“No. It’s too late to stop now,” Helen said. “So Jules might have been the most free-spirited of all my children, but she was also the most stubborn. Her father said she was just like me, but she’d rather spit in his eye than acknowledge that truth. We thought once they went hungry for a time that she’d come crawling back, but she and that boy figured out a way to make a living without our help. They both loved the water, and Jules had a way with people. Soon they went from giving surfing lessons to owning their own small boat where they led scuba-diving charters. But even with some decent money coming in, they still lived a free-spirited kind of life. Finally, they moved up from a tent to a camper, but I still kept tabs on her, because despite the way she turned her back on all of us, we loved her.”

The old woman looked away when she spoke of love. Maybe she wasn’t as hard-hearted as she appeared.

Helen swallowed visibly, then continued, “When she had her first child, Jonah, she brought him to see us, and we tried again to get her to come home, to raise the boy here in a safe place with his cousins and other family like she’d been raised. But she refused. Her visits were infrequent, but she wasn’t cruel enough to completely keep me from my grandson. We called a silent truce so that Jonah could know his grandparents and other family. A few peaceful years went by, and then she had her second child.”

Helen paused, her expression lost in a memory they couldn’t see. Quinn could swear she saw a few tears glistening in her eyes, but if they were there, they were blinked away quickly.