46. Salem
SALEM
The box was labeled KITCHEN—FRAGILE, which was a lie because I had put one mug and a bottle of hot sauce in it. The rest was shoes, but Ethan had carried it in without comment, and I decided that was one of the reasons I was keeping him.
It was April. Five months since a haunted house.
Five months of Gray Harbor doing its slow turn from dark and cold into something that resembled life.
The hydrangeas were fighting their way back, and the harbor smelled like salt and something green.
It was the kind of morning that made you understand why people stayed here even when the winters were long and the rain was abundant.
Moving day was supposed to be casual—pizza, beer, a few friends. Alba had turned it into a small militarized operation. Everyone had zones and assignments that none of us followed, and she was so cute getting frustrated at us over it.
Miles had arrived first with a truck, a drill for furniture assembly.
Paul had shown up twenty minutes later with coffee.
Rowan had arrived five minutes after that, taken one look at Paul, and immediately begun ignoring him with surgical precision.
Bless his heart, Paul was following her around like a puppy trying to be the hero of her closet storage assembly.
It was chaos. It was exactly right.
I had carried four boxes inside and then walked out to the backyard and simply—stopped. The garden had done something since October. Everything had.
“Where did you go?” Ethan called from somewhere inside.
“Backyard!”
A pause. Footsteps. He appeared in the doorway of the slider, arms crossed. I didn’t understand his infatuation, but it was mutual.
“Break?”
“I was soaking it in,” I said.
It was a good day, and I didn’t want to get so caught up in moving that I missed what was actually happening. Good friends. A wonderful boyfriend. A new home.
Ethan leaned into my back and closed his arms around me, pressing a kiss to my temple. I leaned into him.
“Paul is trying to help Rowan carry the Peloton.” Alba appeared beside us with two coffees, handing me one. “She told him she had it. He offered again. She told him she could bench press him if needed, and he should remember that. Wait? Is this foreplay for them?”
I pressed my lips together.
“He’s a lost cause,” Alba said, with great fondness.
“She’s leaving in September.”
“I know.” Alba sipped her coffee. “He doesn’t seem to be factoring that in.”
“Paul never factors things in.”
“No. That’s both his greatest flaw and his most endearing quality.”
From inside came the sound of something being set down harder than necessary, then Rowan’s voice saying something I couldn’t catch, followed by Paul’s laugh.
I looked at my coffee.
September.
I had known it was coming, had known it since before any of this started, since before the haunted house, the contract, and the wonderful man whose house I was moving into.
I had built my whole life around staying, and I had watched her build hers around going.
We had both known, quietly, that this was how it was going to be.
It didn’t make it easier to stand in my new backyard in April and feel the months counting down.
The screen door opened, and Rowan appeared, carrying absolutely nothing, expression serene.
“Did you ditch the Peloton?” I asked.
“Paul’s got it. He was very insistent.”
“I should go save him.” Ethan departed with a kiss
“Not without a few choice words from you, I bet.”
She came to stand beside me, wrapping both hands around her own mug, looking out at the yard. “This is a good garden.”
“I know.”
“You’re going to be good here.” She paused, and her expression shifted. “Oh. Lucy and Callum are dating.”
I turned to look at her. “2B Callum.”
“2B Callum. Apparently, they met at some charity event.” She took a long sip of coffee. “Small town.”
“Small town.”
The morning light caught her hair, which had grown longer into more of a LOB. For a second, she looked like she had at nineteen—standing in the doorway of our apartment with that mischievous look.
“I’m going to miss you so much,” I said before she could say whatever she had been building toward.
Her jaw worked slightly. “I know. Me too.”
“Madison’s going to love you.”
“Madison’s going to be cold, and I’m going to complain about it constantly.”
“You’re going to thrive.”
“Obviously.” Then, quieter, she said, “You’re going to be okay here.”
“I’m going to be okay here.”
She nodded once and bumped her shoulder into mine. We stood there in the particular quiet of two people who had said everything that needed saying.
“Rowan,” Paul’s yelled from inside. “Where does Salem want the bookshelf?”
She closed her eyes. “Why is he asking me?”
“Because you’re the one he wants to talk to,” I said.
“This idiot.”
Paul called for her again.
She turned and went back inside, and I heard her tell Paul exactly where to put the bookshelf, which was physically impossible and needed to be discussed with a proctologist first.
I shook my head and turned back to the garden. It was different in spring. I had seen it in October—the careful rows, the dark turned soil, the handwritten markers gone soft from the weather. I thought it was beautiful then.
But this was something else entirely.
The beds along the back fence had come alive in the months since—green, full, and crowded with color. Roses climbed the fence. The hydrangea leaves were back, and I could not wait for their blooms to take over. Something small and stubborn in the corner.
And then, at the far end of the bed, in a long, deliberate row.
Dark. Layered. Spiraling petals that went almost black at the center. They looked like something you’d see in a painting and assume wasn’t real. They looked like they had been there forever and also like they had been waiting.
I walked toward them and crouched down.
They were extraordinary up close. Each bloom was somehow both dense and heavy at once. Dark spiraling centers, almost black. They caught the morning light in a particular way and held it.
“Ethan,” I said as he bounded down the back porch steps.
“Still not unpacking your boxes. We are going to live in a cardboard jungle until June.”
“What are these?”
He stood behind me. “Ranunculus.”
“Your grandma had good taste.”
The corner of his mouth moved. “That one was my doing, actually.”
I held his gaze for one long second. Then I stood up, closed the distance, and kissed him. Neither of us moved for another few seconds after.
Alba’s voice cut through the screen door. “Salem. Why does this box say kitchen but have shoes in it. And a bottle of hot sauce. This is such a mess.”
We laughed. She was nothing if not a force.
I looked back at the house. Miles was running a drill somewhere, Alba was reorganizing things, and Rowan and Paul were doing what Rowan and Paul did best.
I was so in love with this life.
Ethan took two steps and held out his hand. “We should save the cavalry before people lose limbs.”
I couldn’t contain my smile if I wanted to.
I let him lead me across my backyard and into my house.