“DROP ME off here.”
Nicholas didn’t appear thrilled, but he complied with Livvy’s order, stopping at the end of the cul-de-sac. It was dark out, but the lights from the dashboard illuminated his face in a greenish glow as he turned to her. “Will you think about meeting up with my grandfather and sister?”
She bit her lip. In all the other stuff they’d discussed, she’d almost forgotten about John and Eve. “Not your sister. Tell her we’re cool.” She believed Eve was remorseful. There was no need to have another stressful discussion, especially if it was going to drag up totally false stories about their parents.
He accepted that response with a single nod. “My grandfather, though?” When she hesitated, he pressed. “He’s getting old, Livvy. I don’t want to lay that on you, but I don’t know how much longer he has.”
Her stomach sank. “Is he sick?”
“No, nothing urgent.” Nicholas grimaced. “Still. You never know. I’ll beg you to do it, if that’s what it takes.”
She opened and closed her hands in her lap. For Nicholas to beg? That was indeed serious. “I came here to make peace with my family. That’s it. I didn’t ask for all this.”
“I know.” He traced his fingers over the steering wheel. The fingers he’d had inside her. “I’m sorry. I don’t like bothering you, believe me.”
“It’s not a bother to see John. It’s painful.”
“I get that.” He didn’t say anything more.
She sighed. “I’ll think about it.”
“Thank you. Let me know either way.”
She opened her door, the interior light coming on. “I guess, I’ll, um, talk to you soon then?” The words felt weird in her mouth. It had been so long since they’d parted ways with actual goodbyes and the expectation of seeing each other again.
He rested his palm on her arm and she stopped. “Can I—”
She waited for him to finish but then he only shook his head and removed his hand. Her skin felt a little colder. “Never mind. Yes, we’ll talk soon.”
Were they supposed to kiss? Hug? She gave him an awkward wave and what she imagined was a pretty close human imitation of the gritted teeth emoji and exited the car.
She was supremely conscious of his vehicle idling behind her as she walked into the cul-de-sac. He wouldn’t leave until she got to her mother’s house. She tried to view the neighborhood through his eyes—it was solidly middle- to upper-class, but the four-bedroom brick home she was walking toward was a far cry from the estate where she had grown up.
She tucked her fingers into her jacket pocket, brushing velvet softness. While Nicholas had been distracted on the phone, she’d stuck the roses he’d brought her into an empty glass of water. She couldn’t have brought them home without serious questions.
That hadn’t stopped her from foolishly tucking a few petals in her pocket, though. She removed her hand and tugged her jacket tighter around her body. All her nerve endings felt tingly and too sensitive, as they always did after an encounter with Nicholas. Something was off, though, and it took her a second to realize what it was.
She didn’t feel terrible.
That repetitive cycle of pleasure and pain. Where was the pain? Where was the aching inside of her, threatening to swallow her whole?
There was worry, yes, but she was calm. Why was that? Could it have been the talking when usually they were silent? The sense of making some sort of non-physical connection with him? The range of emotions he’d displayed? His vulnerability when he confessed he was nervous about a woman going down on him?
She mulled over the idea of oral sex therapy as an as-yet-undiscovered area of psychology as she skirted the motorcycle parked at the curb. Her aunt had complained the neighbors were letting their guests park willy-nilly in front of their home. She’d tell Maile about the hog in the morning.
She mounted the steps of the porch and waved at Nicholas. His headlights flashed and he drove away.
Livvy almost had her key in the door when a creak had her straightening, body going alert. A large shadow separated from the rickety chair on the porch, and she took a step back.
The shadow spoke. “It’s me, Livs.”
“Me, who—?” Realization struck, and she took another step back, this time out of shock. No one called her Livs except . . . “Jackson?” she whispered.
The hulking man stepped into the thin circle of light cast by the porch lamp. She and Jackson shared the same eyes and lips, but otherwise, no one would know they were siblings, let alone twins. Both her brothers had always been large-framed, taking after their father’s side of the family.
In the ten years since she’d seen him, Jackson’s face had grown leaner, more sculpted, his cheekbones high and slashing, his thick brows lowering over piercing eyes. He’d turned his solid frame into muscles packed on top of muscles, his large forearms and biceps revealed by the white T-shirt he wore in defiance of the fall chill.
“Jackson,” she said again. Then she burst into tears.
