The Last Word by Katy Birchall

Author:Katy Birchall
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

It’s a strange thing witnessing someone you know as an adult returning to their childhood home, especially when it’s someone you see in a professional capacity. You get glimpses of what they were like growing up through small moments, like how Ryan had barely stepped through the door before he was down on his knees ruffling the hair of an Irish setter, which had come lolloping down the hall to greet him and was spinning round in circles, then resting its paws on Ryan’s shoulders to lick his ears.

Through raucous laughter, Ryan glances up at me with a boyish grin across his face. “This is Sullivan. But his friends call him Sully.”

I’ve never seen Ryan more comfortable and happy than in that moment with his dog.

“Oh, Ryan, you’re going to get his hairs all over your trousers,” his mum, Emily, says, smiling fondly at her son as she emerges into the hall. “Just step around him, Harper, and come on in. He’ll be down there getting Sully overexcited for a while.”

Slender and petite, Emily has strikingly sharp cheekbones and delicate features with gray-blue eyes and honey-blond highlighted hair. She is dressed in a dusty-blue shirt tucked into beige linen trousers and has a calm aura about her, with a small, secretive smile as though she knows something you don’t—similar to the one I’ve caught Ryan sporting from time to time. On her, though, it’s not annoying.

When Ryan finally gets to his feet, she wraps her arms around his shoulders as he bends down to her level and then pulls back to admire him, patting his cheek lightly with her hand and telling him she’s missed him. He looks mildly embarrassed at her attention, but softens, too, and I can see from their embrace that they have a close bond.

I feel a pang of regret that I don’t ever get such a welcome from my family.

“Ryan! You’re home!” comes a booming voice from the end of the hall. Ryan’s dad appears with oven gloves and an apron on. He comes striding toward us, a wide smile across his face.

“And you must be Harper,” he says with a slight Swedish accent. He shakes off the oven gloves to hold his hand out to me. “Welcome! I’m Fredrik. Pleasure to have you, make yourself at home. Ryan, don’t leave your bag on the ground there for everyone to trip over, yes?”

Ryan says, “Give me a moment to breathe, Dad, before you start telling me off for nonexistent mess,” and then they give each other one of those man-hugs that involves just one arm wrapped round the other person and some rough pats on the back.

Fredrik must be where Ryan gets his height from—he’s imposingly tall and broad with light brown hair, speckled with gray, and sparkling blue eyes that could rival his son’s. He chuckles as he instructs Ryan to take our bags upstairs where they’re “out of the way.”

“And there you were thinking I was a neat freak,” Ryan mumbles to me.

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