“Jaysus,” Cameron muttered. “You’re like a little squirrel.”
Ronan grinned. “I count it every week. You can have it all.”
“No,” Cameron said. “We all have to contribute equally.”
“That doesn’t seem fair, considering Ronan is never going to go out on the boat,” Kieran said. “He should contribute less.”
His little brother shrugged. “I don’t mind,” he said in a quiet voice.
“How much do you have?” Cameron asked, turning to Kieran.
Kieran knew exactly what he had in the bank. He even knew how much he made every month in interest. And he knew that putting his money into sails for a boat they probably wouldn’t be allowed to sail was foolish. He was saving his money for something more important—he just wasn’t sure what that was. But someday, he’d need money and he’d be the only brother to have it.
“Enough,” Kieran said.
“He knows,” Dermot said. “He knows to the penny how much he has.”
“Over a thousand,” Kieran admitted. “But I’m not spending it all on this boat.”
Cameron gave him a pat on his shoulder. “We decide as a group. And we all contribute the same. We’re brothers.”
Kieran nodded. “We’re brothers,” he murmured.
They’d all managed to survive together. But Kieran had to wonder how long that would last. Someday, Cameron would leave for college, perhaps in a place far away from Seattle. Dermot had big dreams of traveling the world. And Ronan would undoubtedly find a safe place for himself to settle.
But even if they were separated by distance, the four Quinn brothers had a bond that no one could break, a bond forged by a family tragedy and strengthened by a childhood spent watching out for each other.
“You know what we should do,” Kieran said. “We should build ourselves a boat from scratch. Once we get this one fixed, we can sell it and build something we really like. Something bigger and better. After all, we got this boat for free and I bet, fixed up, we could sell it for fifteen thousand.”
“Oh, man, that would be so cool,” Dermot said. “Do you think Grandda would let us build our own boat?”
“Sure,” Cameron said, clearly excited by the suggestion. “We’ll tell him it will help us learn the business better. I’ve got some really cool designs we could look at. And when it’s done and we’re all old enough, we’ll just leave.”
“Where will we go?” Ronan asked, trepidation in his voice.
“The South Pacific,” Cameron replied. “We’ll go say goodbye to Ma and Da.”
Ronan looked a little green at the thought. Kieran glanced over at his twin brother and their gazes met. Dermot understood. They just needed to feel what their parents felt, to see what they’d seen and then maybe, they could finally put the past behind them and build lives of their own.
1
“BITNEY, KENTUCKY? What the hell is in Bitney, Kentucky?” Kieran stared down at the bus ticket, shaking his head.
He and his three brothers had gathered in Cameron’s office after a meeting with their grandfather. And they were all still trying to wrap their heads around what had just gone down. They’d suspected that Martin Quinn was thinking about retiring and turning over the control of the family yacht-building business to one of his four grandsons. But not one of them had expected this.
“So, let me get this straight,” Dermot said. “We’re supposed to walk away from everything here in Seattle for six weeks and find a new life for ourselves? In some strange place?”
Ronan nodded. “This is crazy. The old man has lost his mind. How the hell is he going to run this place without us?”
Kieran chuckled. “Don’t worry about that. He knows every job in the place. I swear, he could fire us all and the business would thrive.”
Quinn Yachtworks had been started in the early sixties as a small fishing-boat repair business in Seattle. Their grandfather had gradually built it into the finest custom sailing yacht producer on the West Coast, known for its sleek, state-of-the-art designs.
Martin’s only son, Jamie, had worked in the business until he and his wife, Suzanne, had been lost at sea.
It seemed as if every bit of happiness had leaked out of the young Quinns’ lives on the day they buried that empty coffin. The things that made them a family had changed. There wasn’t a lot of affection or laughter in the house. Instead, the boys worked and worked … and worked, pushing aside their emotions and their loss.
There had been some good moments, Kieran recalled. The four brothers had built a boat all on their own and he, Dermot and Cameron had spent an entire summer sailing it around Puget Sound, much to the dismay of Ronan, who refused to step on board. But the dreams they’d had for themselves as kids had been replaced by responsibility to their grandfather. Martin Quinn had taken them in when they needed a home. It was their family duty to repay him.
They all attended college locally and continued to work at Quinn Yachtworks, helping to expand the business even more. At first, they’d worked simple jobs around the shop and then, as they got older, they’d taken on more important positions. Cameron ran the design end and Dermot handled sales. Kieran served as chief financial officer and Ronan enjoyed supervising the shop, spending his days working side by side with the builders and craftsmen.
Yes, they’d all put aside their childhood dreams to help out after their parents’ death. But it was silly to think any of them could go chasing after those dreams now. “Where are you going?” Kieran asked Dermot.
“Mapleton, Wisconsin.” Dermot held up his phone, a tiny map on the screen. “It’s not anywhere near water. Except for this little lake.”
“Look up Bitney, Kentucky,” Kieran asked.
“That’s an easy one,” Cameron said. “He’s sending you to racing country. Remember how crazy you were about horses? You used to have all those plastic ponies lined up on your bedroom shelf. And you were always bugging Grandda to tell you about the horse he had when he was a kid. You even asked Da for riding lessons for your tenth birthday.”
Kieran ran his hands through his hair and shook his head. “I barely remember that. I’d almost forgotten about Ma buying me those plastic ones all the time. She’d put them in my lunch box.” He smiled at the memory. His mother had always been thoughtful like that. She’d loved playing with his horse collection as much as he did.
“Whatever happened to those ponies?” Dermot wondered.
“He wrapped them up and put them in the coffin,” Cameron said.
“Right,” Kieran replied. “I didn’t think I’d ever want to play with them again. They reminded me too much of Ma.”
A long silence grew between them.
“What time do you leave?” Ronan asked.
“Eleven-thirty tonight,” Kieran replied. “I’ve got two and a half days on a bus. I can’t imagine how much fun that’s going to be.”
Dermot chuckled. “You can catch up on your reading. Hey, it might be kind of cool. Who knows? I’m trying to keep an open mind. And a forced vacation isn’t such a bad deal.”
“Yeah, let’s see if you feel that way after you’ve been stuck inside a bus for sixty hours,” Kieran said. “Or you come back six weeks later to find your office buried in paperwork.”
“Sixty hours? Look at mine,” Ronan said. “Sibleyville, Maine. That’s about as far away from Seattle as a guy can get. Three and a half days. That’s one day more than