She and Jackson had been like two peas in a pod, sharing a room until they were eleven, though the house they’d grown up in had had plenty of space. She liked chatter and noise; he’d been a silent, shy kid. Her father used to joke they made up for each other’s weaknesses. Together, they were one perfect individual.
The first time they’d been apart had been when Jackson was arrested for the fire. That had kicked off a decade of separation.
She and Jackson had never been physically affectionate—like her mother, Jackson shied away from overt displays of fondness. But nothing could have stopped her from throwing herself at her brother. She tried to wrap her arms around his neck, but even in heels, on her tiptoes, he was far too tall.
She spoke against his chest, “Pick me up,” but it came out more like “Schmoop rump.”
“Uh, what?”
“Pick me up!”
A resigned sigh came from deep in his belly, but he did as she asked, lifting her so she could properly cling to him.
A big hand awkwardly patted her back. “Please stop.”
She ignored the pleading in that rough voice. “Don’t tear-shame me. I can cry if I want. I haven’t seen you in forever.” Not since the charges had been dropped. He’d left town sometime that night, with only a terse note for her, a duffel of clothes, and the money Maile had given him.
She’d left a couple days later, unable to find a reason to stick around in a place that no longer seemed like hers.
The patting turned more frenzied. “How long is this gonna last?”
“As long as I want, asshole,” she snarled between sobs. “Deal with it.”
Another sigh. “Livs, you know I’m not good at this.”
He never had been, bless him. She inhaled, struggling to stop. A few ragged breaths later, her tears eased enough for her to speak. “No, I don’t know that. I don’t know anything.” She twisted her head. A flash of black peeked out from under his T-shirt sleeve. Her tears turned to indignation, and she shoved herself away from him. “Except I see you got some tattoos. From someone who obviously wasn’t me.” Like a wife discovering lipstick on her husband’s collar, she jerked his shirt up and studied the half-sleeve there with a sneer. Her outrage melted into sharp nostalgia. Jackson had incorporated Hawaiian designs, reminiscent of the single tattoo their father had had on his arm. Whenever she’d asked her dad about it, he’d laughed and rolled his eyes, telling her it was a remnant of his wild youth.
She sniffed and lifted Jackson’s other sleeve to find something written on his inner bicep. Damn it, too bad she couldn’t read Japanese. “This is ridiculous. You went to some strangers somewhere for our people’s heritage?”
“Since when are you an expert on our people?”
She wasn’t. Her father had been estranged from and never met his extended family in Hawaii, and her mother had only ever made half-hearted efforts to teach her kids about their Japanese side.
But still. “I know how to do research.”
“I got this one in Tokyo and the other one in Maui. I think that was better than you hitting up Wikipedia.”
She nudged him into the moonlight and peered closer at the lettering. “Some nice line work,” she admitted grudgingly. “I could do better, of course, but it’s not terrible. What does it say?”
“Google it.”
She glared up at him. She and Jackson might have been close, but he was still a brother, with all the annoying traits that came along with that. She smacked his arm. “You want to permanently alter your body? You come to me from now on. No one else.”
He rubbed his arm where she had hit him, though she imagined her hand stung more than his hard flesh. “Yeah, yeah.”
She took another step back, and silence fell between them as they studied each other, cataloguing the differences ten years could make. His hair was shorter now, his face roughly hewn and matured from his baby roundness. There was an odd sense of deep familiarity that came with seeing someone you’d spent twenty years with, but the strangeness of meeting someone after a decade who had lived a life that was so remote, she had no idea what it had even consisted of.
They’d emailed occasionally and talked on the phone at least once a year, either around their birthday or the holidays, so they’d had a vague idea of where the other one was, but that was it. While she’d stuck to the States, Jackson had backpacked the world, doing God knows what. When she would ask if he had a job or enough money, he’d only tell her vaguely he was doing fine, and then change the subject.
He was the first to speak. “Still a pipsqueak, I see.”
Her inhalation was shaky. “Still big and mean, I see.”
His full lips curled. “Hey, Livs.”
“Jackson.” She shoved her hands in her pockets, unsure of what to do with them now that she was done grabbing him. She fingered the rose petals, their smoothness calming her. “I’m surprised to see you.”
“I know.”
“What . . .” She trailed off, uncertain what to say. There were a million questions she wanted to ask, and a million ways for him to dodge her.
