Later,as the sky slipped into navy and the stars blinked awake one by one, we drifted outside. The swing creaked gently in the breeze. June took Lily upstairs to bed. Harper offered to wash the dishes and disappeared inside with a look that clearly saidno one follow me.
Which left me alone on the porch.
Until Grant came back with two slices of lemon cake, one in each hand.
“Thought you might want dessert without commentary,” he said, handing me a plate.
I accepted it gratefully. “You’re a saint.”
He sat beside me on the swing, careful not to rock it too fast. The porch was wrapped in golden light from the battery-powered strings I’d hung that morning. They buzzed faintly, a soft lullaby for the dark.
“Thanks for coming tonight,” I said after a few bites. “It meant a lot. Especially to June.”
“She’s kind,” he said. “Quiet, but… anchored.”
“She’s the strong one,” I said automatically.
Grant gave me a look. “I think you all are. Just in different ways.”
I didn’t answer right away. I wasn’t sure how.
Instead, I licked a bit of frosting from my thumb and stared out into the dark yard, where the garden had gone feral and the wind chimes near the porch whispered like they had something to say.
“You know,” I said finally, “I thought coming back here would feel like failure.”
His voice was low. “Why?”
“Because I left on purpose. I built something. Not much, but… enough. And now I’m back, and all I have to show for it is a suitcase, three expired tubes of mascara, and a half-finished mural that got painted over by an ad for iced coffee.”
I didn’t mean to say all of that.
But he didn’t laugh. Or give me advice. He just listened.
“Maybe,” he said quietly, “you didn’t come back to prove anything. Maybe you came back because this place still had something to give you.”
I let that sit between us.
Then I said, “You’re really good at this, you know.”
“At what?”
“Saying things that make people feel seen.”
Grant looked down at his empty plate. “You’d be surprised how many people don’t want to be.”
“Well,” I said, “I do. I think.”
He smiled, and it was the kind of smile that made me want to stay in this town longer than I planned. Which, if I was honest, scared me more than anything else.
The house was quieterthan it had been all day. Just the low hum of the dishwasher in the kitchen and the creak of old floorboards shifting their weight.
I found Harper at the sink, sleeves rolled up, her shoulders tight with precision.
“You know there’s such a thing astooefficient,” I said, leaning against the doorframe.
She didn’t look at me, just kept rinsing plates.
“I like things clean,” she said. “Is that a crime?”
