Dear Olivia,

I would kiss the ground, but sand in my mouth will only make me vomit more than I already have.

What a disgusting voyage it has been. On my ship, there will be none of this excessive rum-drinking. And I will have a rule: what comes out of your body, you will clean yourself. How tired I am of finding unidentified near-liquid globs on the floor and taking a mop to them myself. Men can be animals, chica. But you know this.

But enough of this: Cuba!

It is even more beautiful than the pictures. The sand is soft and warm under my feet. I watch the other men unload their bags and laugh because I am practically a gypsy. In my knapsack I carry only these: A change of clothes, a pen, this journal, a blanket, and a necklace of yours. I am sorry for stealing it, Livi, but you seldom wear it anyway. I will return it when I see you again.

When we arrived here, I hurtled myself off that boat. I stumbled about like a drunk man, shouting to the heavens with joy. Ah, The Dance Of The Wayward Pirate. I should love the sea, shouldn't I? And I do, only not when I sail it crammed together with dozens of filthy drunk men with no sense of personal space.

Do you know how many times I was vomited on in a span of six days? Seven. Once every day, twice on Thursday. I will have to buy new clothes as soon as my legs solidify out if this jelly state. Both of my outfits are stained with other men's sick, now.

I am nervous to meet my mother, Livia. You say she will love me, but I don't know. What if she doesn't remember me? What if she disowns me for have sailed on my uncle's ship for so long? For letting him get away?

Speaking of parents, I wonder if you have been to see your father yet. After what he did to you, I think he deserves a good scare and a sword to his neck.

    Thinking of you,

             -Robin

XXX

Heather knew she only had two hours and thirty minutes until the store opened. She'd already put herself behind schedule in the morning, eating breakfast with Caelum, then again by stopping at the farmer's market. And these kids were goddamn distracting.

She was trying to make some new journals. In the past week, they'd sold almost forty. There were only five left. That, and the boxes, she needed to make some more of those. And as always, ships in bottles were in high demand. But she didn't dare attempt to do these with the two of them sitting there. Every other question they asked made her hands shake.

"So, you and Olivia were good friends?"

"I guess so."

"What was she like?"

Heather paused, looking at the seam she was trying to sew on the journal. Second one this morning. normally, she'd be on her fourth or fifth. Wrenching herself back into focus, she made five neat stitches and tied a knot. "Crazy," she answered, snipping off the excess thread. "Kinda moody."

Peter frowned. "That's it?"

"No," she answered. Heather chose a print of a scalloped shell to press on this one. Yeah, that would look good with the lilac, wouldn't it . . .

"What else?" The girl asked.

Heather arranged the print on the cover. "I mean, it's not like she was a bad person or anything. She just wouldn't stand for nonsense. And she'd get upset if you talked about . . ." She trailed off, grabbing her airbrush and the stencil that matched the print. Maybe the trim could be in green, the rest of it a sort of soft yellow?

"If you talked about what?" Peter pressed.

She sighed. How much did the kid know? And how much to tell him? "A lot of things. You know who James was?"

Peter nodded, so did Mel. How did they know? The girl watched intently as Heather airbrushed the initial stencil, removing it to get to the details. She switched the color to a minty green.

"Well, she'd go off if you talked about him. Or her dad, most of the time."

"Why?" Peter asked.

Heather put her head down and focused for two minutes -- long enough to finish the picture. Not her best airbrush work, but who cared? People would buy it anyway. Galveston shoppers seemed to have a weakness for handmade items. Heather was always to sign her work, and usually left behind some tiny imperfection: a smudge, a bit of paint outside the lines. A chip in a wooden box, fingernail marks on a pot. Just something to show that she wasn't a machine.

The kid was persistent. "Why did she get mad if you talked about him?"

Heather realized that this guy was Peter's grandfather. Was it really her place to break a relationship wide open? Did she really want its shards all over the floor of the new life she'd made for herself? Placing the journal on the rack to dry, she selected another piece, this one a faded gold color. "Do you really want to know?"