A trickle of anger undercut her joy at seeing him. It surprised her, that anger, but she supposed she’d been carrying it around for a while. “Fuck you, Jackson. How could you not come home for Paul’s funeral?” Oh, she tried to keep the tinge of bitterness and judgment out of her tone, but she feared she failed.
Yeah, that anger and resentment was real. It didn’t matter what Paul and Jackson’s relationship had been at the time of their brother’s death. Hell, Paul had been estranged from her like whoa. She’d still wept when she learned he’d died alone and cold on a hiking trail, had rushed home to put her arm around Sadia.
Jackson nodded, not a trace of surprise on his broad face. “So, we’re leading with that, huh?”
“Yeah. We’re leading with that.”
“I couldn’t come then.”
“Was someone stopping you?”
He ran his hand over the back of his neck. “A few guards. I might have been in a jail cell in Paris.”
The anger vanished. She stared at him in shock, every fear she’d had about her brother rushing back. He’d always been so good. A little surly and quiet, yes, but he’d walked the straight and narrow far more than she ever had.
Being accused of arson had pushed him over the edge, it seemed. Dear Lord, had he spent the past few years bumming the world and getting tossed into jail cells? “For what?”
“It was nothing.”
“It was something, if you were in a foreign jail.”
“I had to pay a fine. No big deal. But, yeah, I missed the funeral.” He walked away and sat down on the porch steps, linking his hands between his legs. “How was it?”
She wanted to grab his arm and snuggle close to him, force him to love and hold her, but she’d already pushed her luck. She didn’t want to shove him right off the porch onto an international flight.
Tentatively, she sat on the step, with a good amount of distance between them. “It was a funeral. Pretty small.” Most of the friends Paul had were ones he’d made after she’d left town. He’d cut ties with most everyone they’d grown up with. Not surprising, since most of them were also either friends or employees of Nicholas. Sometimes both.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t come.”
She deflated, all of her resentment gone. “I guess you had a good reason. I wasn’t any closer to Paul than you were, at the end there. But he was still our brother.” It was easy when you were estranged from someone to always focus on their weaknesses, but Paul had been a pretty decent big brother before life had come between them. Stubborn and sometimes annoying, but protective and loving too.
“Yeah. I know.” Jackson cleared his throat. “I should have contacted you after, at least.”
“And Sadia.”
He looked out over the yard. Livvy wondered if he was comparing it to their old home, where they’d been surrounded by woods. Here, the houses were close enough she could see Carol’s television on in the living room next door. “Did her family come to the service?”
“Yes.” Sadia’s parents had left early, but her sisters had hovered around her.
“Good. That’s good.” He rubbed his nose. “I got your e-mail about Mom.”
“I assumed.” She’d worded the e-mail carefully, laying out the facts only. She figured Jackson had the right to know about their mom, but as angry as she’d been over him not coming home for Paul, she hadn’t been ready to guilt him into rushing home for their mom.
It had been her decision to come here. Jackson could make his own decisions.
He rolled his big shoulders, like he was trying to get rid of an annoyance. “I was in the state anyway. Thought I could at least check on you.” His eyes cut to hers. “How’s Mom?”
“Not bad. She’s getting around with the walker now. A physical therapist comes a few times a week. She’ll be walking with a cane soon, probably.”
“Thought only fragile old people broke their hips.”
“She’s not young anymore, Jackson. And it can happen to anyone who takes a nasty fall and has a touch of osteoporosis. Luckily, Aunt Maile was able to get help for her immediately.”
Jackson’s smile was faint. “Aunt Maile. She still a chatterbox?”
“Who isn’t a chatterbox to you?” Livvy grinned, though. “Yeah. Still hoarding yarn. She helps Mom a lot, especially when I’m at work.”
“You’re working here too?”
“Part-time. At Gabe’s shop.”
Like her, Jackson had been friends with their housekeeper’s son, but he showed little reaction to hearing his name. “You’ve really settled back home nicely.”
Though there was no inflection in his voice, Livvy bristled. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing.”
“If it was nothing, you would have said nothing. The fact that you said something means something.”
Jackson tapped his fingers on his knee. “You still think you know me so well, pipsqueak?”
“I will always know you,” she said quietly. I’ll always love you. No matter how far we run from each other and this place.
