“Since your parents died. I know how long I’ve lived there, Ryan. My brain is perfectly fine. It’s my joints that aren’t behaving themselves. I moved in to that big old house because I had my four wonderful grandchildren to care for. You’d lost your parents, and I didn’t want you to lose your home, too. But things change. Needs change. This will be better for me. I can walk as far as Hilda’s cottage, and I know most of the people living here. I won’t have to rely on you and Rachel for lifts.”

“We don’t mind.”

“I mind. I already made you take too much responsibility in your life. I see that now. I made mistakes.”

“That’s not true.”

“It is true. You’d lost your parents. Your life changed overnight, and suddenly instead of riding your bike and your skateboard, you were reading bedtime stories and learning how to braid hair. And you did a fine job. It’s because of you that Rachel has kept her sweet, generous nature. You gave her the security she’d lost. You were there when she needed you, but you were a child, too, and you shouldn’t have had to take that on.”

Thinking of Rachel raised his stress levels. “She’s seeing Jared.”

“I know.”

“He’s a decade older than her.”

“I know that, too.” His grandmother straightened, rubbing her hand over her back. “She’s grown up, and you have to let her make her own decisions, even if some of those decisions aren’t the ones you would have made. Do you think I wanted to see you fly off to dangerous places? No.” It was the first time she’d ever voiced her feelings on the subject, and he realized how selfish he’d been back then, his one and only thought to get away and live his life.

“You never said anything.”

“Because it wasn’t about what I wanted, it was about what you wanted. And you wanted to see the world with nothing and no one holding you back. You had so much hunger inside you. There were so many things you wanted to do. When you left this island, there was a time when I wondered if we’d see you again. You were desperate for an adventure.”

“That didn’t end the way I thought it would.” He thought about Finn, who right at the end had decided the next adventure in his life was going to be home and family.