And maybe my silence is all she needs to read to know that it’s complicated for me. “Of course, no place is universally right for everyone,” she says diplomatically. “Dragonfly Creek felt right for me, when we stopped here. I’m not sure it was right for the boys back then, in hindsight, but then…” She gestures at the pastures and the mountain beyond it. “They chose to come back, so maybe it was the right place, but the wrong time for them. Right is a word best applied later, I think.”
I swallow hard. “It’s nice that they came back.”
“I feel very lucky.” There’s an odd catch in her voice.
I glance sideways. She’s staring out into the distance.
“Is it just the five of you?” I ask. “Do you have any other family?”
Luna doesn’t reply.
"I just wondered—” I swallow. "Do you ever—with your parents—do you?—”
"They've been gone a long time." She pauses. Shakes her head. "That's a closed chapter for me.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
"I don't mean to — " She purses her lips, her face turning sharper than I’ve seen it before. Her nostrils flare almost viciously as she takes a very sharp inhale. Then her mouth turns down in a sad frown. "I'm a better listener than I am a talker about some things. It's a failing. But it is what it is, at my age.” She sets her glass down against the railing. “I’m going to the greenhouse. Let Bellamy run until she’s ready to play in one spot again, and come join me.”
"I'm sorry if I've?—”
She waves it off.
Crap.
Fuck.
My stomach seizes, heat swarming my face.
Luna sighs and reaches for my hand, her touch warm and unexpected. She squeezes, as if to say,trauma sees trauma. We’re fine. Nothing is broken.
But something has shifted, because now I know where Luna's line is.
For two days, I thought—or maybe hoped?—the Kincaids didn’t have lines, maybe this was an endlessly safe place for Hope Waterford to fall apart, but of course it’s not safe without any limits.
There are always limits.
Some are more dangerous than others.
And more than once, I’ve been tempted to spill my guts about everything. About my parents, about Derek. About the pregnancy, God help me.
I would have handed it to her, all of it, because I’m so tired, and she’s so kind, and I haven’t had a mother for four years.
But Luna isn’t my mother.
And she’s just reminded me that even if we find peace, we don’t get back everything that we’ve lost.
"Mommy!"
Bellamy is running fast toward me, something clutched in her other hand.
I meet her halfway across the lawn and I drop to my knees in the grass. She crashes into me and I press my face into her hair. She smells like sunshine as she starts explaining, in her very serious three-year-old voice, about the rock that she found.It’s so pretty Mommy,I feel her say it, because my pulse is pounding so hard I can’t hear her. And I saywowandno wayandtell me againin all the right places while my hands shake against her small back.
I have to pull myself together. Need to stop thinking about this ranch like a fantasy escape from reality, and start treating it like the temporary refuge that it is—a place where I can carefully, very carefully, plan for my next steps to get Bellamy and my unborn baby a better life, somewhere very far away from here.
Chapter 13
Zane
