I went over to the albums he’d stacked on the floor and took a seat.

“Okay, we’ve got Rob Zombie, Roberta Flack, Robyn, Rod Stewart, The Ronettes, Linda Ronstadt, Diana Ross, Roxette. If you like rap, there’s a Roddy Rich and a couple of Rick Ross albums in the stack my mom gave me to bring over. And if country’s your thing, there’s a ton of Randy Travis in one of the other crates—and even a Ratt metal album if I remember right.”

Josh looked over at me from the sink. “Any music acts that don’t start with R?”

I was embarrassed to have to admit, “My mom only listens to acts whose names start with R—first, last, or band name. Doesn’t matter as long as it starts with R.”

“Really? I never knew that about Marian.”

“Not my birth mother—my other mom, Marian’s sister. She formally adopted me when I was a baby. She’s a writer—you might have heard of her pen name…Clara Quinn.”

Josh’s eyes widened. “Your mom is Clara Quinn? I never read her, but my bunkmate Bobkowski loved all her stuff—especially that one series of hers—the one with the fairies.”

“Fae,” I corrected with a grin. As many issues as I had with Mom on a career level, I loved that she had so many fans who adored her work from all walks of life.

“This cabin was a gift to her from my father for agreeing to take on my birth mother’s visitation rights,” I told Josh. “You can tell your bunkmate that you got stuck spending the night in the same cabin where she wrote that fae series.”

“He’d lose his mind, then demand I bring him here, too,” Josh answered with a chuckle. He shook his head. “Your father gave her a cabin as a thank you. That’s the perfect gift for a writer.”

“My father’s good at gifts,” I admitted, even though he wasn’t a subject I liked to talk about.

“Are you two close?” Josh was washing dishes, his eyes focused on the task at hand. But I could feel his curiosity the same as a gaze.

“Not really. He’s.…busy. He had majority custody of me because—well, you’ve met Marian. But his sister and her wife mostly raised me until I reached adulthood. I only used to come here for the summers and winter holidays, and I spent the rest of the time with them.”

“That must have been hard being raised by your aunts instead of your parents.”

I bristled. “You don’t have to feel sorry for me. I was much better off with them than my birth parents.”