“They won't.”
“But if they do?—”
“Those flowers are the only language he’s got right now, and he’s telling you to hold on.” He stands and holds out his hand, that familiar glint of mischief back in his eyes. “Bedtime. That hangover's going to be biblical, and I want it on record that I tried to stop you at glass two.”
“Don’t you mean atbottletwo?” I take his hand and let him pull me up. The balcony tilts pleasantly and I list sideways, and Ian catches me by the waist without comment, steadying me until the world levels out.
“Okay?”
“Mm.”
“Right.” He keeps his hand at my back and steers me toward the door. “Walk. Slowly. No unnecessary heroics.”
We make it three steps into the living room before I stop.
“Ian?”
He rotates back toward me, eyebrow up.
“If he comes back, and something's wrong with him—like, really wrong, not just baseline broken—what do I do?”
He’s quiet for a moment, like he’s genuinely thinking what the best answer might be. “You show him that you’re not afraid of whatever he brought back with him. That's it.”
I think about that the whole slow walk down the hall. It sounds simple. It probably isn't.
Ian stops at my door, hands in his pockets, the mischief dialed back to something easier.
“Goodnight, Crazy.”
“Goodnight, Ian.” I push the door open, then pause. “Thank you. For everything.”
He shrugs, one shoulder, already turning away. “Don't make it weird.”
In the bedroom, the peonies on the nightstand are five days old—deep burgundy, almost black at the center, their heavy heads bowing. Tomorrow, new ones arrive.
Maybe.
5
RETH
Flashback
My father used to say you could tell everything about a person by the way they kept their home.
Cluttered meant they were still deciding who they were. Bare meant they were afraid to commit. But a home that looked lived-in and loved—that was a person who knew what mattered.
I think about that when the car pulls through the iron gates.
The house is enormous. Pale stone, tall windows, a garden that wraps around the front like it grew there on purpose, like the house and the earth had made some private agreement long before we showed up. It’s beautiful the way things in storybooks are beautiful—a little unreal, a little too perfect. The kind of beautiful that makes you feel like you’re not supposed to touch anything.
Mary’s face is pressed to the car window, leaving foggy little circles with every quick breath.
She hasn’t spoken in ten minutes, which is wrong. Mary talks the way other people breathe—constantly, automatically. But the second we turned off the main road, she went still. Now she’s just staring, eyes wide, like she’s afraid the house might disappear if she blinks.
“Nazareth,” she whispers without turning her head.
“I see it.”
