Page 215 of Nobody Told Me Thrift Shops Sell Stolen Dragon Heirlooms

I joined her on the second line. My pronunciation was imperfect, but she didn’t correct me.

Kneeling side by side before the shrine, hand in hand, we sang to the smoke rising from the burner my family had lost and found again. My father came to kneel on her other side, his large hand settling over both of ours.

Wolf. Dragon. Human. Irish. Japanese. Italian. Olden Folk and family and all the pieces that had never fit neatly because life wasn’t neat and love had never required it to be.

My mother’s voice wavered, and I carried the line until she found it again.

When the song ended, the room seemed fuller, somehow. My mother leaned her head against my shoulder. “You brought us home.”

I closed my eyes.

I thought of Quinn’s hand on my cheek in her apartment doorway. Of Max choosing my shoe. Of my father waiting on the terrace. Of my mother’s hand over mine, guiding fire she could no longer make.

“No,” I said softly. “We did.”

My mother smiled.

The incense burned on, smoke wafting higher and higher, and for the first time in years, I didn’t feel like a question the world had failed to answer.

I felt whole. A son. A dragon. A man loved by people who had never needed me to be less than all of myself.

My mother’s grip on my hand tightened. “Rafe,” she said. “Home is not the place where nothing is lost. It is the place where love keeps bringing things back.”

My throat closed.

She touched my cheek, her fingers light and warm. “Bring your sunshine girl home.”

At first, I couldn’t speak.

My father turned his face away, but not before I saw the shine in his eyes.

“I will,” I said.

Mother nodded, satisfied, then glanced toward the door, distracted by something none of us had heard. Her brow furrowed.

“Is my father waiting for tea?”

My father moved at once. “I’m sure he won’t mind if we rest first, darling.”

“Oh.” She looked up at him and smiled, easy and trusting. “Are we very late?”

“Not terribly.”

“That’s good. I hate being rude.”

“You could never manage it for long.”

She laughed softly as he helped her stand. Before they left, she turned back to me, the Fog already pulling her somewhere else, but her smile still finding me through it.

“Sing it again tomorrow,” she said.

“I will.”

My father guided her from the shrine room, his hand solid at her back, her head leaning briefly against his shoulder as they went.

I stayed kneeling before the incense burner.

Home was not the place where nothing was lost.