The house doesn't feel empty anymore.
Epilogue
Ellie – 6 Months Later
"Betty's recipe says a quarter teaspoon of nutmeg, but that's a suggestion, not a rule."
I add another pinch of nutmeg. Lily leans across the counter on her elbows, counting pinches.
"That's three pinches." She holds up fingers. "Three. A quarter teaspoon isn't three pinches."
"Betty puts in more than the recipe card says. I've watched her."
"Then her recipe card needs updating."
"I'll let you tell her that."
Lily narrows her eyes. She's considering it. Betty will no doubt hear about this by Monday. The kitchen smells like cinnamon and butter. Flour covers the counter, the mixing bowl, both my forearms, and the front of my shirt where I wiped my hands before I remembered I own a towel.
Colt's contentment moves through the bond, warm and unhurried. The pulse that means he's in the other room withhis coffee, watching us through the doorway and pretending he's not.
"Dad's staring again," Lily says without looking up from the dough.
"He's supervising." I fold butter into the mixture.
"He's not helping. That's just staring. It's weird."
"I live here." Colt's voice comes from the doorway.
His mug lands on the counter beside me. He drops a kiss on Lily's head, which she tolerates, and his hand finds the small of my back before he reaches past me for the cinnamon. His fingers brush the claiming mark through my collar.
I've had six months of this.
My books arrived in fourteen boxes. Colt built shelves along the hallway and the living room and Lily's bedroom. Lily organized them by genre, rearranged twice, then made labels with the label maker she talked Colt into buying because, her words,the spines aren't enough context. Most evenings go the same way: Lily doing homework at the kitchen table, Colt across from her with the club's financials spread in front of him, me in the window seat with whatever I pulled from the library that week. The quiet in this house holds three people now.
The bond works the same way—not dramatic, not overwhelming. His heartbeat runs beneath mine when I roll toward him at four a.m. Dry amusement flickers when he reads a passage he likes and tries not to react. Protectiveness flares, orc and ancient, when Lily's voice carries from another room.
On the mantle, Maren's photo hasn't moved. I didn't touch it. I wouldn't. Two months ago, Lily set a second frame beside it without saying a word: the three of us at the farmer's market, mesquinting into the sun, Colt with his arm around my shoulders and Lily in front, mid-laugh, holding a bag of peaches she refused to share.
Lily's phone buzzes. Six weeks ago, Colt handed it to her for her thirteenth birthday and told her it came with conditions. She of course agreed to them all and has followed them to the letter since.
She reads the screen and holds it up.
"Betty says a quarter teaspoon is what she writes for people who don't know better." She looks at me. "She also says hi."
"Told you."
"Betty's not a peer-reviewed source."
"She's been doing this longer than we've been alive. That counts."
Lily considers this and folds the phone into her back pocket. I slide the pan into the oven and set the timer.
Through the window above the sink, October has turned Nightfall Cove gold and copper, the trees along the ridge going rusty in the morning light. The Harvest Festival starts in two hours, and Lily mapped our route through every booth on a piece of graph paper she taped to the fridge.
The library held steady through summer. The photography workshop runs monthly now. Holly teaches, I organize, Lily assists, which in practice means Lily corrects Holly's filing system and Holly pretends she doesn't notice.
Lily comes to the library after school most days now. She claimed the back table near the reference section—her backpack on the left chair, her water bottle on the right, and anyone who moves either gets corrected. Last Tuesday she walked a patronto the biography section before I could get off the phone. Correct shelf, correct row. She sat back down without looking at me, but her chin lifted the way Colt's does when he's pleased with himself and won't say so.
