Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
Two weeks later
The smell of roasting turkey had seeped into every corner of the house by the time I came downstairs, mingling with sage and rosemary and the warm yeast of the dinner rolls my mother had started at dawn.
It was the kind of smell that belonged to childhood Thanksgivings, to the years before everything changed, and I paused on the landing to let it settle into my lungs like a blessing I hadn’t known I needed.
Late November light slanted through the tall windows of the big old house, pale gold and surprisingly clear after weeks of the usual low clouds and fog.
The storms had finally broken three days ago, replaced by the kind of crisp autumn weather that Northern California liked to pretend was normal for this time of year.
I could see the oak in the backyard through the kitchen window, its remaining leaves a deep rust color against the washed-out blue of the sky.
I couldn’t sense the portal network humming beneath my feet or the slow pulse of dimensional energy that had been my constant companion for months.
The world was smaller now, confined to what my ordinary senses could perceive, and some mornings I still woke reaching for something that wasn’t there, my mind grasping at silence where there used to be song.
But as I stood there in the house that had sheltered four generations of my family, breathing in the familiar smells of a holiday I’d thought I might never see again, I found that the absence hurt a little less than it had yesterday, just like it hurt a little less yesterday than it had the day before.
And maybe that was all I needed.
Ben called out to me from the kitchen. “Sidney? Your mom wants to know if you can find the good serving platter. The one with the gold rim.”
“Hall closet, top shelf,” I called back, and made myself continue down the stairs instead of hovering on the landing like a ghost at her own haunting.
The living room had been transformed while I slept.
Someone — probably my grandmother, who had always believed that holidays required proper presentation — had brought out the good tablecloth, the cream-colored linen with the delicate embroidered edges that only appeared for Christmas and Thanksgiving and the occasional particularly formal Sunday dinner.
The long table had been extended with both its leaves and set with the wedding china that had belonged to my great-grandmother, each place marked by a small arrangement of dried flowers and autumn leaves.
I counted the settings as I passed. Seven places, which seemed awfully ambitious for a family that had spent so many recent holidays fractured and incomplete.
“There she is.” Eliza Cartwright emerged from the kitchen with a stack of cloth napkins in her arms, her blonde pixie cut slightly disheveled from whatever culinary crisis she’d been managing.
She’d come by to help, even though she’d be heading off to her own family’s dinner later that day.
“I was starting to think you were going to sleep through the whole thing.”
“It’s barely ten o’clock.”
“And the turkey’s been in since six. Your mother is a force of nature.” Eliza deposited the napkins at the head of the table and turned to face me, her expression softening into something more serious. “How are you doing? Really?”
It was a question people had been asking me for weeks now, ever since I’d woken up in my own bed with the world gone quiet and my abilities burned away.
My whole family had gotten good at giving explanations that sounded plausible enough — an accident in the woods, with a resulting concussion that had required me to spend a lot of time in bed to recover.
But Eliza had known me since I was a kid, and she’d never been one to accept easy deflections.
“I’m here,” I said, which was honest if not exactly comprehensive. “That’s more than I expected a few weeks ago.”
“Fair enough.” She reached out and squeezed my arm, the touch brief but warm.
“For what it’s worth, I’m glad you’re here, too.
The town council tried to schedule a meeting for tomorrow — can you imagine, the day after Thanksgiving?
— and I told them they could all go straight to hell.
Some things are more important than zoning disputes. ”
I smiled despite myself. “You’re really settling into this mayor thing.”
“Someone has to keep the idiots in line.” But she was smiling, too, and for a moment we just stood there in the light-filled living room, two women who were both now in places that neither of them could have imagined a year ago.
The moment broke when my father’s wheelchair appeared in the kitchen doorway, pushed by Rebecca Morse.
Finn looked better than he had two weeks ago — the grayness had left his face, and he’d regained enough weight that his clothes no longer hung on him like borrowed things — but he still moved carefully, still winced when the chair hit a bump in the old hardwood floor.
