“Or on her back,” Josh so unhelpfully adds.

“Can I go see the sand, Daddy?” Amelia asks, and I put her down.

“Just stay close to the porch.”

She runs off, leaving me stuck on the video call with my brother. Yeah, this will go well.

“There is nothing going on,” I tell him before he can say anything.

Joshua doesn’t look convinced. I watch the thoughts turn in his head as he cocks his head to the side. “Right.”

“There’s not.”

Josh smirks. “Nope. Nothing. It’s just a trip to the beach, right?”

I glare at my oldest brother, knowing that this flippant shit is just that . . . shit. He doesn’t believe a word of it any more than he believes me. “It’s just a trip to the beach, Josh.”

He purses his lips, and I know that it’s coming. He is teetering on the need to be right and let me know it. “It sounds like it’ll be good for you guys to all get away. That house is a special place where things happen for you.”

I might kill him. I groan, needing this back and forth to be over so I can prove my point. “Just say it.”

“I have nothing to say but that, truly, I like Jess, I always have. Dad and Mom will not be happy, but then again, who fucking cares what they think?”

“There’s nothing to think because we’re just friends—sort of. I don’t know what we are, civil ex-lovers?”

He laughs at that. “Who happen to be vacationing on the beach. Yeah, what could happen?”

“Anyway, you didn’t really call to check in, did you?”

“Did Dad call you?”

My father has called me six times, and I’ve ignored all of them. I prefer communicating with him via email so I have a record of what was said.

“I haven’t answered.”

We all have a very complicated relationship with our parents. Josh, however, hates the man. He wants nothing to do with him and has been trying to buy out our father’s portion of the inn Josh runs, but my father won’t even entertain it. There’s something going on that Josh won’t tell us about that has him so adamant he needs to leave the family business.

At the age of twenty-five, each of us were gifted with shares of the company. We have enough to have a say, but not enough to actually override him. Each year, he does give us another slice, but is always careful to keep the balance in his favor. The five of us combined own forty-nine percent of the company though. It’s enough to make him sweat.

“I haven’t either. I just wanted to see if you knew what he wanted.”

“I’m sure when I get back to Willow Creek, Mom will let me know.”