The sound surprised all of us, I think. Including Rafe himself. He looked almost startled by it, like he'd forgotten laughter was something his body could do.
“Sorry,” he said quickly. “I didn't mean?—“
“Don't apologize for laughing,” I said. “There's not nearly enough of it around here.”
Rafe looked at me for a long moment. Something shifted in his expression, some wall coming down just a little.
“Thank you,” he said quietly. “For this. For letting me be here.”
“You're stuck with us. Including Michael's terrible construction skills.” Evan said, before I could respond.
“My construction skills are fine.”
“Your construction skills are a hazard to public safety,” Nate said cheerfully.
“I raised a traitor.”
“You raised an honest man.”
I threw a rag at his head. He caught it without looking, because of course he did, and threw it back with perfect accuracy.
I picked up my hammer, turned back to the work still waiting to be done.
“Alright,” I said. “Enough standing around. We've got a bathroom to fix and apparently my grout is a crime against humanity.”
“Crime against bathrooms,” Nate corrected.
“Same thing.”
“Not even close.”
I shook my head, fighting back a smile, and got back to work.
The house creaked around us, settling into its bones, and for the first time in a long time, the sound felt like promise instead of memory.
Like maybe this place could be home again.
Like maybe we all could.
The clearing was maybefifty yards across, ringed by ancient trees that looked like they'd been standing since before humans learned to build cities. Moonlight spilled across the open ground in ways that shouldn't have been possible given the cloud cover. Pooling in the center like liquid silver, thick and viscous, present in ways that light had no right to be.
Ward stones marked the perimeter. Worn smooth by centuries of weather and ritual, humming with power I could feel even from inside the truck. This was sacred ground. The place where Hollow Pines buried its dead and honored its losses and drew lines that said no further.
The place where Anna had burned.
I got out. The air hit me like walking into water. Heavy. Resistant. Charged with something that made my skin prickle and my pulse slow. My boots crunched on gravel that shouldn't have been audible, each step echoing in the unnatural quiet.
The center of the clearing looked different than I remembered. The pyre was gone, of course. They'd cleaned everything after the funeral, swept away the ash and the remnants and the physical evidence of loss. But the ground was still scorched in places. Still marked by fire that had burned too hot, too magical, too meaningful to leave no trace.
I walked to that spot. Stood where I'd stood six months ago, watching flames consume the woman I'd loved for twenty-five years. Watching sparks rise toward a moon that had watched back with the same patient attention it wore now.
“Hey, baby.”
My voice sounded wrong in the silence. Too small. Too human. But I kept talking anyway, because stopping meant thinking, and thinking meant feeling, and feeling meant drowning in grief I'd been trying to outrun since the night everything ended.
“House is coming along. Got the trim up in the living room. Nate helped. He's got your eye for detail, you know. Keeps catching things I miss.” I pressed my palms against my thighs, grounding myself. “He's happy, Anna. Really happy. Evan's good for him. Better than good. They fit together like they were made for it.”
The moonlight pulsed. Probably my imagination. Probably just clouds shifting, changing how the light fell. Probably nothing supernatural about the way the silver seemed to gather closer, thickening around me like a blanket.
