“Good girl,” April said.
Daphne laughed, then covered her mouth with her hands. “I can’t believe it,” she said through her fingers.
“I can. You belong in the Devon.”
Daphne dropped her hands. “I don’t think I could’ve gotten here without you.”
“That’s not true at all,” April said.
She’d moved closer now, so close they were a breath apart. April took both of Daphne’s hands in hers, held them to her chest.
“Thank you all the same,” Daphne said, resting her forehead against April’s.
“You’re welcome all the same,” April said.
“April,” Daphne said, taking a deep breath and pulling back to look at her. She bit her lip again, just like she had before Nicola had arrived, as though she was bracing herself for something, some declaration.
But April needed to declare first.
“I want to come with you,” she said.
Daphne’s head popped up, her eyes round. “What?”
“Just hear me out,” April said, her voice shaking a little. Her whole body was shaking, in fact, a dry leaf drinking up the first drops of rain.
“April,” Daphne said. “I—”
“You belong in the Devon,” April went on quickly, fingers tightening around Daphne’s. “You do. No question. I’m so happy for you. And I’m going to do what Nicola said—I’m going to find a place forFool’s Passage.”
“Good.”
“But I want to do that with you.”
Daphne’s mouth opened a little, lower lip trembling.
“I want to go to London with you,” April said. “It’s the perfect time. I’ll rework my pieces. I think it might make a great tarot deck, and I’ll write the guidebook too. Get a job in a café or tattoo shop while I work on it, I don’t care. We’ll bash around London, you and me, while you become a star.”
“A star,” Daphne said, shaking her head.
“Or whatever you want to be. You can do anything, Daphne Love. You believe that now, don’t you?”
Daphne’s eyes fluttered closed for a second before opening again, tears brimming and then spilling over. April leaned forward and kissed them away, untangled their hands so she could hold Daphne’s face in hers.
“You believe that?” April said again.
Daphne nodded. “I do. But—”
“Good, good,” April said, laughing a little even as her own tears threatened to fall. “So we’ll go together. We’ll do this together. Figure this out, making it whatever we want—”
“April, I can’t.”
Everything stopped.
The tears, the laugh on April’s mouth. The relief that had just started to burgeon in her chest. The excitement. Everything.
“What?” April asked. Because maybe she heard wrong, heard aton the end of Daphne’s own declaration when there wasn’t one, her fears creating a scenario that didn’t exist.
But when more tears streamed down Daphne’s cheeks, when she removed April’s hands from her face, clutching at her fingers and holding them to her own chest, a plea in her expression, April knew her hearing was just fine.
