CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Liam rode to Devon in a Town Car. He texted Clare on the way out of London to let her know he was coming. She sent back a smiley-face emoji. Can't wait to see you!

He sat in the back with headphones tuned to the most calming music he could find, easy synthesizer and piano and flutes, mostly. He used them as background for the meditations in his workshops, and they worked now to ease his sense of agitation. He listened to the music, watching the landscape pass by the windows, and counted breaths. Whenever his thoughts urgently intruded— What have you done? How will you move forward without Krish? How the hell is Tillie in Wulfecombe? —he started his breath count over.

Halfway to Devon, he took out his phone and texted his mentor: Bhante, I have come to a crossroad. Can we speak soon?

Just the act of typing it out gave him a sense of calm. He could hear Bhante's voice, calm and full of humor, giving him back a piece of wisdom Liam most likely already had within. And in a moment, a text came back: Yes. Remember, too, that everything has a beginning and an ending. Make your peace with that, and all will be well.

He texted back a grateful-hands emoji and leaned back. The surprise was not that he'd parted ways with his old friend, but that it had taken so long. Krish had no connection to any spiritual practice, which was fine in the world (or not fine, but not his business), but it was impossible to run this business without that deep grounding. Going forward, Liam would correct his mistake. His team should be as serious about the goal of the work as he was: not money, although there was no problem with wealth, but love. Love as a practice, as a method of living in the world. Approaching everything with a spirit of friendliness.

A conundrum, really, if he thought of Krish. He still felt anger over the betrayal. It would take time to work through his feelings of injury.

The car delivered him first to Clare's farmhouse, where he would be staying. When Tillie said she was at the Green King, he'd almost changed his plans, but Clare would be wounded, and in truth, he wanted to be in the house with his family, to soak in the nurturing he would find in those walls, amid the wounded animals and the smell of baking bread and his auntie's warm arms. He wondered how he'd let so long a time lapse without coming back here.

Clare herself came out of the house when she saw the car. She was tall and lean, her black hair short and spiky. "Liam!" A trio of dogs came with her, a beagle with a tumor on his nose whose ears dragged the ground, a clearly blind Lab, a little almost-hairless thing with healing wounds on its back. Clare flung her arms around him and hugged him, the gesture so welcome that Liam found himself sighing, letting the hard day fall away.

"I'm so glad to see you!" he said.

She pulled away, her hands on his arms. "You're even more beautiful as an adult than you were as a child. You look just like your father, you know."

"Do I?"

"A clone," she said. "The minute I saw your mother with him, I knew I'd lost her."

It made him feel oddly emotional. "Never lost her."

"No, not really, of course."

A woman, short, with skin the color of teak and a baby on her hip, waited on the step, grinning to show a space between her two front teeth. Liam inclined his head. "Amelia, is it?"

She held out an arm. "We are so happy you're here, cousin!"

He bent to hug mother and child, and the baby giggled, grabbing Liam's hair. "Who's this, then?" he asked, disentangling the chubby fingers.

"This is Teddy."

Liam pulled a little fist to his mouth and kissed it.

"Come on," Clare said. "Let's get you settled."

She showed him to his room, tucked under the eaves, with windows looking out toward her greenhouse and the roofs of the village below. The bed was covered with a white candlewick spread and piles of pillows. "D'you remember this room?" she asked. "Your mum stayed in here. Not that you spent any time here at all."

He laughed. "True enough. We were all off building forts and trying to avoid being stolen by fairies."

She nodded, inclining her head. "Something on your mind, love?"

Startled, he swung around to look at her. "How did you know that?"

She placed a hand on his upper back, gestured for him to sit down. "I have some gifts of my own, you know. Even as a boy at the most vigorous age, you were a sensitive. You felt all the ghosts and knew all the secrets."

"I don't remember that."

"Do you want to talk?"

He took a breath, measuring her open expression, the pale blue eyes. He remembered that she was a spiritual leader of some kind, one of the New Thought arms that had emerged from the late 1800s—Divine Science or Unity or one of those. Sinking down on the bench by the window, he said, "I've met someone. In New York, just a week ago, but it's been ... intense from the first day. I had to come to England for the gig in London, and she's been trying to figure some things out, so she stayed in New York, but then—"

He halted. It was just too strange.

"But then?"

"She came here. To Wulfecombe. Independently."

"Did she look you up or something?" Clare asked, frowning. "A bit stalkerish."

"No, it's not like that. She didn't come to find me. She came because something else brought her here, and now I think it feels fated between us, but I've had some problems in this area, falling in love too fast, too hard, and I don't want to mess up again."

Clare was silent for a long moment. Then she said, "Of course you fall in love hard. You love everything. The grass and the moon and pie and the people in your world, and the women who move you. It's such a beautiful gift, even if it sometimes hurts you."

He looked at her, feeling very close to tears. It had not occurred to him, even with all of his work over the years, to simply accept that he fell in love because that was how he operated. Not because it was a flaw. He gripped her hand. "I'm so glad to be here."

"It was meant to be," she said with a little smile. "Now, she's in town, here?"

He nodded.

"Go get her and bring her to supper. It'll just be us—Levi and me and whatever cousins can come."

"I will." He stood. Turned back and hugged her, feeling so grateful to be with people who loved him. Him, Liam, who had been a boy and would one day be old. "Thank you."