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31

Boone

Life returns to normal.

Only it doesn’t.

I wake with the sun and tend the garden before the heat becomes unbearable. I pull weeds from between the vegetables, turn the soil around plants that need it, haul water from the well, and spend afternoons splitting wood in the shade beside the house so there will be enough stacked when winter comes. I repair a loose board on the barn, mend a section of fence that has started leaning toward the road, clean Bramble’s stall, sharpen tools, gather eggs, and do all the small things that once filled every hour of my day.

Everything is exactly as it was before the mountain.

I’m not.

Sometimes I find myself standing in the garden covered in dirt while remembering the greenhouse. I’ll bite into an apple and think about Rhys finding one on the kitchen table. Yesterday, I caught myself staring at a pit after breakfast, wondering how long it would take to sprout, only to remember there are no cherry trees here.

It was a plum.

At night is when it’s worst. The house becomes too quiet, and I lie awake listening to my father snoring softly in the next room while wondering what Rhys is doing a hundred miles above me. I spent months begging him to leave me alone, and now I find myself missing the sound of his footsteps outside my door.

I hate myself a little for that.

“Look who’s back.”

The voice pulls me from my thoughts.

I straighten from the row of beans I’ve been weeding and wipe the sweat from my forehead with my forearm. Lucien stands on the other side of the garden fence with one hand resting casually against the post.

“Lucien.”

I get to my feet and brush the dirt from my knees. “I’ve been meaning to make it into town to thank you for taking such good care of my father while I was gone.”

His smile appears immediately.

It’s a handsome smile. I suppose it always has been. Straight white teeth and a shallow dimple beside his mouth that probably explains why half the unmarried people in the village find reasons to linger when he walks into a room.

It has never worked on me.

“Anything for your family,” he says.

Something about the way he says family makes the back of my neck prickle. His gaze moves slowly over me, starting at my face and dropping to my chest. Lower. Then back again.

I step away from the fence.

“Lucien!”

My father’s voice carries from the house, and Lucien’s attention leaves me so quickly that I almost convince myself I imagined the look.

Almost.

My father comes down the steps with more enthusiasm than I’ve seen from him in years, and Lucien opens his arms to receive him. They embrace like old friends.

“You should have told me you were coming,” my father says. “I would’ve made something.”

“Nonsense. I was passing through and thought I’d see how the two of you were managing now that your wayward son has finally returned.”

My father laughs.

I don’t.