Are you happy?
Yes.
She didn't hesitate. She said yes, clean and complete. How you answer when the truth is simple.
I close my eyes.
The whiskey glass rests on my chest.
The house is quiet.
I am alone in it.
And for the first time since this started, I don't look for a reason that isn't my own.
Chapter 35
Vee
The morning is warm enough to be outside without a jacket for the first time since we arrived at the cabin.
I didn't plan anything for today. I woke up and the sun was coming through the curtains and I thought:outside. That's all. Just outside, in the sun, with nowhere to be and nothing to manage.
We've been out here for two hours now. Lawn chairs dragged onto the grass, coffee going cold on the porch railing. Rhys is in the largest chair, which still looks inadequate for him, with his face tipped slightly toward the sun. His eyes closed. Malcolm is on the steps reading something on his phone with his shirt off because of course he is. Finn disappeared inside twenty minutes ago saying he had to check something and hasn't come back.
Alex is beside me. We aren’t touching, just close in the same way he's been close since the night I told him I chose them. Like he's stopped trying to maintain the careful distance and has settled into proximity instead, and the proximity has its own warmth that's different from touch but still real.
"What are you thinking about?" he asks.
"Nothing," I say.
He looks at me.
"The garden," I say. "I keep thinking about what I'd plant if we had the space."
"What would you plant?"
"Tomatoes obviously. Herbs—basil, rosemary, thyme. Something with flowers too, not just vegetables. Lavender maybe. Something that smells good when you walk past it." I look at the tree line. "Fruit trees if there was room. That takes years to establish but I'd like to start something that takes years."
He's quiet. "Something permanent."
"Yeah," I say. "Something permanent."
The door bangs open.
Finn emerges with a stack of papers that should not exist given that we are sitting outside on a Tuesday morning with nowhere to be.
"Okay," he says. He has the expression he gets when he's been productive in a way he's proud of. "I found some listings."
Everyone looks at him.
"How many is some," Malcolm says.
"Twelve." He holds up the stack. "Color coded."
"Finn," Alex says. "We haven't even—"
"I know we haven't. But we're going to need to eventually and I had forty minutes. Plus the wifi is good today so…" He drops into the remaining chair and spreads the papers on the small table between us with the focus of someone presenting findings. "I used our general criteria—space, land, reasonable distance from town, not on Ragon's side of things—and I narrowed from forty-seven listings down to twelve. These are sorted by priority. Green tabs are strong contenders. Yellow are worth a look. Red is wishful thinking but I included them anyway because they're interesting."