"Yeah."

"Well, you're grandpa's a douchebag," she told the kid, never looking up from her pile of prints. Maybe something different for this one. How about seaweed? Easy enough. She could laminate one of the dried pieces Sammy liked to use for postcards and laminate it into the cover. That might be cool.

Peter nodded. "Tell me something I don't know."

She spared him a glance. "More of a douchebag than you think he is. He used to hit your aunt, did you know that? She had all these cuts and bruises on her. Everybody knew where they'd come from, but nobody but me dared to talk about it."

His eyes widened. "Really? He did?" She nodded. "Did Olivia get mad at you? When you talked about it?"

Heather nodded again, standing to find Sammy's seaweed. "Attacked me with a pocket knife."

Concentrate, concentrate . . . if she didn't, the memories bombarded her. If she didn't dedicate every inch of her focus to finding the damn seaweed, she would sink back into the darkness of losing Olivia, losing her best friend. She would find herself back at the bottom of that well, unable to travel back to the sea, unable to find joy in being a pirate again.

She supposed the only reason she'd let this kids stay was because she owed it to Olivia. After all, without the small fortune Liv had left Heather in her will, Ship In A Bottle wouldn't exist. Heather would never have met Cae, and Oliver never would have been made. So, really, she owed this entire, beautiful new life of hers to a friend who she'd abandoned in her final hours. And lord, did that hurt.

"She attacked you?"

"Yep."

"And you guys stayed friends?"

"Yep. 'S not like I hadn't gone after her with a sledge hammer before."

Peter looked horrified, which almost amused Heather. Almost. "A sledge hammer? What did she do?"

"She read my journal."

"Oh." He looked at the ground, then back at Heather. "I read her journal," he admitted. "I found it in my mom's apartment. She's at the hospital, and I have a key, so . . . I broke in, and there it was, like, on the kitchen counter." Well that explained how he knew about James.

"Your mom?" Heather narrowed her eyes. Oh, there was the seaweed. Well that took long enough. "Oh, right. Bailey." She rolled her eyes. That crazy woman was really the reason Liv was dead. Why did she have her journal, then? "You don't live with her?"

Peter shook his head. "Foster care."

"Sorry," Heather said. She sat back down with the seaweed. Well, maybe it would be easier if she airbrushed over it, like a stencil . . . less work, but still cool looking. Why not? "Yeah, I did the foster care thing when I was a kid. It sucked ass."

The kid smiled a little. Heather didn't look, because she was afraid he might look like his aunt when he smiled. "It does, for the most part. But my foster mom says she's gonna adopt me and Aiden, so that's good."

Aiden? Oh, right, the older one. "How's your brother?" She asked, glad to keep the conversation away from Liv.

"Fine, I guess," the kid shrugged. "He's not talking to anybody cause he's upset about my mom, but he's not in the hospital, so that's good."

"Why's he upset about your mom? What'd she do?"

"She tried to kill herself." Peter shrugged. "I don't know what the big fuss is about. I mean, she got saved, didn't she? It's not like she's actually dead."

Heather frowned, shaking the brush. "And you ran away? When he's that upset?"

"Well, yeah." Peter squirmed in his chair, eyes darting around Heather's studio. His eyes rested on a sketch that she supposed probably looked familiar to him. She'd just sold the last ship in a bottle with The Fina inside. She was improving it, now, to make it look more like the real thing. "Aiden's fine. He's just being dramatic."

Heather raised an eyebrow to herself. "What about you?" She asked, looking at Amelia. "You have a family?"

The girl nodded guiltily. "They probably don't know I'm gone yet. They don't wake up until almost ten in the summer." She smiled a little, but it was quickly replaced by a troubled frown.

"Well," Heather said, sighing. "Sometimes your family isn't the people God put you in a house with when you were born." She smiled, thinking of Caelum and Ollie, waiting for her at home. "Sometimes you've got to search around a little bit before you find them."