Page 184 of In Somnis

She did all of this.

For me.

She ran breakfast, then lunch, set up the coffee station, made the muffins, put the ingredient card next to them so guests with allergies could check, and cleaned up after all of it. Did every bit of it so I could sleep in.

I take another bite.

Sydney keeps talking. I catch how she’s angled toward me, but I’m not really listening.

What is in this glazing?

“Is she still here?” I ask, licking my fingers clean.

“Lennon?” Sydney’s eyebrow shoots up.

“Yeah.”

“Uh… yeah. She left maybe half an hour ago after setting up the coffee station. Went back to your place, I think.”

“Thanks,” I say, and grab another muffin off the tray on the way out.

I’m halfway down the path when I hear it. Laughing. Her laughing, which I can pick out now from a distance with a reliability that I’m not going to think about. Underneath it is Jasper’s voice, lower and more animated than usual, and then hers again.

I slow down before I’ve decided to.

They’re on the swings.

Lennon is on the left one with her feet dragging slightly through the grass, and Jasper is on the right. They’re in the middle of some conversation that has them animated and gesturing. She throws her head back, laughing at something he said, and he lights up like someone just handed him oxygen.

Jasper doesn’t get that, not really, not from most people.

I’ve missed it myself, more times than I like.

She doesn’t. She looks at him like he makes sense, like everything he says matters.

Like he’s not too much.

Jasper deserves that. He’s deserved it for years.

I’m glad it’s her.

I’m really fucking glad to have her sunshine back.

My mom is in the garden a few feet away, hands moving through the herb bed. Mabel is in the chair beside her, while the afternoon light shines across all of it, and I stand on the path and just look.

Mabel catches my eye over their heads. The look she gives me speaks for itself as she looks at Lennon, then back at me, and the corner of her mouth does the small thing it does.

I look away first and back to my little brother and my chef, a smile spreading across my face as I walk over to them. I come up beside Lennon’s swing and crouch down, bringing myself to her level, and put my hand over hers where it’s wrapped around the rope.

She turns, and when she sees me this close, the laugh is still on her face, caught mid-fade, and her eyes are bright from it.

“What did you do?” I ask quietly.

“Did you sleep?” she asks, at the same time.

“Better than I ever have in my life.”

And that should concern me more than it does.