Chapter 7:

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Cedric announced he would be coming to Bellhaven on the fifteenth to verify things personally. He said it like a threat. I said he was welcome. That was the last exchange of the evening.

I packed that night, before he got back. I had been half-packed anyway. I checked into a hotel three blocks away and set an alarm, then lay awake for two hours before it went off.

At six in the morning, a message from Thane: I’m coming to Highcrest. Already at the airport.

He arrived at the lobby at eight-thirty looking like someone who had taken a very early flight after a very short night. Jacket wrinkled, dark circles, hair doing something unplanned.

𝖶e𝗲kl𝘆 𝗿е𝘭еaѕeѕ 𝘰𝘯 𝗀𝗮𝘭𝗇𝗈v𝘦𝗅s.𝘤𝗼𝘮

“You look terrible,” I told him.

“I know. The small gray cat hid under the furniture all night. Is that normal for her?”

“She does that. She’ll come out when she’s ready.”

“Good.” He picked up my bag. “The rabbit also bit a third groundskeeper, but otherwise everyone is settled.”

We drove to the airfield. The jet was the family’s. I fell asleep on the sofa before we reached altitude and did not wake up until my phone rang somewhere over the hills.

Cedric’s name on the screen. Thane saw it, nodded toward the phone, and took himself forward to the other cabin.

“Where did your luggage go?” Cedric’s voice filled the speaker. “Are you running?”

“I told you I was leaving. You told me not to. That is the complete summary.”

“The animals—”

“Have been in Bellhaven since Thursday.”

A pause. His voice dropped. “I know the proposal went wrong. I know that. But three years is not nothing. Come back. I will make it right.”

“A bruise on Isolde’s leg was enough to end your own proposal. What does that say about the three years?”

Silence on the line. Then, with the flatness of someone saying the thing they have been avoiding: “I know why I noticed you first. You looked like her. I am not going to pretend otherwise. But that stopped being the reason a long time ago. You became yourself. I just never showed it properly.”

In three years, Cedric had never once been this unguarded. I sat with it for a moment. It was real, and it had arrived too late, and both of those things were true at the same time.

“We are beginning our descent,” said the flight attendant from the aisle. “Airplane mode, please.”

“I have to go,” I said. “Take care of yourself, Cedric.”

I turned off the phone and watched the city appear below — unfamiliar streets, a different kind of sky, the start of something I had not yet finished picturing.

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