I get out and stand on the gravel for a second longer than I need to.
The air is cooler here than at the beach. Inland air. Clipped grass and warm stone. Margot unfolds herself from the passenger seat with the small contented groan she makes after long drives.
I go around to help Richard with the bags.
He has the trunk open. He hands me my duffel without comment, hooks the strap of Margot's bag over his own shoulder, lifts the cooler out by himself when I reach for it.I've got this one, you take yours. His everyday version of taking care of things. He shuts the trunk with his elbow.
We walk up to the house together. Margot is already ahead, keys in hand. The front door of the house is right there—carved oak, brass handle worn dark from decades of palms—and she gets it open and props it with a hip and waves us through.
I walk to the door, bracing for the feeling of being small–of feeling wrong and unwelcome.
The half-flinch, the held breath, the version of me that walks into every room ready to be tolerated and not invited.
I have had it at every door since Linda. Every door. Foster doors, school doors,thisdoor.
I wait for it.
It doesn't come.
My breath stays even. My shoulders stay where they were. I cross the threshold and—
—I am inside. Slate floor. Late light coming sideways through the west window. My body has not flinched.
I stand there. Stupid with it.
Home does feel nice. And thisishome.
Margot is already through the foyer and into the kitchen with the cooler bag from the car, calling back over her shoulder to ask if I want lemonade.
"Yeah—be right down. Just dropping this upstairs."
"Take your time, sweetheart."
I shoulder the duffel and start up. Fingertips trailing the bannister. Past the little brass bowl on the side table where Richard drops his keys. Past the grandfather clock in the hallway that runs three minutes fast no matter how many times anyone resets it.
I push the door of my room open with my hip and stand in the doorway looking at the room itself.
It looks the same.
It does notfeelthe same.
The bond in my chest hums faint and far—Bane's thread up and to the left, Atlas's lower and steady, Zero's a little out and bright. I know without thinking about it where each of them is.
The beach house. My boys. Cleaning,allegedly.
The promise from this morning is still warm in my head.
"We'll be on the road by ten tonight, baby. Eleven at the latest." Bane, kissing me up against the wall of the kitchen in the beach house while Margot was outside loading the car. "I am going to drive directly to your room. I am not stopping for gas. I am not stopping for food. I am going to climb in your window like a teenager and—"
"You are not climbing in my window. There are stairs."
"I am romantic, Maxie."
"You are unhinged, is what you are."
"Tomato, tomahto."
And Zero in the doorway, leaned against the frame, watching us with the small half-grin he never lets the parents see.
