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And everyone told me English girls were so sweet, Jared said, and then: Oh, hey.
Kami glowed with pride at the success of her surprise. “I took another detour on my way home. Since you’re new and everything.”
The hush of the woods was changed now into the different calm of still waters, the quiet somehow enveloping rather than disturbed by humming insects or the rustle of trees.
The two lakes were laid out side by side in the clearing, two shimmering glass circles as if the ground was wearing spectacles. Kami had seen the lakes showing different colors, pearl gray under cloudy skies or blue in sunshine, but right now they were green, the green of glass bottles turned liquid and poured over pale sand. A weeping willow dipped a branch into the waters of the farthest pool, some leaves trailing on the surface and the other leaves drowned and dark.
“These are the Crying Pools.”
Kami was dismayed to see a few raindrops hit the pool, breaking the silver surface, but before she could suggest taking shelter she looked up and saw the rain cloud above them melting into wisps against the sky. She looked back down to shimmering-calm water and Jared’s small smile. It wasn’t much, that smile, not compared to Ash’s, but Kami could see the feeling behind it; she could share his pleasure and blend it with hers. It made the smile warm as a touch.
“Sorry-in-the-Vale, Sorriest River, Crying Pools,” said Jared. “Is the quarry called Really Depressed Quarry?”
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“Yes,” Kami answered. “Also, I live on the Street of Certain Doom.”
Jared drew closer to the pools. He stood looking down into one, then glanced over his shoulder at Kami.
It struck Kami that he should have looked out of place, the city boy in his battered leather jacket, but he did not. He fit here. The shadow of the trees hung over his hair, and for a moment she thought his eyes caught a green spark. It occurred to her that the Lynburns had lived in Sorry-in-the-Vale a very long time.
“I think I see something in the water,” said Jared.
Curiosity made Kami forget the moment of strangeness and hurry over to peer into the lake by Jared’s side. “I don’t see anything.”
“I thought it was a glint of metal,” Jared said. “Possibly I was hoping for more rich ancestors’ bells.”
“Or it was the sun on the water.”
“Or that,” Jared conceded. “So, am I ever going to see your house on the Street of Certain Doom?”
As they wound their way back toward her house after taking the world’s two longest shortcuts, Kami had to admit that she was nervous. Her house was ridiculous. Only her parents would ignore the new roof technology that had been available for, oh, six hundred years, and live in a thatched cottage. When they reached it, she swung open the gate from the woods into her garden with some misgiving.
“No jokes about Glass houses,” she told Jared. “Because we have heard them all.”
“What about—”
“That one too,” Kami said firmly.
The gate swung open.
The Glass house was Cotswold stone too, but was a little house, resting snug on the dip of land below the woods, dark thatch over yellow stone, honeysuckle dripping down in front of the low windows. Above the door was carved G, and then a scar in the stone, followed by the word House. Kami made her way through the garden. The grass could have used trimming and she had to jump over Tomo’s bicycle. A watering can was hanging on the wall.
Kami turned her house key in the door, gave it a heave to open it because it always stuck, and glanced back at Jared. He stood looking at her, then looking at the house, and in that moment he seemed strangely helpless to Kami. Which was ridiculous, because Jared was one of the least vulnerable-looking people she had ever seen. Yet something about the way he stood made her think of a kid peering in a shop window, knowing he could not have anything inside.
Jared’s eyes met Kami’s. His wariness flooded through her, trying to set up barriers between them too late. It was almost horrible, having what a stranger thought mean so terribly much.
Kami waved her hand. “Welcome to my humble abode!” she said grandly, and when he still stood staring she reached out her hand to him. “Jared,” she said, quieter. “Come in.”
He did not take her hand, and after a moment, a chill going through her, she dropped it. Jared followed her inside once she had turned away. Kami hesitated at her own threshold, about to kick off her shoes, because Sobo always wanted shoes off and slippers on as soon as you went in the door, and it always took her a beat to remember Sobo was gone and stop herself calling out “Obaa-chan!,” that name she had lost when Sobo was gone, because it was a name only for family and she always referred to her grandmother as Sobo otherwise, even in her own head, because Jared was always there. She took the beat now, looked up to explain to Jared, and saw that he already understood.
She flashed him a quick smile. They walked down the hall and into the living room.
Kami had to check on the boys first thing: she shouldn’t actually have taken those detours. The kids could be left alone for a couple of hours, because Ten was the most pathologically responsible child in the universe, but it wasn’t like Tomo ever listened to him. The living room was a mess, as usual, and Kami almost broke her neck on one of Tomo’s toy trucks.
Best if you think of this room as a minefield. Tread carefully or get exploded, she advised Jared, and then said aloud, “Hideous brats! We have a guest. Conceal evidence of your crimes.”
Tomo, watching TV at ear-splitting volume, outdid the television with a shriek and turned around on the sofa. Ten, in the window seat with a book in his lap, curled in against the glass and tried to be very quiet while he assessed the situation. Kami sent him a reassuring smile and he blinked at her owlishly behind his glasses.