The bullet had missed his spine by millimeters, according to the surgeon in Eureka.
He’d walk again eventually, with physical therapy and time.
But for now, the wheelchair was a constant reminder of what he’d given up to save my mother.
“The carrots are done,” Rebecca announced as she steered him toward the living room. “Emily’s banned me from the kitchen until I promise to stop trying to reorganize her spice rack. It’s alphabetized wrong.” But even as she spoke, she smiled. It was an expression I’d seen her wear much more lately.
Behind them, through the kitchen doorway, I could see the controlled chaos of dinner preparations.
My mother stood at the stove stirring something in a copper-bottomed pot, while my grandmother supervised from her position at the counter, occasionally issuing commands that were more suggestion than order.
Ben moved between them easily, fetching ingredients and washing dishes and somehow managing not to get in anyone’s way.
He caught my eye through the doorway and smiled, that particular smile he reserved for moments when words weren’t necessary.
We’d been learning to do that lately, to communicate in the small gestures and quiet glances that couples developed over time.
It was different from the bioelectric resonance we’d shared before, less immediate but somehow more intentional.
We had to choose to understand each other now, rather than simply feeling it.
I liked that, actually. I liked that our connection required effort, required attention. It felt more real somehow, more human.
My grandmother looked up from the sweet potatoes she was peeling. “Sidney. Stop dawdling in doorways and get me the casserole dish.”
So I went.
The house ebbed and flowed with people as the morning turned to afternoon.
Hope Hayakawa came by, bringing a bottle of wine and the latest news.
Her parents had reached out to let her know that their old family vet finally wanted to retire, and she would be heading back to Berkeley to take over his practice, allowing her to settle in her hometown.
“Which means,” she said, watching my face carefully, “that I need someone to take over here. Someone with local roots and the right qualifications. Someone who may have just passed her veterinary boards last week.”
I stared at her. “Hope — ”
“Don’t answer yet.” She held up a hand before I could say anything else.
“Just think about it. The practice, the house — I’d sell you both at a fair price.
You could pay it off over time and build something of your own here.
” Her smile turned wry. “I know you’ve had a complicated few months, but Silver Hollow is still your home. And the town is going to need a vet.”
“I don’t know if I can — ” I began, but she was already shaking her head.
“Don’t tell me what you can’t do. We’ve all seen what you can do, Sidney Lowell, and it’s a lot more than you give yourself credit for.” She glanced over at Ben, who’d appeared in the doorway with a questioning look. “Besides, you’ve got a good support system. That counts for something.”
She patted my arm and went to join the others in the living room, leaving me standing in the kitchen with my mother’s gravy ladle in one hand and a future I hadn’t let myself imagine suddenly spreading out before me.
Ben came up beside me, close enough that I could feel the warmth of him through my sweater. “What was that about?”
“Hope wants to sell me her practice. And her house.”
“The Victorian on Ash Street?” His eyebrows rose. “The one with the wraparound porch and the stained glass windows?”
“That’s the one.”
He was quiet for a moment, processing. “What do you think?”
“I think I don’t know how to think about the future anymore.
” I set down the gravy ladle and turned to face him, leaning against the counter in a way that probably drove my grandmother crazy.
“For months, all I could see was the next crisis, whether that was lost griffins or contaminated phoenixes or the Dragon. And now that’s over, and there’s just…
time. A whole life I’m supposed to figure out how to live. ”
“Is that so bad?”
“I don’t know.” I looked out the window at the yard and the forest beyond, at the mountains in the distance where the portal site lay hidden among ancient trees. “I can’t feel them anymore, Ben. The ley lines, the connection to everything. It was part of who I was, and now it’s just…gone.”
“You’re still you.” He said the words simply, without drama, the way he said most things that mattered. “The abilities were part of what you did, but they weren’t who you are.”
“Weren’t they?” I heard the edge in my own voice and made myself soften it. “I was a guardian, Ben. That was my purpose, my inheritance. And now I’m just — ”