Page 113 of Nobody Told Me Thrift Shops Sell Stolen Dragon Heirlooms

Still, it was a huge step forward. More than I’d expected and less than I wanted. Enough, for now, to feel almost unbearable.

When I returned home from the meeting, I found my parents on the western terrace, where my mother liked to take tea when the weather allowed. It overlooked the reflecting pool and the long slope toward the orchard. This side of the estate was quieter, less symmetrical, shaped by use more than display.

The flagstones had been reset three years ago when my mother started catching her foot on uneven edges. A low handrail curved along the steps down to the pool, beautifully forged and almost invisible unless you knew what had been changed. My father had ordered the gravel paths replaced with smooth stone after she began refusing walks because the sound confused her. Even the terrace furniture had changed: fewer chairs, wider spaces between them, nothing delicate enough to tip if she reached for it at the wrong angle.

Beyond the pool, the orchard moved in the afternoon breeze, pale blossoms and new leaves sprouting over all the trees. The water caught the sky in broken pieces. On the far side of the lawn, a gardener knelt beside the herb beds my mother had once insisted on planting near the kitchen because basil, she said, should never require a pilgrimage.

I’d seen this view thousands of times but rarely took the time to really look at it. That realization bothered me. Quinn would have looked.

She would have noticed the lowered threshold first, probably, and the smooth grade of the path down to the reflecting pool. She would have seen the care inside the design before she admired the stone. She would have noticed the gardener kneeling by the herb beds, the wide spacing between the terrace chairs, the handrail worked so cleanly into the steps that it looked decorative unless you understood what it was doing there.

Then she would have looked past all of it, toward the old landing lawn, and asked whether dragons were expected to wipe their feet before entering the house.

The thoughts came too naturally: Quinn on the terrace; Quinn meeting my parents; Quinn smiling at my mother with the same unguarded kindness she’d given everyone at the gala, never pitying, never treating confusion as something to hurry past. Quinn would notice the beauty, the labor, the accommodations, and the oddity, then somehow making all of it easier for me to see.

I stopped at the balcony doors.

She was an intern on my legal team. Brilliant and attractive to a degree that had become inconvenient, but still professionally connected to me. I’d already made the correct choice at her apartment door. I would continue making it.

My thoughts, however, had become undisciplined.

“Rafe,” my father called from the table.

I stepped onto the balcony.

My father stood immediately, as he always did when my mother was present, though the gesture was technically for me. He was tall and large, built for command, but he had the quiet warmth of one who had never needed volume to prove it. My mother sat beside him, wrapped in a pale blue shawl despite the gentle weather, her dark hair pinned loosely at the nape of her neck.

She peered at me over her teacup. “You’re late.”

“I’m exactly on time.”

“For clocks, perhaps.” She set the cup down. “Mothers use a more advanced system.”

Smiling, my father put his hand on her shoulder. “He came as soon as he could, love.”

For a moment, uncertainty moved across her face, faint but unmistakable. “Did he?”

“Yes,” my father said, sure and kind. “Rafe had his meeting today. About the sword.”

“The sword,” she repeated.

I approached the table and kissed her cheek. “Good afternoon, Mother.”

She caught my hand before I straightened. Her fingers were cool and delicate around mine. “Good afternoon, darling boy.”

Darling boy. Some days she said it to me as if I were six. Some days as if I were a man. Today, I couldn’t tell which it was.

I sat across from her while my father poured tea. The service was porcelain, white with a blue pattern around the rim, one of the few sets my mother preferred over anything newer.

“How did it go?” my father asked.

I accepted the cup he offered. “Better than expected.”

Something like triumph moved over his face, but he knew me well enough to wait. “How much better?”

“The museum director agreed to recommend a structured return to the board, pending final review. Their counsel is open to revised display language during the transition and a temporary loan until the current exhibit period ends.”

My father sat back slowly. “That is more than amenable.”