Page 106 of Her Brother's Billionaire Best Friend

“Don’t fall into any more rivers if you don’t want my cooking,” said Tracey. She grinned as she refilled the soup bowl.

I sighed, and took another spoonful. My mom’s homemade minestrone.

“How many years had it been since we ate this?” I said.

“I used to make it for you every Tuesday,” she said.

“That’s right. Dad used to work late on Tuesdays.”

“Sure did,” said Tracey.

“Hey, Grandma?” said Kyle from the living room. “What’s a Quercus?”

“An oak tree,” my mom said without even looking up. “You enjoying that?”

“Beats more Batman comics,” Kyle said, rolling over as he lifted up the book about trees my mom had loaned him.

Unsurprisingly, Kyle had been re-grounded since that day at the old bridge. Not that he hadn’t also been congratulated. He and Conor had dived into the river and pulled me out together, drawing me in their arms to the side of the riverbank. I was lucky that Tracey had been coming over more and more to help me once she heard about it. I’d been weak and ill since I fell into the river. I guess the stress of the days before had caught up to me too.

I took a look around the living room, where I’d been resting up for the last couple of days. It felt strange to be back here, for everything to feel so normal after the mess of the last few days. David was at work but later he’d be back, no doubt to watch a movie with us.

But of course, we all knew that nothing would be the same again. Not after the revelation of who Conor really was. And not after he’d risked everything to help me find Kyle. At first, I felt guilty about how I’d let my son run away. But now I realized that even if it wasn’t my fault, it was my responsibility to help him understand who he really was, where he was really from.

But to do that, I knew I was going to have to take Kyle to meet Conor. I knew I’d have to let him talk.

And Conor was nowhere to be seen.

David had gone up to the house more than once to ring the bell. But each time, no one answered. He wanted to thank him, for one. The truth was that, as much as it was silly, David blamed himself for what had happened that night. His obsession had meant discovering the journal, which had driven Kyle to run away, to put his life in danger.

But now we realized that we couldn’t just blame Conor for what had happened. He’d made his choices, just like the rest of us. But he’d always had a reason.

A few days later, David put down his knife and fork at dinner.

“Can you go talk to him?” he asked me.

I looked up. I was feeling better now. But I didn’t know if I could bring myself to see Conor again, not after everything that had happened.

“Yeah, Mom.” Kyle’s voice was quiet. “You could do it.”

“All right,” I said. “I’ll go up tomorrow morning.”

*

So the next day, I found myself walking up to Lakeview. Autumn was coming now and a chill had set in across the valley, but the sun was gleaming as I made my way along the path and up towards the heavy gates of the house. But when I got there, I stopped myself from pushing the bell.

Instead, I turned and began to walk to the left, down the road and over the field which led down from Conor’s house. I was heading in the direction of the old bridge, the Falls. I couldn’t say what led me by that route, what was drawing me down through the trees to the Falls themselves. But as they began to crash and boom in the distance, I saw him.

Standing there, at the top of the path which led under the Falls themselves, around the old rock-face of the cliff. Conor was dressed in a Henley shirt and a pair of jeans, some old boots on his feet. His shoulders hunched, he stared out at the landscape.

“Conor!” I called, stepping forward on the path. Without even looking at me, he walked away.

“You should stay away from me,” he said brusquely.

“No,” I said under my breath, and followed him. A few days earlier, I would have agreed. But I had to talk to him—had to thank him—had to know what he was thinking. I followed him down.

As a kid, I’d always been scared to walk under the Falls. As I went down the path, which cut in a zig-zag through the rock-face, the water roared in my ears. But the further down I went, the quieter it got, and before long I was standing on a flat terrace naturally carved into the stone face of the cliff, with a blue curtain of glassy water descending to my right. As I watched the strings of shadows playing on the cliff face, I caught sight of Conor again.

“I’m not going anywhere,” I said. “Kyle and I aren’t leaving. You know that?”