Chapter 35
LILY
April comes in warm and wrong.
Wrong because the trees are blooming, the harbor smells like salt and wet wood, the whole town is melting into spring, and I'm supposed to be happy about it.
Erin's shop is exploding with color. Ruth has dragged her patio tables out onto the sidewalk for the first time since October. Windows are open everywhere, clean air moving through, and Harbor Hill is doing what Harbor Hill does best: being so beautiful it steals your breath away.
I can't enjoy any of it. Spring means eight weeks. Eight weeks until I pack my life into boxes and move to Chicago and become a medical student and stop being the girl who lived across the flower shop in the town that saved her.
I got into Johns Hopkins after all. The letter came two weeks ago, and I told my parents because that's what you do, and they said all the right things.
And I stood in my apartment with the phone pressed to my ear and felt nothing.
No validation. No relief that I'd finally done the thing they wanted, become the daughter they could brag about at dinner parties.
I'm done trying to earn love that should have been freely given. I know now what love is supposed to feel like because I'm surrounded by people who give it to me easily, without conditions, without scorecards.
All I care about is that Rome is on my side, that he is proud of me. And when I told him I was choosing Chicago over Johns Hopkins, he didn't question it, didn't push, didn't try to optimize my decision. He just said he trusted my judgment.
Now I'm counting the days. The variable is time, and it's disappearing faster than I can hold it, and I can't make it stop.
The kitchen table at the Holt house has become a kind of war room. I keep showing up with information. Apartment listings. Neighborhood breakdowns. Commute times from various addresses to the medical campus.
A spreadsheet I made at two in the morning comparing rent prices against proximity to the hospital, color-coded with notes, because apparently the way I process grief is through Excel. If I can turn my future into data points and pivot tables, maybe it won't hurt so much to look at.
Rome and I these days are all about moving preparations and apartment hunts. He keeps sending me places that are too expensive and too big, penthouses and two-bedrooms with views, because Rome's love language is excess and he doesn't understand why I'd want anything less than the best.
But he's letting me choose. He'll come with me to Chicago for the final checks, walk through the spaces with me, make sure I'm safe.
I want something small. Small means less empty space to fill. Small means less room to feel lonely in.
Callahan sits across from me at the table.
Will is to my left, a stack of listings in front of him that he asked to see because he wanted to know where I'm going, what my plans are.
When I told him I was moving, he went quiet in that particular Will way, the silence that holds approval and sadness in equal measure.
I went home that night and cried myself to sleep.
"This one's in Hyde Park." I turn my laptop toward Callahan. "Walking distance to campus. One bedroom. The reviews say the building's old but the landlord is responsive. There's a laundry room in the basement."
Callahan studies the screen, his face blank.
"Looks solid," he says. "What's the lease term?"
"Twelve months. Standard. I could do a shorter one, but the monthly rate goes up."
"Go with the twelve." He leans back. "You don't want to be apartment hunting during first year."
Practical. Helpful. The exact right advice delivered in the exact right tone.
He's been doing this for weeks. Every time I bring logistics, he meets them with steady, useful input.
Where to live. What to budget. How to set up utilities in a new city.
He looked up the public transit map and highlighted the routes near each apartment option, folded it into a neat square, and left it on the table for me like a gift.
It's killing me.
"There's a grocery store two blocks east," I say, scrolling through the listing photos. "And a gym, if I ever have time, which I probably won't because first year is apparently a hundred hours a week of memorizing the names of bones and crying in library bathrooms."
"You'll have time." His voice is even, sure. "You'll make it work. You're good at that."
I want to throw the laptop across the room. I want to grab his face and shake him and say all the things that are clawing their way up my throat.
Stop being supportive. Stop being helpful. Stop sitting there like a man watching a train leave and being calm about it. Be messy. Be angry. Tell me you hate this. Tell me you don't want me to go. Tell me anything that isn't the right thing, because the right thing is making me lose my mind.
I say none of that. I scroll to the next listing instead.
"This one has a balcony."
"That's nice." His hands rest on his thighs, his posture relaxed in a way that is studied. "You like outdoor space."
"I do," I say brightly, holding the surface together. "I could put plants on it. Herbs, maybe. Basil. I've always wanted to grow basil."
"Basil's easy. Full sun, water when the soil's dry." He nods like we're having a perfectly normal conversation. "You'd be good at it."
I'm moving a thousand miles away and we're discussing herb gardens like two people who have never touched each other in the dark, like we haven't memorized every sound the other makes, like leaving isn't going to tear us both apart.
I can feel Will watching us. He has listings in his hands, but he's not reading them. His eyes move between Callahan and me with a patience that is distinctly Will.
"What about the neighborhood?" I keep going because I can't stop.
"The reviews mention some noise on weekends, but that might just be college students. I can handle college students. I was a college student twelve months ago. I know how loud we get."
