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I’m gushing when I notice the chair across from us. The one beside Maisie’s. Except, it isn’t extra, is it? Six chairs. Nana Noreene at the head, Paula at the foot. Gage and me on one side. Maisie and…the empty chair, tucked beneath the table exactly where it was when I walked in.

My laughter fades. Gage notices where I’m looking, and the warmth leaves his expression, replaced by something quieter and much older.

I lower my voice. “Gage.”

I tip my head toward the empty chair. He shakes his head, his eyes flicking toward Nana, still mid-debate about my stockings, and his mother, gathering bowls.

His fingers close around mine. “Come with me, Princess.”

CHAPTER 30

Gage

Jubilee has an unopened letter. I have an empty chair.

The lake sits at the property edge, where Grandpa’s maples finally thin. The sun is sinking, setting the surface on fire, copper and rose gold rippling every time the wind breathes. Crimson and gold leaves blanket the shoreline, and Jubilee walks through them like a tap dancer. She kicks up sprays of amber, grinning at the crunch like the sound was invented for her.

I let her, long enough to memorize the jack-o’-lantern stockings—definitely jack-o’-lanterns—and the burgundy bow bouncing at the end of her braid.

Eighteen days until Halloween. I’ve never once not known the number.

I catch her elbow. She stops mid-kick, a maple leaf stuck to her boot, and one glimpse of my face, and she softens.

“You asked how I became a serial killer.”

“Vigilante terminator.” She smiles gently.

Fuck. I’m still not used to how she looks at me. Everything between us changed in that shed, but not this devotion. If anything, it’s grown.

I glance back toward the farmhouse, its windows glowing. “It started with that chair.”

She waits.

“His name is Grady.” Is. Present tense. I’ve never managed to move him into the past. Not without a body. Maisie says it isn’t hope, it’s bookkeeping. You don’t close an account without a final statement.

“Gage, Maisie, and Grady.” A laugh leaves me with nothing inside it. “A farm, a barn full of animals, a grandma baking pie. You’d think we fell out of a Dr. Seuss meets Hallmark movie. Grady was seven years younger than me. My actual blood. And he loved Maisie from the second the social worker’s car pulled up. I was thirteen. She was eleven. He was six. He thought she was the coolest person alive.”

Jubilee squeezes my hand. “She really is.”

“Don’t tell her. She’ll start charging admission.” I rub my thumb over her knuckles, my smile fading. “Her mom died before Maisie was old enough to remember her face. Her dad was bipolar and a drunk. When she was six, she packed a backpack and walked out to the highway to hitchhike. Six. A state trooper found her, and that was the end of her dad and the beginning of the system.”

Jubilee’s lips part, but she doesn’t interrupt. All she does is shuffle those boots a little in the leaves.

“Maisie bounced from home to home. Foster parents always had their own kids, and their own kids figured out fast that the new girl was the easiest place to put blame. Except, Maisie wouldn’t be blamed. Or used. And she couldn’t stand watching other foster kids get pushed around, so she took the bullies apart.” An amused breath leaves me. “She was the only one allowed to bully anybody, because she was the only one unbiased about who deserved it.”

A small, wet laugh escapes Jubilee. “That makes total sense.”

“Doctors had words for her young. She got tools early. Learned to read people like a manual. Learned she could depend on herself and nobody else. Never get close to anyone except⁠—”

“Cats,” Jubilee finishes, then tilts her head. “And Grady?”

“And Grady,” I confirm. “He was the first person she ever let in. This freckle-faced rugrat I wrestled in the hay. I taught him to ride a bike. How to catch a chicken. How to throw a baseball. How to grow tomatoes. Then in sweeps this scrawny, smart-ass girl with a dark bob, overalls, and hoop earrings, and I’m yesterday’s news.” I didn’t mind. Not once. “ASPD didn’t mean a damn thing to a six-year-old. He didn’t care that she never cried at movies. He cared that she let him follow her. She taught him how to make friends with cats. Sit down. Don’t reach. Blink slow. Let them come to you. He practiced on every barn cat in the county.”

Grady’s laugh echoes in my head. He’s tearing across the barnyard after Maisie, a parade of barn cats trailing them both, chanting at the top of his lungs. Crazy Maisie, crazy cat lady! Crazy Maisie! And Maisie never once told him to stop.

I say it out loud before I decide to. “Crazy Maisie, crazy cat lady.”

Jubilee goes completely still, and I watch it hit her. The café. The day she gestured around Maisie’s office and asked, Your idea or his? And Maisie said, Neither of us, believe it or not.