Raven didn’t understand why he’d be judged for going to dinner, but she agreed. Fortunately, Ellis wasn’t in the house. She was probably at the nursery with Maxine.

Raven changed into a dress. It was one she’d worn to school and sometimes on dates with Jackie. It was too warm for Florida in June, but she put on sandals to make it more summery.

River wore slim-fitted pants, a short-sleeve button-down shirt, and slip-on shoes.

“What did you tell Jasper?” she asked in the car.

“Nothing—he was in the shower. Which means I haven’t. Thank god for underarm deodorant.”

He seemed to know his way around already. He got on the small highway that crossed over the Paynes Prairie wetlands, one of the few landmarks Raven knew from driving into Gainesville with Ellis a few times.

They drove to a restaurant he’d looked up that specialized in steaks. It was fancier than she expected. Men and women in crisp white uniforms seated them and took their orders.

River ordered whiskey on ice. He showed an ID when the waiter asked.

When the man left, she asked, “Is the drinking age lower than twenty-one here?”

“It’s a fake ID,” he said in a low voice. “I’ve had it for years. But don’t tell Mom . . . my mom . . . Ellis . . . whatever.”

He lit up when she laughed.

When the drink arrived, he held it up for a toast. “To my baby sister, who’s once again tossed us into a stormy sea. May we find our way back to shore.”

She tapped her water glass against his and drank. He downed more than half the whiskey.

“Finding the way back to shore is different for your family than it is for me,” she said.

“You are our family.”

“I’m not.”

“You think you aren’t, but you’ll come around. Like Luke and Leia had to battle their dark origins.”

“Who?”

“The Skywalkers. Star Wars.”

Jackie had a Star Wars poster on his wall when he was little. But she still didn’t understand the reference.

“You’ve never seen a Star Wars movie?”

“No.”

“Wow.” He finished the whiskey and asked a passing waiter to bring another. “How sheltered were you? Did you have a TV?”

“No.”

“Phone?”

She shook her head.

“Jesus, how did you survive? Did you have any internet at all?”

“My mother used a phone and computer with internet to order supplies we needed. I was only allowed to use the computer for school assignments.”

“Did you ever sneak and do some surfing?”

“She checked the computer history after I used it.”

“Shit, that’s messed up.”

“It’s smart. She said to give kids phones, internet, and video games when they’re little is like giving them addictive drugs.”

“Yeah, well, they give those to little kids, too.”

“The father of a friend of mine was killed by someone who was reading a text while driving.”

“That sucks. So you had friends out there?”

“I have friends out there.”

“Do you know when you’re going back?”

She shook her head. “My aunt and your father are in control of that, and no one tells me what’s going on. All my aunt tells Ellis is the estate is still unsettled and I need to hide from reporters.”

“She’s hiding you to protect her own interests,” he said.

“I know. But I agree with what she’s doing. I don’t want my mother to become a big news story and have people say bad things about her. I’ll stay here for a while to stop that from happening.”

He bit into a piece of buttered bread. “Is that the only reason you stay here? Aren’t you at all glad you met your family?”

“I didn’t know about any of you until a month and a half ago.”

“Yeah, but now you do. Don’t we mean anything to you?”

She tried to think of an answer that wouldn’t sound too harsh. “A person can’t suddenly feel close to people out of nothing. And none of you has made that easy for me.” She wouldn’t tell him that Maxine, unrelated to her, was the person she felt closest to since she’d come out east.

He smiled in his droll way. “I guess we aren’t the most lovable family.” He looked serious all of a sudden. “But there’s a reason for that.”

“I refuse to take the blame for everything that’s wrong with your family.”

“Of course you shouldn’t. But you know who’s to blame.”

“You can’t pin it all on my mother either. You heard what Zane said today. Ellis had problems in her family all the way back before she was born. I bet Jonah did, too. I saw what his mother is like.”

“Yeah, Gram is a piece of work. To her, my mother is only slightly less evil than the Devil himself. My grandfather hated my mother, too.”

“That was all there before I left your family.”

“Yeah, but still. What Audrey Lind did forced our family skeletons out of the closet and turned them into flesh-eating zombies.”

More and more, he reminded her of Reece. But maybe only because she missed Reece so much. Reece didn’t have a drop of meanness in him, and River had plenty.