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I don’t panic, not at all. That is until I look at my daughter, who for the first time in two days, has gone mute. I pop a brow at her and twist back around to look at Scarlet. “Waverley was showing me the birds.”
“The birds?”
“The birds,” I confirm.
Scarlet seems to shake off her questions, the day visibly wearing thin on her. “I’ve just woken up your cousin,” she tells Waverley. “Will you please go and play with her until Uncle Elliot gets here? I need to start dinner.”
Scarlet lets her eyes scan me before she walks off ahead of us.
I feel Waverley’s eyes on me and shift my gaze to her. She winks. “Uncle Charlie once told me that half-truths are told by the wicked,” she whispers.
I hold a finger to my lips to shush her.
She chuckles, running ahead of me and toward her mum. “My dad is wicked!”
Scarlet slows at that, allowing me to catch up. “Wicked?”
I wince, the pain in my leg getting worse. “You don’t want to know.”
“Did you rest your leg at all while I was gone?”
“Briefly.”
“You’ve done too much too soon. We normally don’t recommend being up for more than a couple of hours a day at first.”
“I needed to be out of bed.” I side-eye her, knowing she’s looking at me. I don’t need to tell her how fed up I am of being stuck. She’s always been intuitive. She’ll know.
Inside, Scarlet heads straight for the kitchen. I follow her, sliding onto a stool at the island.
After a minute, she places down four pills and a glass of water.
I take them silently, at ease just watching as she moves around the kitchen, gathering vegetables and an array of pans for dinner.
Lots and lots of pans.
The amount you’d need to feed a whole family.
My heart warms, a smile pulling at the corners of my lips as I watch her, my mind drifting to a memory.
“I have this dream.”
I let my fingers tangle in hers, her body already entwined with mine. My head twists to face her. “Tell me.”
She smiles, and I kiss her cheek. “It’s a lot of noise. Christmas maybe—but I see the dining table full. Mason, Nina, and Ellis. Charles, Ell, the girls. Everyone. Drinking and laughing and just living. I used to try imagining it, but it was impossible. I didn’t have the girls. The guys never really showed up like they did after Dad died.” She pauses, her eyes thoughtful. “We grew up loud. We weren’t told to be quiet. That age-old saying children should be seen and not heard. Well here, in this house, and at Glen and Frey’s, if we were quiet, that’s when they came looking for us. For so long this house has been silent, and I crave having that noise again more than anything. Mase doesn’t see it. He doesn’t even want it. I don’t think he knows what he’s missing,” she mutters sadly. “But recently, since the memorial ball and having the girls come around more, it feels like it’s touchable. Like maybe in a few years’ time, we’ll all be around the dinner table—happy. There’ll be noise and laughter and life here again.”
I swallow down the rest of my water as I watch her, my heart thrashing in my chest. The memory is bittersweet.
Scarlet got her happy.
Her house full of noise and life.
But as if in some cruel twist of fate, I wasn’t in it.
“Dinner will be a while if you want to go for a lie-down,” she tells me, her eyes barely holding on me before they’re back on her task.
I can’t seem to look away. “I think I’m afraid I’ll miss something,” I say honestly, not even meaning to speak the words out loud.
She immediately stops chopping the veg, looking at me with a frayed understanding. “With Ave?”
