My hubby knows a thing or two about heating things up.
Gah! No. I’m good. It’s fixed.
Ahhh, you let Noah fix it, didn’t you? That’s practically a betrothal in this town. Have you shagged him yet?
Esther!
What? Best to test the milk before you buy the cow, dear.
Please go menace someone else.
Can’t. Being menacing is too much cardio. But I’m proud of you, dear.
I put the phone down and pretended my eyesdidn’t sting.
The timer dinged. I pulled scones from the oven, split one open, and ate it too hot, butter melting down my fingers, because carbs—and fat—were needed.
When Noah came back, arms full of bags of tools and hardware supplies, I did not smile.
But I didn’t run, either.
That felt like progress Gran would approve of.
Six
NOAH
Icame down late that night, after a particularly long nap, because I was still wrestling with jet lag. The inn had the gentle quiet that isn’t silence—old-house quiet, radiators ticking and the walls settling and sighing. I followed the warmth to the lounge and stopped in the doorway.
Skye was decorating the tree by herself.
It wasn’t a grand tree—nothing that screamed hotel lobby. It was a stubborn, well-meaning Scots pine that looked like it had picked its way home across the fields. She’d dragged it into the corner near the hearth and strung the bottom half in lights while the other half waited like an unlit promise. There was a plastic tub of ornaments open on the rug, a tangle of paper chains she’d clearly made by hand, and a mug steamed at her elbow. The fire threwcopper into her hair, and she’d kicked off her shoes and wore those socks with little pom-poms at the ankles.
And she was singing.
Not loud. Not performing. Just the soft, automatic singing you do when your hands are busy and you forget anyone could be listening—low and warm and a little husky where the day had sanded it down. It was a song I didn’t know, which annoyed me in a petty way because I used to know all her songs.
You can spend years pretending you don’t remember the precise temperature of someone’s voice, and then one note finds the tuning fork in your ribs and everything you’ve built shivers on its foundation. I leaned on the doorframe and let it happen because some mistakes you have to witness to fix.
She looked up at the shift of light. Saw me. The song cut off with a swallow.
“You missed tea,” she said. Which in Skye language meant how much of that did you hear?
“Couldn’t sleep last night, and I slept too long now.” I held up hands. “I heard you fighting a losing battle with a string of lights and thought I’d offer diplomatic assistance.”
“They’re feral,” she said, deadpan. “They came out of the box as a knot with a superiority complex.”
“Hand them over, then.”
“It’s your funeral,” she warned, but she passed me the snarled knot anyway.
Up close she smelled like lemon and sugar. She’d gotten glitter on her cheekbone, traitorous stuff that has the survival instincts of a cockroach. I hadthe sudden, stupid urge to lick it off her face and had to move backward to avoid becoming a headline.
I took the lights to the hearth rug and started the ritual—free a loop, swear, roll, pass under, curse again. In the meantime, Skye slowly dug through a box of ornaments, unwrapping each one and holding it in front of her for a moment.
“You’re humming,” I said after a minute, because I like to make my own trouble. “You always hum when you’re nervous.”
“I always hum when I’m working,” she corrected. “It keeps the ghosts from making suggestions.”
