Eamon and Shoshanna headed toward me, and I pushed past the hard thoughts. Back to Ireland, where life felt good. I snagged Ryder. “All right, guys. Game faces.” I hauled us all together and took a selfie. When Ryder realized what was happening, his smile turned as huge as a Muppet’s. Eamon kissed my cheek, which brilliantly showed off his elf ears, and Shoshanna posed with some sort of I kill people with my eyes expression.
We laughed as we reviewed the masterpiece.
“Getting sentimental?” Shoshanna teased.
Henrik looked over my shoulder. “I’ll give you a thousand dollars to post it. Scrub that, I’ll give you the spare room in my apartment. Free rent in LA for a year. Think about it, Iris.”
“That would be a stretch way too far for my dad. Letting us be on the sidelines of a shot in full elf makeup is one thing. Selfie faces on the internet is entirely different.”
I squinted, realizing I hadn’t cited the Thornians or our safety as the reason why I couldn’t put my face online. This policy—like everything else I hated—was about appeasing my dad, wasn’t it?
“Wait for me in my car?” Eamon asked, handing over the keys. “We’ll head to Cashel together. I’ve got to get out of my hottie leaf pants for the drive.”
“Hashtag hottie leaf pants.” Shoshanna held up a triumphant fist.
They walked away and my phone vibrated. I found myself staring at a reply from my dad.
None of your business.
My fingers flew over the tiny cubed alphabet as I fired back my response.
Really? Because I thought she was my grandma. Or is it a fluke that her name is in the middle of mine?
I hit send, and this time I felt uneasy about what I was doing. There was a reason I never poked my dad about Grandma Mae. I didn’t know that reason, but you didn’t have to be a wizened wizard to figure out the backstory was tragic.
I found Ryder learning how to properly coil an electrical cord.
“Look what the juicer taught me to do with this stinger!”
I laughed. My brother was getting into set lingo. “Very nice, buddy. Come on. We’ve got to get ready to go south.”
We went to our trailer and grabbed a few things for the drive. One of the things he grabbed was his broken-spine copy of the Elementia trilogy. My dad’s old copy.
“Can I borrow this?” I asked.
He nodded with a huge grin. “You want to read it again? I wanted to read it again the second Dad finished reading it to me. Only the words were too big.”
We stepped outside and a mild breeze came off the lake, lifting, almost singing. “What was he like when he read it to you?” I asked.
“Unhappy,” Ryder said simply.
“Do you know why?”
“He never told me, but he told my therapist the book would make him go UPS and—”
“PTSD?”
“That’s it. He told me to sit in the waiting room.” I thought that might be the extent of Ryder’s knowledge, but then my brother leaned in conspiratorially. “It’s because of Samantha. His twin sister. The one who died when she was a kid.”
“He talked to you about her?” I couldn’t keep the incredulity out of my voice. The one time I’d asked about my deceased aunt, he’d spazzed like it was so long ago I was asking him to remember his own birth.
Ryder stroked the cover, fingers trailing over the raised letters of the title. “Sometimes he’d stop reading in the middle of a sentence. Slam the book and turn off my light. He wouldn’t even say good night.” Ryder’s face fell. “The more I liked the book, the meaner he got, so I pretended I wasn’t listening.”
There were a lot of things I wanted to say to him. This isn’t right. He’s got more baggage than both of us. I’m sorry I didn’t understand sooner.
I put my arm around him. “It sucks being a Thorne, doesn’t it?” He shrugged, and we approached the craft services van. “Do you want to drive with Mr. Donato?” I asked. “I’m going with Eamon.”
“You don’t want to come with me?” he asked.
“Let your sister have time with her boyfriend,” Mr. Donato said with a wink. He pulled the van door open, and Ryder climbed in. “Get in a mild amount of trouble, young lady. You’ve earned it.” He slammed the door, and I touched his arm.
“Thank you for yesterday. For helping Ryder when our dad got all…”
Mr. Donato—who still reminded me of Stanley Tucci too much—waved a hand to stop me. “Dads aren’t perfect. In fact, I’ve never met one who’s come even close. I’ve been telling Ryder all about it.” He patted my shoulder. “I forgot one of my kid’s birthdays last week. Blame the filming stress or the time difference. Worst part is, I couldn’t even tell which daughter it was from the crying voice mail.”
“That’s terrible.”
He shrugged. “Give your dad a break. He’ll probably give you one right back.”
I turned to leave but spun back for a question. “When Ryder was screaming, you said something in his ear and he starting crying instead of fighting. What did you say?”
Mr. Donato smiled sadly. “I reminded him that he loves his dad. No matter what.”
• • •
In Eamon’s car, I leafed through the worn copy of the Elementia trilogy that had my dad’s handwriting in it, looking for answers. I scanned the marginalia, but nothing jumped out.
Next I flipped to Grandma Mae’s bio. Born in 1945. Okay, my dad was born in 1965, so Grandma Mae was young when she had him and his twin sister, Samantha. I’d only heard her name a few times before, and just thinking it now made my aunt feel more real all of a sudden. Where was she buried? What did she look like? What did I even know about my own family?
Samantha died when she was thirteen. I knew that much because my dad had robotically told my pediatrician once in
