her arm free, she grasped the railing instead of him. “Where else would I be? This is my family. Used to be yours.”
He snorted.
At seventeen, he and Hattie had helped Lyle build this porch over a warm summer weekend. Melissa had sat in a lawn chair, supervising. Over ten years later, the wood groaned beneath their footfalls. Bitter wind whistled through the towering conifers that had given the town its name.
The front door popped open. Lyle ushered his daughter inside. “Hurry, it’s cold. Your mom and I were just wondering what took so—” He eyed Mason. “What’re you doing here?”
“Nice to see you, too.” Mason trailed after Hattie, easing past her father. In the tiled entry, he brushed snow from his hair.
Hattie bustled with the busy work of removing her coat, then taking his.
Took about two seconds for Mason to assess his surroundings well enough to realize he’d stumbled deep into enemy territory.
Akna sat on one end of the sofa holding an infant wrapped in a pink blanket. Sophie Reynolds—a buxom busybody he remembered as being a neighbor and clerk down at Shamrock’s Emporium—held another pink bundle in a recliner. Despite a cheery fire, the room struck Mason as devoid of warmth. As if the loss of their child had sucked the life from Hattie’s parents.
Unsure what to say or even what to do with his hands, Mason crossed his arms. “Brutal out there.”
Akna flashed a hollow-eyed stare briefly in his direction, before asking her daughter, “I suppose you’re here for the girls?”
“Mom...” Hattie leaned against the wall while unzipping one boot, then the other. “Honestly? You probably need some rest. And it’s not like you can’t see the twins as often as you like.”
Sophie noted, “A body can never see too much of their grandbabies.”
Mason didn’t miss Hattie’s narrow-eyed stare in Sophie’s direction.
While Mason stood rooted in the entryway, Hattie joined her mother on the sofa, taking the baby into her arms. Her tender reverence reminded him that Alec had been the one who’d ultimately given Melissa her most cherished desire. Part of him felt seized by childish, irrational jealousy over his once best friend filling his wife’s need for babies. But then the grown-up in him took over, reminding Mason the point was moot, considering both parties were dead.
“It’s not the same, and you know it.” Akna angled on the sofa, facing her daughter and granddaughter. “Right, Sophie?”
Sophie nodded. “Amen.”
Akna said, “Your sister betrayed me.” By rote, she made the sign of the cross on her chest. The official family religion had always been an odd pairing of old Inuit ways blended with Lyle’s Catholicism. A gold-framed photo of the Pope hung alongside Melissa’s and Hattie’s high school graduation pictures.
“Oh, stop. Melissa loved you very much.” Hattie’s voice cracked, causing Mason to shift uncomfortably. As much as he’d told himself he hated Melissa, wanted her to hurt as badly as she’d hurt him, he’d never wanted this. Hattie regained her composure. She’d always been the stronger of the two sisters.
“Obviously, not enough. And how could she have ignored Alec’s parents? When your father called to tell them the news, poor Cindy had a breakdown. Taylor’s got them on the first flight out in the morning so she can see her doctor.”
“Such a shame,” Sophie murmured.
“Akna, I’m sorry about all this.” Mason left the entry to join them. “Which is why—soon as possible—I’ll sign over my rights to Hattie. What you all do from there is your business.”
“Hattie,” Akna asked, “with the time you spend at the bar, do you even feel capable of raising twins?”
Hattie shrugged before tracing the back of her finger along her sleeping niece’s cheek. “If this is what Melissa wanted, I feel honor bound to at least try.”
Lyle ran his hands through his hair and sighed. “A few weeks ago, Melissa and the girls rode along with me while I covered for one of my delivery guys.” A former bush pilot, Lyle now owned a grocery distribution center that served many nearby small communities. “Looking back, she acted jumpy. She mentioned not having been sleeping. Didn’t think much of it at the time—chalked it up to her being a new mom. She talked a lot about wanting Hattie to be the girls’ godmother, and that if something ever happened to her, she wanted them raised young.”
“What does that even mean?” Akna asked through the tissue she’d held to her nose.
“Ask me, this is all unnatural,” Sophie said. “The girls should be with their grandparents who love them.”
Hattie ignored the neighbor and forced a deep breath. “Mom, no offense to you and Dad, but Melissa brought up the godmother thing with me, too. At the time, I told her she was talking crazy, but she said she wanted the girls raised by someone young. I guess her friend Bess was taken in by her grandmother, then lost her, which is how she ended up in foster care until she turned eighteen. Melissa didn’t want that for her girls.”
“We’d never let that happen,” Lyle said.
Hattie took her niece from Akna’s arms. “Look, I know this is a shock for everyone—me, too—but if this is what Melissa wanted—”
Her mother interjected, “What about our wishes?”
Lyle sat beside his wife, taking her hand. “Honey, what we want doesn’t matter. All we can do is support Hattie as best we can.”
“I would be calling a lawyer,” Sophie said.
“Sophie,” Hattie said, “please, stay out of this family matter. And, Mom, I don’t mean to be harsh, but you’re acting petty.” Standing, Hattie cupped her hand to the infant’s head. Hattie’s brown eyes narrowed the way they always had when she dug in her heels to fight for what she wanted. “Why can’t we raise the twins together? As of now, Mason and I might have legal custody, but what does that really even mean? I’ll move into Melissa and Alec’s, which is—what?—three miles from you? You used to watch the girls all the time for Melissa and Alec. Won’t you do the same now for me? Vivian and Vanessa will be raised in the only home they’ve known, by people they love. I fail to see how this isn’t the best all-around solution—especially since Mason already agreed to take himself out of the equation.”
“It isn’t the best,” Sophie said, “because grandparents are best. You’ve never been around little ones. How will you even know what to do?”
While Sophie, in her infinite wisdom, rattled on, Mason was unprepared for the personal sting he felt at Hattie’s speech. Did she have to make him sound so heartless and uncaring? But what else could he do? He had no stake in these little lives. Prior to their parents’ funeral, he’d never even seen the girls. If he had his way, he’d be on a return flight to Virginia first thing in the morning.
Akna had been silently crying, but her pain now turned to uncontrollable sobbing. “Wh-why did this h-happen?”
Lyle slipped his arm around her.
Sophie closed her eyes in
