Page 23

Maybe if Blair could be that complicated, she could be, too.

Iris sighed, dropping onto one of the pouf chairs and switching on a small table lamp as shadows overtook the room.

“I told you before that this used to be my dad’s house.” She gazed over at Blair, who had settled into the chair on the other side of the window. He didn’t respond, just leaned forward to let her know he was listening. “He wasn’t a nice man.” She hugged her arms around herself, her hands resting on her forearms. “When I was a kid, he used to follow my mom and I around the country, demanding to spend time with me. But he was…dangerous. At least, my mom thought so.”

“Did you think so?” Blair asked.

Iris shrugged, her mind running over the many unsettling memories from her childhood that weren’t represented in her mother’s curated photo album. “He was always angry whenever I saw him, and he didn’t really seem to be in his right mind. He scared me, even when I was too young to understand why. He drank a lot. He was addicted to playing the lottery for a while.” She hesitated, tracing her finger over the tip of the glass rose. “But he really did want to be in my life. I think he genuinely wanted that.

“Eventually, my mom had enough of running, and we bought a little foreclosure in Martenshire, where she’d gone on skiing trips with her family as a kid. That’s the town Audrey’s new apartment is in. But of course, my dad figured out where we were living, and…”

She looked over at Blair, her eyes suddenly blazing. “Do you know there’s no legal way to stop property sales from showing up in the paper and online? My mom tried calling the local gazette to ask them not to publish her name, and they wouldn’t do it. There’s no protection for people who don’t want their address displayed for the whole world to see.”

Iris shook her head, immediately regretting getting so worked up. She cast an anxious glance at Blair, but he merely looked thoughtful, a slight crease of sympathy between his brows.

“Anyway…what my mom didn’t realize was that my grandmother happened to live nearby. My dad was raised by his father and never really talked about his mom while my parents were dating, apparently. But he was familiar with the area and decided to buy a place here in Vitford, just one town over from where we lived.” She gestured around the room. “My mom didn’t find out until this one weekend when she had to leave town for work, and he showed up on our doorstep. I was sixteen. He told me to come with him. I was old enough to say no, but I was scared…so, I went.”

The wind shuddered around the house. Iris clenched her fists in her lap, her eyes falling closed for a moment before she regained her composure. “He told me that he bought this house for me, that he went into debt to do it, but this way we could be a real family. He kept using that phrase: a real family.”

The cozy room around them faded away as Iris’ mind replaced it with the room from her memory. The old, musty-smelling blue mattress that sagged and squeaked when she sat on it. The huge skylight window that had once loomed over the bed. The battered side table and the matching bureau.

“My dad said this would be my room. And once Mom came home, he swore that he’d convince her to live here too, in his room downstairs.” Her heart clenched. “That was the scariest part. He was so certain he would be able to convince her. I knew my mom was stronger than that, but still…” She shivered.

“That night, the wind was really fierce, and in those days the house was surrounded by huge, towering trees.” She tried to paint a picture with her hands. “Every time the wind started up, I could hear branches ripping from the trees to lash against the house, and I just lay huddled in my blankets, shaking.

“Around dawn, there was this awful ripping noise.” She swallowed. “I can still hear it. And I knew, I just knew, that one of those gigantic trees was about to fall.”

Iris tensed as the wind picked up again, and she felt a warm, tentative hand touch her shoulder. She glanced at Blair in surprise and their eyes locked. He didn’t move away and neither did she. She leaned in a little closer, twisting herself to face him.

“A few minutes later, there was another huge gust of wind. This time the ripping sound didn’t stop, it got louder, and then…”

In her memory, the house convulsed as a fifty-foot tree slammed against the skylight, bullets of glass raining down onto her like deleterious hail. She watched the wood beams above her buckle and splinter, felt their impact as they crashed onto the bed just south of her legs.

“It hit the skylight right above my bed,” she breathed. “There was glass and debris everywhere… I remember my dad racing up the stairs, and he brought me straight to an emergency center. Apart from shock, I was perfectly fine. He took me back to my mom’s house, since his would need months of repairs, and she was on her way home anyway. She was furious when she found out what had happened.

“Anyway, a few weeks went by, and then my dad found our phone number online, and he kept on calling. One time I answered by accident.” Iris frowned, her gaze faraway. “He said he was taking the other trees down, that it was costing him a fortune, but he was doing it for me. He told me I would have to come live with him, because everything he did, he did for me.”

“What about the trees on either side of the house?” Blair asked, speaking up for the first time in several minutes.

“He said they were too expensive to remove, that he was in debt as it was from buying the house so that we could be a real family.” She gave a bitter laugh. “What a joke.”

For a moment, the only sound was the whistling of wind through the very trees that had survived annihilation.

Blair cleared his throat. “What happened to your father? How did he die?”

Iris thought back to the day they’d gotten the phone call, the look of relief that seemed to take ten years off her mother’s face. As much as she hated to admit it, there had been only relief in Iris’ heart too. She supposed at the end of the day, her father’s actions had made that inevitable.

“Heart attack, apparently. Like I said, he drank a lot. And he was really angry, which I’m sure didn’t help his blood pressure. When I inherited the house, I didn’t know if I could stand it. Just thinking about my dad made me feel sick; how was I supposed to live in his old home? Then my grandma died, and I was offered her job just a ten-minute drive away. I realized that if I accepted, I might actually be able to afford to keep the house, and it all just kind of started to…fit.” She shrugged. “I made it my goal to remove every piece of my dad so I could make this place my own. Gabriel helped me a lot with that.”

Blair’s steady gaze fell to his lap. Until that moment, Iris hadn’t stopped to consider how strange it was that he’d been so attentive during her story. He was normally so fidgety.

“Sorry to get so deep,” she said, wiping at the corners of her eyes. “I’ve had a lot on my mind lately.” She hesitated, lowering her voice, even though they were currently the only two in the house. “I’m really sorry about how Gabriel’s been treating you. And I’m sorry if dinner was awkward. I know Audrey can be a little overzealous, and my mom is⁠—”

“Please don’t apologize.” Blair’s expression was earnest. "I appreciate you asking me to join you. It meant a lot.” He pressed his lips together, his attention darting to the window. “Are you sure it’s okay if I stay here, though? I don’t think Gabriel wants me to.”

“It’s more than okay,” Iris replied at once. “This was my house first. Well, after my dad. You know what I mean.”

Blair squared his shoulders, determined. “I’ll pay you rent. I’m going to get my apothecary business going as soon as I can. I’ll start selling my recipes at craft fairs to start. I should have enough income to⁠—”