"Pull up the crime map," Callahan offers. "You can overlay it with the apartment locations."
I pull up the crime map. I overlay it. We look at dots on a screen that represent a life he won't be part of, a city he won't walk with me, streets he won't know.
He points at intersections and asks about street lighting.
I answer with data I researched at two in the morning when I should have been sleeping, because sleep hasn't been coming easily lately.
My brain won't stop running calculations.
Time remaining. Miles between us. The probability of this surviving distance.
"The medical campus has a shuttle," I say. "Late night. For students coming off shifts. So I wouldn't be walking alone."
"Good."
One word. That's all he gives me. Good. Like the shuttle schedule is the thing that matters here. Like my safety is a logistical problem he's helping me solve and nothing more.
I know he doesn't like the idea of me walking alone at night in a city. I know it bothers him in that deep, protective place he tries to keep hidden. I know because I know him, because I've spent a year learning every silence and every way he holds himself when he's worried.
Why can't he just say it?
"Callahan." I close the laptop, my hands press flat against the lid. Those green eyes give me nothing.
"I think the Hyde Park place is your best option," he says. "Good location. Reasonable rent. You'll be close to campus."
"Callahan," I say again, trying to catch something in his expression, anything I can hold onto.
"The balcony one is nice too," he continues, like I haven't said his name twice, like I'm not sitting here silently begging him to crack. "But it's an extra fifteen minutes on the commute. During first year, those fifteen minutes matter. Go with Hyde Park."
I stare at him. He holds my gaze without giving me a single thing I can grab onto.
He's so good at this. So practiced at standing behind his own walls that you could spend a year loving him and still not find the door.
His chair scrapes back suddenly, the sound sharp in the quiet kitchen.
"I need air," he says.
The door to the backyard slams behind him. I bite my lip hard enough to taste copper, holding myself still because if I move, I'll shatter.
I start gathering my things, stacking papers with shaking hands.
"I shouldn't have come here to do this," I say. "It was stupid. I don't know what I was thinking."
"This is exactly why I asked you to come."
Will hasn't moved from his place, the listings folded neatly on his lap now, his weathered hands resting on top of them. "So you both could see how wrong all of this is."
I search his face, this man who has become something like a father to me, and feel the tears pressing against the backs of my eyes.
"There is no good solution, Will."
"There is." He says it simply, without drama or performance. He's lived long enough to know that most problems have answers if you're brave enough to look for them.
"If either of you would stop long enough to listen."
"I want to scream," I admit, and my voice is cracking and I let it. I'm so tired of holding myself together. "I don't know what to do. I don't want to leave, and he's being so goddamn helpful that it makes me want to scream."
"He's careful because he loves you." Will's eyes are steady on mine. "That's the only reason a man like my son would sit at this table and talk about crime maps and shuttle schedules while his heart is breaking."
The tears spill over. I don't bother wiping them.
"He thinks letting you go is the bravest thing he can do." Will shakes his head slowly. "He's wrong, but he thinks it. And he got that particular brand of wrong from me. I taught him that love means sacrifice. That you hold on by letting go."
I press my face into his shoulder. His arm comes around me without hesitation, one hand rubbing slow circles on my back the way I imagine he did when Callahan was small and scared and didn't know how to say it.
"I'm going to miss you," I say into his collar, the words muffled and wet. "So much, Will. So much I can't think about it without falling apart."
"Then don't think about it." He pats my back, gentle and rhythmic. "Think about the basil. That's a fine plant, the basil."
I smile through the tears, a broken sound that's half sob and half something lighter.
"You're such a good dad, Will."
"I'm always here, okay? Always." He squeezes my shoulder. "That doesn't change because you're in a different city. You call me. Anytime. I mean it."
I kiss his cheek, then I gather my laptop and my spreadsheets and my crime maps and I walk toward the door. I pause at the window. Callahan is on the porch, his back to the house, his face turned up to the night sky, his hands shoved deep in his pockets.
I should go. I should get in my car and drive home and give him space. Instead, I open the door.
He doesn't turn when I step onto the porch. The April night is soft around us, and the sky is full of stars.
I stop behind him and put my hand on his back, between his shoulder blades, and I feel him breathe under my palm. The warmth of him through his shirt. The way his whole body is held tight, braced against something I can't see.
He doesn't turn around. I don't ask him to.
"Hyde Park," I say quietly. "I'll go with Hyde Park."
He nods. A single, small movement.
I leave and I don't look back because looking back will break me, and I need to make it home before I fall apart.
The streets of Harbor Hill pass by in a blur of familiar shapes, the town I love, the town that saved me, the town I'm leaving in eight weeks. Seven weeks and six days, my brain corrects. Because apparently I'm still counting.
I could torment us both with the time I have left. But I'd rather give my Harbor Hill and my Callahan everything, and take everything from them at the same time.