3. June
CHAPTER THREE
JUNE
The Belrose kitchen is golden, especially this early in the morning.
Warm amber light pours through the window above the sink, pooling on the butcher-block countertops and catching the mismatched ceramic mugs hanging from hooks along the wall.
Each one tells a story: the chipped “World’s Best Mom” mug I made at a pottery class when I was six, the faded Alaria University logo mug Mom stole from a faculty meeting (she works as a counselor on campus), the oversized one with a cat wearing sunglasses that Carter ironically bought and now uses every single day.
The whole room glows with raw sienna undertones.
I’m sitting on my usual stool at the kitchen island, a half-eaten piece of toast in front of me.
The wooden floors creak beneath Mom’s feet as she moves to the stove in her terrycloth robe, spatula in hand, humming something from the eighties that she’ll deny knowing the words to if I ask.
On the counter beside her, a candle flickers in its glass jar, filling the air with spice and making me crave cinnamon rolls.
She loves burning candles, in every room, part of her endless quest to make this old Victorian house feel cozy.
It already does, but I’ve learned not to argue with the candle obsession.
“Okay, but here’s what I don’t understand,” she says, not looking up from the pan.
“If the email said the faculty meeting was moved to Thursday, and then the follow-up email said it was back to Wednesday, and then Karen—” she says the name like it tastes horrible, “—sends a third email saying to disregard the second email but please confirm availability for Thursday…”
“Mom. Mom.” I hold up my hand. “Are you asking me to give you advice about the bureaucratic hellscape of Alaria University’s administrative staff?”
“I’m asking you to tell me what day my meeting is.”
“Wednesday.”
She points the spatula at me. “You don’t know that.”
“I know Karen. She always circles back to the first wrong answer. It’s like her idiotic superpower.”
Mom laughs and the sound fills the kitchen, brightening any dark corners. “You’re terrible,” she says, but she’s still smiling. “Karen’s been working at that university longer than you’ve been alive.”
“Which is exactly why she’s developed her own internal calendar system that isn’t like actual human time.” I take a sip of my water. “I’m telling you. Wednesday.”
I glance through the archway and notice Carter walking through the living room.
He steps over a stack of books that’s been serving as an end table for the past three months.
The whole house is like that, books breeding on every surface, colonizing corners, windowsills, and the arms of the mismatched furniture Mom’s collected over the years.
He’s already dressed in joggers and a faded HargroveU hoodie.
He enters the kitchen and grabs his favorite cat-sunglasses mug off the hook.
I watch lazily as he fills it with cereal, then milk, then starts to chug it without a spoon. “Wednesday,” he confirms, sliding onto the stool next to me. The old wood groans under him.
“You don’t even know what we’re talking about,” I say.
“You two are loud. The neighbors know what you’re talking about.”
Mom points her spatula at him, as though she’s casting a curse. After a pointed look and a severe frown, she returns to the stove. “Here,” she says, scooping two eggs onto a plate for me.
Carter waits for his but it never comes. “Hey,” he says, cereal falling from his mouth. “No eggs?”
Mom is brutal as she switches off the stove. “Not after that remark. What woman wants to be called loud?”
Carter looks to me for help, but I only shrug and suppress a laugh.
He licks his lips. “Um… empowered women who… own their shit and…” He searches the floor for answers. “Who don’t let a man tell them how quiet to be?”
Mom turns and we lock eyes, just staring at each other. Then we burst into laughter.
“You sound like a bad song from the twenty-tens,” Mom says while wiping moisture from her eyes. “What is wrong with you?”
Carter snorts into his cereal. His smoky-amethyst eyes catch the morning light, and for a second I’m struck by how settled he is here. It’s easy to forget he wasn’t always ours.
He was eleven when the car accident took both his parents, and Mom didn’t hesitate to help for a single second.
She drove six hours to bring him home with us, set up the guest room, and told him it was his room now—that we were his family and nothing would change that.
She said it so calmly and with such warmth, even though she’d barely taken time to grieve the loss of her sister, Carter’s mom.
I was ten at the time. Aeron was nine. He quickly accepted it because he wanted a brother.
Carter never talks about that year. The before-year, the year of losing everything. But sometimes I catch him looking around our home like he can’t quite believe it exists and that he gets to be part of it.
“Back to the drama,” Mom says, plating the rest of the eggs she’d been frying. “Have you talked to Dorien since the gallery?”
