Will picks up his tools with a quick glance at our hands, and turns back to his work. His shoulders settle, his hands go to work, and the rhythm resumes like the conversation has been folded neatly and put away for safekeeping.
"Thank you for sitting with me," he says, like we've given him a gift instead of the other way around. We also understand the conversation is over.
We're at the door when Will speaks again.
"I know you understand me, son. Like father, like son. Remember that."
Callahan's hand tightens on the doorframe, and I feel the stillness roll through him, feel the way those words land somewhere he doesn'tseem to like.
Will's already back inside whatever conversation he's having with the wood or Anna or both.
Like father, like son.
A Holt man loves once. Loves so completely and permanently that eleven years of absence doesn't loosen the grip. Loves with his whole self, and doesn't stop just because the world takes the person away from him.
Callahan will love someone like that one day. The realization hits me like a blade, the taste metallic and sharp. He will find someone, someday, and he will love her the way his father loves Anna. With everything he has. With everything he is. For the rest of his life and beyond it.
And I will be somewhere else. In some city, in some hospital, building the life I've been working toward since I can remember while he will be here, in Harbor Hill, loving someone who stayed.
"You okay?" he asks gently, watching my face.
I smile because it's better than crying. "Perfect," I lie. "Long day."
He doesn't push, just pulls me into his side and presses a kiss to the top of my head, and I let him, even though every cell in my body is screaming at me to tell him the truth.
I have no right to fall apart over any of it. We agreed to this, we both knew this was temporary. I don't get to change the rules now just because I'm in too deep to see the surface anymore.
Right now I'm here, with him, in his kitchen, his arm around my shoulders, his heartbeat steady under my ear. That will have to be enough.
28
LILY
Christmas morning starts at Erin's shop, right outside my apartment, in the gray light of a December day.
Erin is checking her flowers one last time before closing for the holiday, moving through the buckets with efficiency and I follow her through the shop, adjusting stems, topping off water, doing the routine we've developed over months of early mornings and easy silence. The shop smells like pine and eucalyptus and winter.
"Merry Christmas, Lil," she says, bumping me with her shoulder as we lock the front door behind us.
"Merry Christmas," I beam back at her.
She studies me in the early light and I know my cheeks are pink from the cold. I can feel the brightness in my own eyes, the way happiness has been sitting on my face for weeks now and refuses to leave.
"You look happy," she observes.
"I am so happy," I tell her honestly, because I am. Deliriously,terrifyingly, completely happy in a way I didn't know I was allowed to be.
Her smile spreads slow and warm, and she links her arm through mine as we start down Main Street. The storefronts are dark, closed for the holiday, but Christmas lights are strung between the lamp posts and the whole street glows soft and golden against the dark morning.
Erin has a Christmas morning routine, she told me. Places to go, people to see. She invited me along while Rome waits at home, and I said yes before she finished asking.
Our first stop is Ruth's place, a little house on a side street with a wreath on the door and lights wound through the porch railing. Ruth is expecting us but acts like we're the biggest surprise of the year, throwing the door open with her hands in the air and her face split wide with delight.
"Merry Christmas, Ruth." I pull her into a hug, and she grabs my face with both hands when I pull back.
"Merry Christmas, you gorgeous child," she declares, kissing my cheek hard. "Tell your brother he owes me a pie. He complained about mine last week and I told him to do better and he still hasn't delivered."
I scoff at that, shaking my head. "Rome doesn't bake."
