They settled into an easy flow of conversation that wasn’t exactly small talk. Easy topics, yet revealing too. She asked about his family, daily living on Lunar Lane. After a minute or two of his simple unoffended answers, she realized she wasn’t trying to rule out that he was unknowingly a cult member. She simply wanted to know Ezra.
“What about your siblings-in-law?” she said.
“Cassius and Kelsey.”
“Yeah, do you like them? Does everybody get along?”
“Kelsey’s great. We were hard on her for a while—Sydney and I were. But when she came home and we heard the real story… She never wanted to break up with my brother. He was the stupid one.”
She had to laugh at the straightforwardness of his conclusion. He seemed to be that way with most of his opinions. A thing was black or white to Ezra.
“Cassius just turned forty, and…I don’t know, he’s got this low-key wisdom inside. I hope by the time I’m forty, I’ll have that.” He looked down into his water glass for a long moment, then nodded to himself. “I love and respect him. I’m grateful he joined our family.”
“How many years do you have to gain some low-key wisdom?”
He grinned. “I’m twenty-nine. You?”
“Twenty-three.”
“Huh. Thought you were older.”
She rolled her eyes. “I hear that constantly.”
“It’s not a bad thing.”
Maybe it truly wasn’t to him. She hoped it wasn’t, because she couldn’t do a thing about it. “How about nieces and nephews? Do you have any?”
“Not so far. Cassius and Sydney have talked about it—being parents, raising kids on the Lane the way we were raised, close to the land. Hasn’t happened yet. What about your sister, what’s she like?”
One person Willow could always talk about—her bestie barely-younger sis. Ezra smiled at her stories, which lasted until they agreed to split a single tiramisu. Willow ate slowly, savored the soft coffee-soaked dessert, and savored Ezra’s rich voice as he contributed a story of himself and his brother when they were eleven and nine.
“It probably wasn’t as much of a drop as it feels like in my memory, but at the time I thought we were on the edge of a cliff.” He chuckled, a low warm sound. “I grabbed Trevor by the collar and hauled him back and hollered at him, and he was good and scared and started telling me I saved his life. I still don’t know if he was in any real danger or not, but for a couple months he listened to everything I said.”
“And after a couple months?”
Ezra grinned, shaking his head at his memories. “Mom used to have to send him to his room because he couldnotleave me alone. He had to throw stuff at me—harmless stuff, just to get me to look up. Or he had to bump into me ‘accidentally.’ Or pepper me with questions. ‘What’s that, Ez? Why’re you doing that? What’s this for? Can I do that too? How come, Ez?’”
“Gosh, yes, that was little Saffron. She was obsessed with my nail polish, and it wasn’t enough for me to paint her toenails for her. She wanted to do them herself.”
“Did you let her?”
“Once. She tipped the bottle over. I took it away, and she screamed like she was being kidnapped.”
“One time I was building and Trevor kept poking his finger into my arm and finally I hollered at him, and Mom sent him to his room. She said it was for the rest of the night, but then she came to me and said, ‘I’d like to give your brother another chance to behave himself,’ so he came back downstairs. And sure enough, within fifteen minutes he threw a pillow at my head.”
Willow burst out laughing. “Of course he did.”
“Normally I would’ve gone straight to Mom, but his eyes welled up as soon as I looked up from my bricks, and he ran out of the room looking all dejected. So I went back to what I was doing, and then Mom comes in and says, ‘Your brother just confessed that he has to go back to his room because he’s incapable of not harassing you.’”
“Aw, poor little Trevor,” Willow said.
Ezra gave her a mock glare, then softened. “He could be a complete pest, but he was an honest pest.”
“And what is he now?” she said, but the strength of their bond was clear in the way Ezra spoke of him.
“Just like you and Saffron. I’ve got a lot of good friends on the Lane, deep friends going way back. But Trevor’s my brother. The best friend I could ask for.”
“And he still messes with you over things like the art fair.”