Jackson’s Adam’s apple bobbed. “Why’d you come back here?”
“To look after Mom.”
“Bullshit.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Watch your language. There’s a lady here.”
He snorted. “You always swore worse than me.”
“That’s because I talked more than you. Clams talked more than you.”
He ignored the dig. “Why did you come here?”
“To look after—”
“Bull. Shit.”
“What do you want me to say?”
“The truth.”
“It’s the truth.”
“Fine. I’ll hire a nurse for her tomorrow. Full-time, twenty-four hours. You can leave.”
She eyed him. If Jackson was kicking around prison cells, she imagined most of his money had probably gone to bail and lawyers. If he had money. Lord knew what he did. “How do you have that kind of cash?”
He ignored the question. “So you’re going to leave, right?”
“No.”
“Then why are you here?”
“Because I want my family back!”
They both froze at her almost-shout. She covered her mouth with a shaking hand. Shit, she hoped she hadn’t woken up her mom or her aunt.
Jackson had stilled. “Ah,” he breathed.
After long, tense minutes, she lowered her hand. “I got depressed after Paul died.”
His lashes lowered, hiding his eyes. “How bad?”
She swallowed, aware of what he was really asking. Were you suicidal?
She couldn’t say yes, though it would be the truth. She’d spent a solid week in bed, unable to function, the darkness growing so large it incapacitated her. Thoughts of self-harm had slithered through her brain, finally scaring her enough to pick up the phone. “Not as bad as . . . you know,” she said carefully. That wasn’t a lie. The time after the accident had been the worst episode she’d ever had. Which was not unusual, her therapist had assured her, given all the traumatic upheaval that had preceded it.
“But bad.” Jackson’s lips tightened. “I should have called you.”
She hesitated. Jackson had appointed himself her sole comfort when they were young, but they’d been away from each other for so long. She craved the security of familial support, yes, but that support had to be rooted in something. “Don’t beat yourself up over that. I got help. I’ve been in therapy for a while now.” The first time she’d gone to a psychiatrist, she’d felt vaguely guilty, like she was doing something self-indulgent and silly. But it had helped. It hadn’t cured, but it had helped.
Jackson nodded, but tension had carved lines in his forehead. “That’s good. I’m glad.”
“Yeah. Anyway, I did a lot of thinking and talking and I acknowledged my depression is exacerbated by a lot of things, and one of those things is being so alone.” She ran her hands over her thighs. “We lost one member of our family and it was like we lost everyone. Paul’s gone now, for good. I’ll never fix things with him. But it’s not too late for Mom and Sadia and Maile and Kareem. They’re mine. I want that connection. I need it. Even if I don’t live near them, to know I have that base . . . it would help me.” She could especially use a reconnection with her mom, but she didn’t want to remind Jackson of his own troubled relationship with Tani.
His sigh was long and low. “Oh, Livvy.”
“I know. I’m a marshmallow.”
His shoulder bumped hers, an unexpected show of comfort. “Being a marshmallow isn’t a bad thing.”
“Marshmallows melt.” Weak, soft, blobs of sugar. That was her.
He squinted. “On the inside, but their outsides get all crisp when you stick them in a fire.”
“This is a strange metaphor. I think we should drop it.” She paused. “And, uh, maybe don’t say the word fire around here.”
She was gratified when he smiled faintly. “Probably smart. Have you been by the store?”
She hid her surprise that he could speak about the building he’d been arrested for burning down. She couldn’t drive past it. “Not yet.”
He nodded, like he’d expected that answer. “Have you seen Nicholas?”
It was a lot harder to hide her reaction to that question. She cast a glance at Jackson, noting the direction he was looking. Down the road, at the point where Nicholas had dropped her off. It was clearly visible from the porch. “I—”
“You don’t have to answer. I know.” He gestured at the house. “You don’t get to pick and choose. You face one part of your past, Livvy, you have no choice but to face it all. Around here, everything’s bound up together. And if we’re talking about things that exacerbate your depression . . .”
Hadn’t she thought something similar? Not all painful memories were created equal. Her annual encounters with Nicholas weren’t great for her mental health, no lie.
Livvy bit her lip and nodded. “I know. But I want my family.”
His lips went taut, and he nodded. “I understand, believe me. But you’re better off getting out of here and starting over. Find a nice group of people who love you. Have a house like this in some other suburb.”
