“You want pancakes, Elle? I’m gonna make pancakes. Ooh! A waffle iron. I’m gonna make waffles.”
“You do you,” I told her. “I’ll eat anything.”
“I’ll have both,” Noah told her.
She whacked his knuckles lightly with the wooden spoon she’d just grabbed. “You’ll get what I make, pretty boy. So, anyway, then they start arguing about who gets custody of the wine club. The sodding wine club! Not me, their daughter, the wine club! And Mum only wants that so Dad will have to go somewhere else with the tart. Although she’s not really a tart. She’s my old Brownie leader. She’s quite lovely, really. And…”
Amanda’s rant faded out of earshot once I was in the bathroom. I felt bad for her, I really did. I decided my own rant about Linda that I’d been dying to talk to her about could wait. I’d told Noah about it all yesterday, and he’d been sympathetic enough to tide me over for a while.
Back in the kitchen, they’d moved on from Amanda’s parents’ looming divorce to talking about the house.
“…I know there’s kind of no point in cleaning things up if they’re only going to tear it down,” Noah was saying, “but not everyone who’s interested is a developer. Some of them just want to buy the beach house as it is. Or, you know, they say they do, but they keep canceling.”
“How do you know there are developers interested?” I asked him, pulling my wet hair into a bun. “Did your mom say something?”
“Lee told me.”
“How does he know?”
Noah gave me a flat look and said, “Elle, you know I don’t ask him questions I don’t want to hear the answers to.”
“Plausible deniability. I’m with you there.”
“He changed the number,” Amanda told us, clearly only half listening as she made me up a plate of waffles, smothering them in chopped fruit. “On the sign outside. It’s his phone number.”
“What part of ‘plausible deniability’ don’t you get?” Noah barked at her, but there was a playfulness to his scorn. He sighed, rubbing a knuckle between his eyes. “I should’ve guessed he’d pull a stunt like that.”
“You’re telling me you guys missed that? He’s your best friend! And your brother! How did you not know that?”
Noah and I both pulled a face. “Uh, because his number hasn’t changed in about seven years?” I said. “There is no chance in hell I’d be able to tell you Lee’s cell number. I barely remember mine sometimes.”
Amanda shook her head at both of us. “What, and you guys thought the painter just canceled last week out of nowhere, and the guy coming to check the roof ‘forgot’ his ladder, and that every buyer wanting to view this place mysteriously changed their mind? And none of that was, like, at all suspicious? You guys are such morons.”
“Plausible deniability,” I repeated.
But hearing her lay it all out like that, I couldn’t say I was surprised. Lee had been against selling the beach house since the very start. This was exactly the kind of thing he would pull to stop it all going ahead.
(Plus, it wasn’t like I’d been around that much to really pay it a lot of attention.)
“You think we should talk to him?” Noah asked me.
“I’m not doing it,” Amanda said. She slid my breakfast in front of me. “I like the kid, but he’s not my problem.”
“That’s really gonna put me back in his good books.” I snorted, moping over my plate of waffles. “Yesterday I missed the trip to Berkeley, and now you want me to tell him to stop getting in the way of your parents selling the beach house? Nope. I like the kid, but he’s not my problem,” I said. “This one’s all yours.”
“Oh, great. Now you decide you’re not part of the family. What happened to ‘this beach house is just as much mine as it is yours’?”
I waved my fork at him dismissively. “This one’s all yours, Noah.”
He grumbled but eventually muttered, “Fine. Jeez. I guess we’ve just gotta hope our mom doesn’t find out….”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
On the morning of Fourth of July, a weird tension hung around the beach house. I hadn’t really seen Lee since he’d gone off to Berkeley without me—he’d gotten back on the Sunday while I was at work, and we’d somehow managed to stay out of each other’s way later that night.
Amanda was back staying with us. She was making pancakes when Noah and I got up.
“My mother’s working,” she told us. “And my dad is out playing golf with some guys he met. It’s not like Independence Day is a big deal for us, so we don’t have any plans. We did, back when this was still a last-ditch happy-family holiday, but…” Amanda blew a raspberry to make her point.
“You’re welcome to celebrate it with us,” I offered, like she wasn’t already counting on doing just that.
“I’m going to spend every holiday with you guys if you’re not careful,” she joked. “If my parents keep fighting, I’ll be begging for a spot at your Christmas dinner, too. Oh look!” she said. “I have strawberries and blueberries and cream. Red, white, and blue! Themed breakfast!”
“She’s more into this holiday than we are,” I stage-whispered to Noah from behind a hand, giving her a melodramatically wary look. “Do you think we should, like, go throw all her tea in the sea to remind her what today’s all about?”
“I vote we throw her in the sea,” Noah replied in the same way, hiding his mouth behind his hand.
“Hey, don’t forget who’s making you guys breakfast.”
She finished arranging a dollop of whipped cream on one of the plates before gesturing for us to sit, then putting heaped, colorful plates in front of us and chopping more fruit.
“Thanks,” Noah said. “You really don’t have to.”
“Oh, please.” Amanda waved the knife dismissively in our direction. “You know I’m an early bird, mister. And a little cooking is the least I can do for you guys, for letting me stay. You have no idea.”
“None at all,” I deadpanned. “It’s not like we heard the rant for, like, three hours solid yesterday.”
Noah cut me a look but relaxed when Amanda laughed.
“What’s so funny? Oh, man, something smells good.” Lee hopped into the kitchen, clicking his ankles together and then hunching forward, eyes shut and head leading, as he weaved through the kitchen, sniffing noisily, mimicking a cartoon character who’d just detected a pie on a windowsill.