I poke my eggs around my plate. “New subject.”
She gives me a “Mom look” and a soft “hmm,” like she knows all the answers and how all of us should be living our best lives.
And she does know a lot. She knows 99% of everything about me. All except the truth about the day that changed any possibility of anything with Dorien.
Carter chimes in, “You two would be the cutest power couple.”
“You’re a liar and should be disowned immediately.”
He laughs and holds up both hands in mock surrender. “Hey, Dorien’s the one who said you were having your little moment in front of his sculpture.”
“It wasn’t a moment—”
“I heard you barely even blinked.”
“I was analyzing the piece. That’s different.
” I can feel my cheeks heating, which is annoying because I don’t blush.
I’m not a blusher. I’m a person with excellent emotional regulation who absolutely does not turn pink when someone mentions Dorien Kael.
Then Carter’s words actually sink in. “Wait. Dorien said that? When?”
Carter laughs so hard he almost falls off his stool.
Mom sets ketchup on the kitchen island, as if that’s the reason I’m not eating much of the eggs.
I recognize the look on her face. It’s her counselor look she uses on students who come to her office thinking they’re being subtle about their problems. “Honey. You’ve been ‘analyzing’ that boy since Bonnie brought him over for your first play date. ”
“That’s not—I don’t—” I stab a piece of egg with my fork, determined to finish breakfast so I can leave. “Can we talk about literally anything else?”
“The weather’s been nice,” Carter offers.
“Thank you.”
“Very sunny. Good for painting, I bet.”
“Agreed. Great painting weather.”
“You know what else is good for painting?” He pauses to finish gulping his mug of cereal, and I already know where he’s going. “Inspiration. Like the kind you get from a talented sculptor whose work makes you stand completely still in a crowded gallery—”
I throw a piece of toast at his head. He catches it and takes a bite. “This is good toast,” he says. “Thanks.”
“I hate you.”
“No you don’t.”
He’s right. I don’t. But that’s the problem with my cousin. He knows exactly how much he can push before it stops being funny, then he pulls back right at the edge.
Mom settles onto the stool across from us and starts eating her breakfast. The morning light catches the silver threads in her curly hair, and I notice the laugh lines deepening around her eyes.
She looks tired in the soft way mothers do.
Behind her, through the window, I can see the backyard sloping down toward the small woods that border the property.
The trees will start preparing for fall soon.
Carter gets up to wash his mug and Mom glances at me. “So,” she says. “The showcase. Does it still feel weird to have your piece up there with everyone looking at it?”
I open my mouth to deflect, then close it again. She’s looking at me like she can see straight through whatever mask I’m putting on. It’s unnerving. It’s also the reason I tell her things I don’t tell anyone else.
“Definitely weird,” I say. “But I used too much red and I think everyone is noticing that first.”
What I don’t tell her is that I almost didn’t submit it. The idea of strangers standing in front of my painting, forming opinions about my talent, my taste, my entire inner life reduced to a thumbs-up or thumbs-down, had nearly been enough to keep the application in my drafts folder.
“I liked the red,” Carter says from the background, but I’m still annoyed with him so I pretend he didn’t speak.
“Did anyone actually say there’s too much red?” Mom asks.
Yeah, Dorien. But I’m not going to tell her that’s who said it. So I just shake my head and finish my food quickly.
Mom smiles at me from across the island. “You know what I see when I look at your work?”
“A concerning obsession with the color red?”
“I see someone who feels things so deeply she has to get them out somehow. That’s not weakness, baby. That’s strength. Most people spend their whole lives running from what they feel. You make it into something beautiful.”
My throat tightens, and I focus on the colors outside the window. I don’t say anything, and Mom sips her coffee, casual as anything, like she didn’t just reach into my rib cage and rearrange things.
That’s when Aeron appears.
He drifts into the kitchen, the old floorboards announcing his arrival with their familiar creaks.
His ocean-teal eyes are heavy-lidded with sleep, his dark hair sticking up on one side, and he’s wearing the same oversized band T-shirt he’s had since sophomore year of high school, the one that’s dangerously thin from too many washes.
There are already holes in it, and I’m surprised it hasn’t unraveled completely by now.
“Morning,” Mom says, glancing over her shoulder. “There are eggs if you want them. I made extra. And you can eat Carter’s.”