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I had something so much better.
I took his rough face between my palms. “Then you’ll be taking me exactly where I need to be. You are my home, Kael.”
Honey-colored light spilled over white marble, dancing with firelight. I glanced up from wiping counters to find my mother’s nurse by the enormous fireplace near the open kitchen. She had switched on the gas fire, and my mother smiled at it from her log-style chair near the hearth. Even from across the expansive cabin room, I could see how the orange and copper firelight danced off her snowy white bob. Mom didn’t say much these days, but the nurses who rotated her care said they felt like she was more at peace here.
She spent most of her time in her own generous building adjacent to the main house, but as the weather had grown colder, she’d asked for “Gerald’s” house more often. Gerald had been my father, but I took it in stride. It meant she felt safe here. And I was more than happy to indulge her if it made her happy, even if she rarely spoke and seemed lost in her thoughts more often than not.
The lonely ranch had been a great idea until I realized that it was, well, lonely. There were short spurts of joy that I ached for. Too-short moments that filled my lonely ranch cabin with the sound of teasing and laughter, but they never lasted long enough. I coasted through each day, filling my hours with a comforting routine that only served to stretch my patience out until those sugary bursts of time that tasted like bubblegum and felt like satin under my fingers.
Mattie’s weekends.
I checked the watch on my right wrist as my left hand finished wiping the counters down from dinner. Six o’clock. Any minute now.
Not fast enough, though.
I hung up the microfiber cloth and pulled my phone out from the pocket of my dark gray sweatpants. I brought up the tracking app and found Mattie’s icon five minutes away. At least she was on time, this time. I’d nearly strangled her last week when she’d insisted on stopping by a store to get scented pinecones of all things. I didn’t care if the first snow had gotten her into the “holiday spirit.” Every second she wasn’t here was a second I felt hollow on the inside.
Pocketing my phone, I drifted over to a floor-to-ceiling window that looked out over the sprawling acres of land we’d purchased last year. At the moment, it was dark, but little flurries of snow dotted the inky night, refracting off the floodlights that framed the property. I scanned the ground. Some of the white powder was sticking, but it wouldn’t build up enough to make the driveway unsafe for her in the next five minutes.
It might snow her in, though. Damn, the bad luck.
My watch buzzed, and I glanced at it.
Bunny:
Stop tracking me.
Is creepyyyy.
Ghost:
Stop texting and driving.
Is stoooopid.
Bunny:
I’m in the driveway.
Chillll.
Shaking my head and smiling faintly, I crossed the brassy walnut floors that mirrored warm light from overhead. The cabin had been built with polished, amber wood, and the open space sometimes felt like living in a gold honeycomb. I’d never seen anything like it, and when Mattie and I had toured the home, we’d known it was the right one. It had taken some time, but “home” had finally become a place. Most of the time.
The outer garage door opened, and I shuffled in my black socks over to the hallway that connected the open living space to the back mudroom. I flicked on the lights, making sure the garage ones were on for Mattie, and then the swhick of the garage door opening announced her arrival. Mattie rotated into the mudroom, her arms full of shit. She had a black backpack on over her knee-length, puffy silver coat, and in her arms, she carried a duffel bag, a canvas tote full of books, some kind of half-eaten takeout in a plastic bag, and a comically gigantic water bottle in the crook of her arm.
I glared at all the stuff. It was standing between me and Mattie, and it was unforgivable.
She slammed the door shut with her foot and looked up with flushed cheeks and a growing smile lifting her cheeks. “Oh my God, you’re wearing the thing.”
I glanced down at the sweatpants. She’d bought them after finding out that there was something called “sweatpants weather,” which had something to do with… packages. I didn’t know, but it made her happy. Looking up again, I reached out to grab some of her shit. “If I didn’t, you would have been obnoxious about it.”
“Wait, I want the food,” she said with a ravenous glare. As a first-year resident and intern, Mattie didn’t get many chances to eat during her rounds, I’d gathered. I tried to feed her as much as I could over her weekends here, but she still tended to forgo food in lieu of additional opportunities at the hospital. Even though she’d graduated from med school fair and square, she felt behind her peers.
“I made dinner. Eat that instead of—” I glanced at the clear container. “Is that fast food Chinese?”
“Don’t you take my General Tso’s chicken from me,” she threatened, reaching for it. Her long, blond hair swung around, spilling over her shoulder.
I danced out of her way and deeper into the house. “I made quiche. It has vegetables.”