“Is that what you did? Start over?”
“Basically.”
“Are you happy?”
Jackson’s eyes gleamed. “I’m alive.”
“Is that good enough for you?”
He didn’t answer that. “You’re going to get hurt.”
Probably. She already had been hurt.
Yet there was today, and her strange lack of hurt with Nicholas.
Pleasure and pain. It’s a circle. You’re just still stuck in the pleasure part of the cycle.
But it felt so good. Dangerously good. The kind of good that could persuade a woman to reach out annually to a man who could only give her his body and nothing else.
“You’re saying I shouldn’t deal with any of it, because I can’t deal with all of it. What if I can? Leave some of my baggage behind when I go?”
“Some things are unresolvable. You’re living in a fantasy land if you think you can have it all.”
Not a fantasy. A fairy tale.
As much as every cynical part of her believed him, she couldn’t stop the tiny kernel of desperate optimism unfurling inside her. “I can’t leave.”
Jackson’s lips curved up, but it wasn’t an amused smile. “I didn’t honestly think you would. You’re so damn stubborn, Livs.”
“A stubborn marshmallow?”
“All marshmallows are stubborn. Nothing that soft could hold its shape if it wasn’t stubborn as hell.” He got to his feet. “I gotta go.”
“Where? Do you have a place to stay tonight?”
“Yeah. I’m expected in New York City tomorrow.”
“For what? For work?”
He only shrugged.
“You didn’t see Aunt Maile or Mom.” Now that she thought about it, she wondered why he’d been lurking in the dark. Had he known Livvy was out? Or had he not been able to risk Maile or Tani answering the door?
He ran his hand over his head. The faint moonlight danced over his black hair. “I didn’t come home to see them.”
She wanted to argue with him, but she wasn’t going to project her own desperate desire for family on her brother. “When will you be back?”
“I don’t know.”
“Will you . . . will you come back?”
He thudded down the stairs. The last time she’d watched him stride away from their house, led away in handcuffs, she hadn’t seen him for a decade. She had to bite back a cry for him to stay.
“Yeah.”
It wasn’t a hug or a kiss, but she held that yeah close to her chest. “I’m going to expect to see you then. Soon.”
Jackson walked to the motorcycle and then turned around. “Be realistic and do whatever you gotta do quickly, Livs. It’s not healthy to be here.” His gaze lifted over her head and darkened.
She turned to look over her shoulder and scrambled to her feet. Her mother stood in the doorway, one hand on the door, the other resting heavily on her walker, dressed in a pink nightgown, her hair neatly combed.
How much had Tani overheard?
The woman was motionless, staring after her son, even as the sound of the motorcycle revving and driving off filled the air. Livvy approached slowly. “Mom? I thought you’d be asleep.”
Her mother didn’t respond, and Livvy’s heart clenched. Was that a sheen of wetness in the older woman’s eyes? “Mom?”
Tani blinked and looked at Livvy, and that wetness was gone. “The noise woke me up. I thought it was a neighbor. Then I heard you talking.”
“What’s going on?” Aunt Maile’s voice piped up behind Tani, and then the other woman was there, crowding around her sister-in-law. She tightened the belt around her silk purple robe.
“Jackson was here,” Tani said. There was no inflection in her voice.
“Jackson!” Aunt Maile clasped her hands together. “Where is he? Why didn’t you bring him inside?”
“He didn’t want to come inside,” Tani replied.
There was a snap in her mother’s voice that made Livvy flinch. “He had to go. He’s expected in New York. For work, I think?”
“What kind of work does he do?” Maile asked.
Jesus, no one knew anything about Jackson, did they? “I don’t know.”
“Is he coming back?”
She didn’t want to say yes. What if he didn’t? “I’m not sure,” she hedged. “Come on, let’s go inside. Mom, I can help you get back to your room.”
“I can get to bed on my own,” Tani said stiffly. Ignoring Livvy’s hand, she turned away and made her way slowly down the hallway, to the first-floor bedroom she’d taken for her own while she recovered.
Maile lingered behind, her wistful gaze on the street. “Did he ask about me?”
“He did.” Livvy closed the door.
“How did he look?”
Livvy spoke without thinking. “Like Dad.”
