The night passed with old pictures and old stories until Holly’s eyes grew heavy and her head rested against my shoulder. Sissy gently pulled the empty plate from her hands and Stella and Gia slid the albums back into the shelves around the living room.
“We don’t have any rooms ready,” Sissy whispered from the sink, careful not to clink the dishes as she washed them.
“You can take my couch,” Danny offered, pulling his hair into a bun to get it off of his face. There was a little gray at the temples that hadn’t been there the last time I saw him. “Like old times.” The light caught the silver on his fingers and he waved them at me. “I’ll let you paint my nails again.” He smiled.
There was nothing I wanted more than to take him up on his offer. To spend the whole night making pillow forts in his tiny cabin near the old greenhouse, to let him try out his new tea blends on me, to talk until the sun peeked through the windows, to tell him everything that had happened since Jinx pulled me away . . .
Holly twitched in her sleep.
“Soon, but not tonight.”
I tried to lean her on the arm of the couch, but she flinched awake, terrified. Her hands clamped around my arm. If she had any nails she didn’t chew to bleeding, I would have had claw marks.
No one moved. No one said anything.
“We’re just putting sheets on the couch,” I told her, smoothing her hair back with the hand that wasn’t in a vice. “We’ll sleep out here tonight, okay?”
The room let out its breath and the women went buzzing around the house for the things we needed.
Her grip loosened, but she looked like a monster was hiding in the hallway.
“I’m not going anywhere.” I kneeled and tucked the sheet Dio handed me under her. “The bathroom is past the kitchen, and there’s always food in the fridge if you get hungry in the middle of the night.”
She leaned back into the couch and curled around the pillow I handed her, but she wouldn’t take her eyes off me.
Danny watched from the kitchen after backing out of the way. He waved everyone in when Holly couldn’t see.
The room cleared out and it was just the two of us. Her eyes grew heavy again and I tucked her into a quilt.
“Danny’s going to head home soon,” I told her. “I’m just going to say goodbye before he heads out, but I’ll be right there,” I pointed to the entrance of the kitchen across the hallway where Stella tittered about some gem show.
She looked over and snuggled back into the couch. I waited for her eyes to close and her breathing to slow. She was out in seconds.
I sighed and brushed her hair behind her ear.
The kitchen went silent as I leaned against the counter.
“I should get mom to bed,” Dio said.
She kissed my cheek and wrapped her arm in Ama’s as they tiptoed up the stairs. Stella and Gia took the hint and said goodnight, leaving me alone with Sissy and Danny. He twisted his rings.
I wasn’t ready for that conversation. Not yet. It had been a long day, a long week. A long decade, if I was honest. I was dead on my feet.
“Do you think you could tell everyone to go easy on her?” I whispered to Sissy. “Hold off on the touchy-feely stuff until she . . . adjusts?”
“I’ll talk to them,” she said, watching the couch from her post at the sink.
“Danny . . .” I rubbed my eyes, trying not to hate myself for even asking. “Could you give her a little extra space, just—try not to be alone with her?”
The worry in his brow, in those big brown eyes, deepened, but there was no hesitation in his answer. “Of course.”
He and Sissy shared a look. She opened her mouth to ask, but I raised my hand.
“One night,” I asked. “Just one night to be happy before we get into it.”
She nodded, thinking, while she wiped her hands on a dish towel.
“I need one thing,” she said.
“Anything.”
She cupped my cheek with her weathered hand. I took it and kissed her palm, every callus and crack more dear to me than gold.
“What’s her birthday?”
I smiled under her hand. “September twenty-first. Just turned ten.”
She nodded, eyes soft as she watched the couch.
“That would have made you about seventeen when Jinx got pregnant,” she said.
Danny came to stand next to me and took my other hand. “Guess we know why you weren’t breaking down our door the second you turned eighteen.”
I swallowed down the lump in my throat so I could answer. “Nothing else could have kept me away.”
Sissy kissed my temple. “Go get some sleep, baby. We’ve got a lot of work to do tomorrow.”
Danny scooped me into one last hug. “I’ll be back at dawn to fix up a room for you.”
I squeezed him back. “You better be.”
When he ran through the rain back to his cabin, and Sissy climbed the stairs to her room, I snuggled up to Holly on the couch. She never woke up. As I breathed in time with her, warm and safe, I pulled the blanket up around my shoulders. It was the same old quilt of red and white hearts that was my favorite when I was her age.
We were home. We were finally home.