She could see Izzie crying on the porch, and she knew she had to get to her. She ran up the path and climbed the porch steps, hearing the tear in her dress immediately as it got caught on a rusty nail. She stopped feet from where Izzie was sitting. Izzie still didn’t seem to realize Mira was there.
“Izzie?” Mira said again, her heart beating rapidly.
Izzie looked up. For a second Mira thought she was happy to see her, but then her face crumbled again. Hayden and Brayden walked up behind Mira. When Izzie saw Brayden, her lip began to quiver.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, and Mira knew the question was meant for Brayden.
“I came here for you,” he said calmly, which was pretty good because in the car ride over he had been freaking out. They’d tried two boardwalk hangouts before they went to Izzie’s old house, and Brayden had started to get worried. Now he sat down on the swing next to her. “You can yell and protest all you want, but I’m not going anywhere unless you’re coming with me.”
Izzie didn’t say anything, but she leaned her head on Brayden’s shoulder as if it were too heavy to hold up. Mira thought she looked completely lost.
Mira sat down on the porch in front of her. “Are you… all right?” she asked, knowing the question was lame. Of course she wasn’t all right.
Izzie’s chignon had fallen out, and her makeup was streaky. She shook her head. “Are you?”
“No.” Mira stared at the beat-up porch floor. “I can’t believe my dad is your…”
“Dad,” Izzie finished. “I know.” She wiped her nose with the back of her hand before Mira could offer her a tissue.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about the community center,” Mira said, her lip quivering. “I keep screwing up with you even though I don’t mean to.”
Izzie felt mixed up inside. She knew she should be mad at Mira, but yelling at her about the community center seemed ridiculous in light of everything else going on. She would find a way to save the center later, even if she had to fight Savannah’s family herself. “I’m not mad at you,” she said. “I’m mad at myself for believing all the lies he told me. All he cared about was keeping me quiet so it didn’t ruin his chances in Washington.” She knew she sounded bitter. She couldn’t bring herself to say his name.
“What Dad did was crappy,” Hayden agreed, “and I’m not defending him, but he told us everything, and he definitely knows how badly he screwed up. Apparently Lucas pushed him to keep the truth quiet till after the campaign.”
Just hearing Lucas’s name made Izzie have heart palpitations.
“When he found out Lucas was blackmailing you, he fired him on the spot,” Hayden added.
Good riddance. “That doesn’t change what your dad did,” Izzie reminded them. “He was embarrassed of me.”
She thought back to the few times she felt they had really connected. The night he tried to talk to her after she came home from the boardwalk, the corsage he gave her at her first event, how proud he was when she made the swim team. Maybe he did care, but it was too little, too late. Her eyes welled up with tears again. “He never wanted to be my dad. If he did, he would have shown up long before he had to by law.”
“He only found out about you last winter,” Mira said quietly. She hated that her dad had put her in the position of defending him. But she wasn’t. She was trying to help Izzie cope. “Before your grandmother got sick, she found your mom’s journal, and it said my dad was your father. Dad spent all summer waiting to hear about your paternity. When they knew for sure, he got Grams in the home and had you brought to us. He wanted you to have a better life.”
So that’s why the story of how we’re related never added up, Izzie thought. Grams knew who Izzie’s dad was. She knew, and she tried to bring him to her. Izzie wanted to be mad at Grams for keeping it from her, but that was pointless. Her grandmother was like a ghost now.
Izzie chose her next words carefully. “That does change things, but it still doesn’t make what he did okay.” She stared at the dining room window. The glow of the streetlight that had finally been fixed illuminated the darkened room. Seeing the house empty made Izzie feel very alone. She should have been embarrassed laying this all out in front of Brayden, but she had no fight left in her. “Your family took me in because they had to. He doesn’t want me.”
“We want you,” Hayden insisted. “Mom adores you, Connor thinks you’re the coolest thing to happen since LEGOs, and Dad, well, he’s lousy at showing emotion. Call it a politician’s curse.”
“That’s just it,” Izzie said. “I don’t know how to be a politician’s daughter or work a social season. I don’t understand your world at all. I tried, but I failed miserably. You saw it. I don’t belong.”
“You navigate it better than you think,” Brayden said. “Look at what you put together tonight. You were a rock star! If I can survive in EC, so can you. You can do this. You have to,” he stressed.
Izzie shook her head. “I can’t go back there.” She had swallowed so many tears her mouth tasted like salt. “You think my streets are rough? Emerald Cove is a trillion times harder. It’s like a daytime soap opera! I’ll get eaten alive if I stay.” Her voice cracked.
For the first time, Mira became aware of her surroundings. Izzie’s old home was in need of major repairs. The porch steps creaked, the railing was broken, and the fence had graffiti. Every house on the block was the same way. On the street corner, three guys lingered while they smoked cigarettes. They could have just been talking, but it creeped Mira out. “So where are you going to go?” Mira asked, folding her legs under her.
“I don’t know.” Izzie closed her eyes and let the motion of the swing take her away. The truth was, she didn’t know how to survive on her own, either. She didn’t want to tell them that, though.
“Who are you going to live with?” Hayden asked.
“I don’t know,” Izzie said, sounding stressed.
“What are you going to do about school? Money?” Brayden pointed out.
“I don’t know!” Izzie was agitated. She needed sleep. Maybe when she woke up, she’d be back in her bed, Grams would be downstairs cooking, and her mom would be on her way home from work. That was the only way she could imagine her life being okay again.
“Do you know what I think?” Mira said, not waiting for a reply. “I think you have no guts.”
br /> “Mira,” Hayden warned, but she ignored him.
“I’m mad at him, too,” Mira said. “You’re our sister and he didn’t tell us.” She looked down at the bracelet her dad had given her for her birthday last year. “If he had, maybe things would have gone differently between us.”
“You mean you wouldn’t have been so fake,” Izzie said drily. It was the first time she had ever really stared at Mira’s face. They had the same eyes. It wasn’t just that they both had hazel ones; they had the same shape, too. Their eyes were just like their… dad’s.
“Maybe,” Mira admitted, “and maybe not. But I’m trying to be a different person. I’m not a doormat anymore. I’m doing the things I love and I want to to be friends with you. We’re sisters.”
Izzie closed her eyes, trying to forget that fact. It would be easier to disappear if she did.
“You’ve already lost one family,” Mira said softly. “Don’t give up on a second. I know this is scary, and it’s not going to be easy for either of us, but we’re not going away. You can run away from all the drama of Emerald Cove, but it’s still going to be there. We’re still going to be there waiting for you. No guts, no glory, remember?”
“You told her that story?” Brayden asked Izzie.
“What story?” Mira asked.
“It doesn’t matter,” Izzie said. “Your speech isn’t working.”
“Fine. Then do it for yourself! Prove EC wrong,” Mira begged. “Prove Savannah wrong. Lucas, Emerald Prep—prove them all wrong. Show the world you can hack it as a Monroe.”
“I’m a Scott,” Izzie said. Her hazel eyes were brazen.
“You’re both,” Mira reminded her. Her eyes were just as determined. “Or at least you can be, if you have the guts to try.”
Izzie gave her a look. “Enough with the guts talk. I get it, okay? I just… I don’t know what to do.” Izzie clutched the necklace her aunt had lent her for the event.
“We’ll help you,” Hayden said.
“We’re not going to let you do this alone,” Brayden agreed, and put his arm around her. His body was warm. “We just want you to give this a shot.”