Maile closed her eyes briefly. They were teary when she opened them. Unlike Tani, she didn’t bother to hide it. “If he comes back, you tell him I miss him terribly.”
“If he comes back,” Livvy emphasized. “He’s gone years without seeing me either.”
Maile nodded, her face troubled. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Livvy’s heart squeezed. If she’d reached out at any time over the past ten years, Maile would have been available as a resource and comfort. She hadn’t needed to feel so alone.
It was good to know that. “Not right now, thanks. Why don’t you go back to bed?”
“I was awake, watching television. I didn’t know if you’d need a ride home. You didn’t walk in the dark, did you?”
In all the drama, she’d almost forgotten Nicholas and what they’d done together before he’d given her a ride home. She fought to keep the blush off her face. “No. I got a ride.”
“Good.” Maile turned and walked to the stairs. Her thick hair was caught up in a braid that almost reached her waist. It swished when she walked. “I’ll go watch some more T.V. Or I’ll start that new knitting project. I want to make a sweater for the Kims’ new baby.”
Livvy did her usual circuit, making sure the windows and doors were all locked, before making her way to her room, unable to get her mom’s face out of her mind.
Marshmallow.
Calling herself a fool, certain the gesture would be rebuffed, she went to her dresser and pulled out the sketchpad she kept there. She always kept a few pads on hand, in case of inspiration. Her hand hovered over her box of pastels, but she chose the charcoals.
She went back downstairs to her mother’s room. A light was visible beneath the door, a late-night talk show blaring on the television. She knocked lightly, peeking in at her mother’s response.
The room was decorated rather barrenly, like most of the house, with only a bed and furniture. Nothing on the walls. Her mother’s regular room upstairs was pretty much the same. It was a far cry from her childhood home’s master bedroom, which had been graced with priceless artwork.
“Hey. I, uh, just wanted to drop these off. The physical therapist said it would be good to keep your hands busy,” she made up on the spot. “I don’t have any puzzles or Rubik’s Cubes or whatever, but figured you could sketch. Or write letters. Whatever.” She walked into the room and placed the sketchbook and charcoals on the table.
After a quick glance, Tani returned her attention to the television. “Thank you.” The dismissal in her tone was unmistakable.
Livvy hesitated at the door. “Do you want to talk about—?”
“Good night, Olivia.”
She bit her lip, aching inside. Marshmallow. “Good night.”
Upstairs, Livvy removed the bruised petals from her pocket and placed them carefully on the bureau. She shed her clothes and tossed them on the floor while the tub filled. She’d been pretty good at keeping her guest room here incredibly tidy, each article of clothing hung up neatly. She was simply so tired. She’d pick up tomorrow.
She sank into the hot bath, letting the water ease the muscles that had locked up during the day. From hunching over her clients and from the load of tension she carried.
What would it feel like to shed some of the baggage she carried?
She’d be happier, wouldn’t she? That dark emptiness would always be there, but if she could grasp more ways to keep it from swallowing her whole, that was a good thing, wasn’t it?
Do whatever you gotta do quickly, Livs.
Livvy grabbed her phone from the ledge of the tub. She opened a new message and typed out, I’ll see John.
A bubble popped up at the bottom of the screen and she held her breath. Part of her didn’t believe he would actually reply. He never had, after that first time laying out their arrangement.
And then her phone vibrated as the three little dots became three little words.
Is tomorrow okay?
She ran her finger over those words before she caught herself. Nope, no. She was going to be cool about this. This was not a big deal, even if it was the first message she’d gotten from him in a decade.
You can try to work out your issues with him, but that’s it.
She typed with purpose. Yes. I have to work during the day. Say, 5:30?
Perfect. I can pick you up?
No. Then he’d drive her home again and that seemed far too date-like. I’ll drive. I can meet you . . . She hesitated, then finished the thought quickly. I can meet you behind Kane’s. If she could stand to see John, she could stand to see her grandparents’ café as well as the flagship C&O—Chandler’s—across the street, damn it.
She nibbled on her nail, watching the dots pop up on the bottom of the screen. They hovered there for a solid minute, and then came his reply. Okay.
Like a mature, healthy individual, she placed the phone on the ledge of the tub instead of fondling those messages. Livvy tipped her head back, trying to clear her mind.
Some things are unresolvable.
Maybe they were. At this point, though, she wasn’t sure what other option she had but to try.