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Ours, I answered.

And she was.

We didn’t move for a long time.

Hazel dropped her head onto my chest, and I put my hand in her hair.

Outside, the wind moved through the cedars.

Inside, my heart was doing its ordinary work in a body that had finally been given something to hold onto.

She was staying.

I was going to feed her for the rest of my life.

Epilogue

Hazel

Six weeks later.

Barrett was arguing with a shelf. “It’s crooked.”

“It’s straight.”

“It’s three-sixteenths out.”

I leaned against the doorframe of what would eventually be my laboratory and looked at the shelf in question. To my untrained eye, it appeared horizontal. More importantly, it was attached to the wall, which put it several stages ahead of most of the room.

“That much, huh? Catastrophe.”

Barrett ignored me and put the level back on top.

I smiled.

The building had once been a storage shed behind Hearth & Hollow, although describing it as a shed was generous. When Mags, the owner, offered it to me for almost nothing, it had possessed three walls, half a roof, and a thriving colony of something blue growing beneath the floorboards.

Barrett had taken one look and said, “Needs work.”

Now it had four walls, a new roof, two wide windows, a deep ceramic sink, and enough electrical outlets to satisfy even me. Barrett had built workbenches along both sides and installed shelves that were perfectly level to anyone who wasn’t equipped with whatever hyper-focused, grid-lined scanning system came as standard with bear eyes.

The apothecary occupied the front room, where Mags had already begun selling some tinctures, teas, and salves we were developing from common Screaming Woods plants. No endangered species, nothing sentient that was likely to strangle a customer unless incorrectly brewed.

The laboratory was mine.

Mostly.

Barrett’s tools occupied an entire corner, and he'd somehow acquired a second propagation table without consulting me.

Our project had become several projects. I was still getting used to saying that.

“You know,” I said, “most people would call that finished.”

Barrett crouched to inspect the lower bracket. “Most people don’t put glassware on crooked shelves.”

Before I could answer, someone knocked on the open front door.

Molly appeared in the doorway carrying a paper bag almost as large as her torso. Her father followed with a wooden crate tucked under one arm.