“Day drinking on a Sunday sounds like a nap before dinner, but sure. White, please.”

“I could have sworn you two already had a nap,” Trystan said under his breath, but not really, as he reached into a cupboard and handed a glass across to Logan.

“You got something to say, sailor?” Sophie challenged.

“Wouldn’t dream of it. Em? Wine?”

Emma was swinging her head like she was watching a tennis match.

“Thanks.” She nodded at Trystan.

He passed a second glass to Logan and closed the cupboard. “Where’s Reid?”

“Getting up from his own nap, I imagine,” Logan drawled.

“Getting Storm up from hers,” Emma corrected indignantly. Then in an aside to Sophie confided, “But I have made the bed twice today.” Her gaze flickered curiously between her and Logan.

“I only make it when I put clean sheets on it,” Sophie said. “Otherwise, I’m wasting time I could spend sleeping in it.”

“Ta.” Emma smiled at Logan as he set her filled glass within reach.

“I’ll get the beer then?” Logan said to Trystan. “Since you’re going to stand around sulking because you didn’t get your own nap today?” He turned and went down the stairs.

“Sometimes I feel so sorry for Glenda,” Sophie said to Emma as she rolled the stem of her glass between her fingers and thumb. “Can you imagine eighteen years of these three locking horns?”

“She’s a saint. Is the oven hot, Trys? Can you—Oh, thanks.”

He opened the oven and took the roaster from her, sliding it onto the rack.

“Hopefully we’ll eat by six. Who wants scalloped potatoes?” Emma asked.

“Who doesn’t?” Sophie asked, eyeing Trystan, trying to tell if he was genuinely annoyed at her and Logan hooking up or using it as an excuse to needle his brother.

“I’ll start those in a little bit, then.” Emma washed her hands and was drying them on a tea towel when Reid walked in with a sleepy Storm.

“Oh, hello,” Sophie said warmly.

Storm wasn’t interested in a bunch of people, even the ones she loved. She turned her face away and sucked her fingers, head resting trustingly on Reid’s shoulder.

“She hasn’t had her coffee yet,” Reid joked, rubbing her back. “How are you, Soph?”

“Well enough.” She kept to herself that she cried every morning when she woke and remembered all over again that Gramps was gone.

He nodded and asked Trys, “So what’s up?”

“Let’s sit down.”

Logan returned with cans of beer and handed them out as they all took seats in the living room. Logan sat on the floor in front of Sophie, resting his back against the front of the sofa, something that Reid noted with a glance toward Emma.

There was a round of pop-hisses as they opened their cans, then Trystan caught them up on what he’d learned. “I’m confident they’ll pay market value,” Trystan wrapped up, speaking to Reid. “I know you were hoping we’d be turning a profit by end of season, and that competing bids would drive up the price once we put it up for sale.”

“I was, but there’s no other option now. We have to sell to them. It’s the right thing to do,” Reid said matter-of-factly.

“I agree.” Logan nodded. “Let’s set up a meeting with the council to tell them we agree in principle. Do you want one of us to make that call?”

“I can do it,” Trystan said.

They all sat in silence for a minute, absorbing this sudden new direction.

It made sense that the Heiltsuk Nation take over the resort, which was smack-dab in the middle of their traditional territory, and provide opportunities for their own people to run it. Sophie would happily provide any support they needed through the transition. This development also relieved her of any sense of disloyalty toward Wilf and the marina, but did it also spell freedom for Logan sooner than either of them would have expected?

A bubble of pressure began to form inside her, one filled with expectations she wasn’t sure she could meet. He had promised to wait for her, but she was still really, really fearful of trusting him.

The silence had Storm picking up her head with curiosity. She held out one arm toward Trystan.

“Tst.”

“Show him what you can do.” Reid sat her on the floor.

Instead of crawling to Trystan, she grinned at Logan and clambered against his leg, clumsily trying to crawl up him until he gathered her to stand on his thigh. His big hands caged her stiff body, supporting her as she practiced her wobbly balance.

“Where would we go?” Emma asked Reid with a worried look.

“This does shake things up, doesn’t it? We have to stay in BC until…” He nodded at Storm. The gesture encompassed the finalizing of Emma’s residency so she could adopt Storm with him. “Then… I don’t know.”

“Do you have any sense of timing?” Logan asked Trystan.

“It’s the government. Took twenty years for them to get this far,” Trystan said with a twist of his lips. “Two hundred and twenty, if we’re being honest.”

No kidding. Sophie experienced a pang of white guilt and hurt on Trystan’s behalf. He had never talked much about how the residential school system had affected him and his mother’s family, but she knew his grandmother had been taken in the Sixties Scoop. As a mother herself, Sophie couldn’t fathom having her child snatched from her home or what it would do to Biyen to be wrenched from all he knew.

The Truth and Reconciliation process with the federal government was intended to repair some of the damage done by colonial settlers to the many Indigenous nations across Canada, but it was a slow, painful process.

Sophie was glad the Fraser boys were willing to make a deal so unhesitatingly, though. No amount of money could erase the history and damage done, but it was a step in the right direction.

Logan lifted Storm to growl into her stomach, making her release a baby giggle that was highly infectious, putting smiles on all their faces.

Poignant ones, though.

These siblings had finally come together into something like a family. Now they were talking about leaving the place that had been their childhood home and fragmenting again.

The front door suddenly flung open. Biyen burst in, panting as though he’d run across the entire island. “Is my mom—Oh. Hi, Mom.”

“Hi, bud. Knock first when you come in here, okay? Close the door and take off your shoes. Did you have fun with JayJay?”

“Yup.” He toed off his shoes and came around the sofa to drop on his knees beside Logan, ignoring all the adults to say, “Hi Stormin’ Norman McDoorman.” He touched Storm’s hand, inviting her to grab his finger.

Storm toppled herself straight at him, steadied only by Logan’s firm grip on her.