22. Mattias

It wasn't a surprise Connor was still bringing Jessie's suitcase. It wasn't a disappointment. Hell, if anything, it was embarrassing for me because somehow, I felt responsible for the town I loved taking his child. For me personally not rushing out into the woods and finding Jessie.

For that one day in my own childhood when I'd almost become one of Cider Landing's missing children.

Would Connor even be okay with me staying in Cider Landing if we got serious in this relationship? Or would he eventually decide he never wanted to see the place again, because he needed to stop thinking about Jessie?

That seemed out of character for Connor, but also, it seemed... like a step that might eventually happen to most parents of lost children. It only made sense that eventually, people moved on. Right?

That was... healthy. If healthy was ever a word that could be applied to something as deep and personal and world-crushing as grief.

That wasn't a light conversation to start the moment he arrived, though. That was a serious conversation, for the dead of night, when I'd had more than a glass of wine and he was feeling especially talkative.

So I took his suitcase and he took Jessie's, and we headed to the heron room. His room, really.

Our room at some point, maybe.

Not that I didn't have my own, but my room was the same one I'd been sleeping in since I was a year old, and the bed was a twin. I was not inviting Connor to share it with me. Not that I wasn't willing, it was just... the heron room had a king-sized bed, where we could both fit comfortably. Where we could watch the show he'd brought, adorably thinking of me even when I wasn't with him. Why the hell would I not just share that bed with him?

"What are you thinking about?" Connor asked as he set Jessie's bag in its usual chair. "You've got a funny look on your face."

I scrunched up my nose. "You don't want to know. Mostly about how I'm sleeping in the same bed as I did when I was five."

He laughed at that, and we both glanced at the big sprawling king bed in his room, then immediately away.

I cleared my throat. "I'm just thinking, um, that we should watch the DVDs here in your room. Not in mine. It doesn't really have room for two full adults. Old house, old bedroom. It's most people's idea of a closet nowadays. Not even a nice one with the cool shelves and mirrors and shoe racks, just a regular closet."

He chuckled, but then winced and turned to stare at the carpet. "I've got a closet like that, back in the city. With, like, a chair you can sit on while looking through the shoe racks. It's... a lot. It's silly, right?"

Was he... ashamed of his money? That was fucking wild. It did gel with how he'd made a point of telling me that he hadn't built the Darling company himself but inherited it. Still, he'd built Tadpoles himself, and if he couldn't see how he'd clearly inherited that head for business from his family, I couldn't make him see it. Instead, I could try to change the subject.

"I mean, maybe you get tired going through your shoe collection and need to sit down?" I waved a hand dismissively. "Honestly, Connor, if I could afford a palace for a closet, I'd be down for it. I'm pretty sure most people would. I just also don't need it. My childhood room is fine. It's not like I spend a lot of time in it, you know?"

Awkwardly. I could attempt to change the subject awkwardly.

Connor, on the other hand, nodded, albeit slowly. "I don't stay at the place in New York that much either. It's just somewhere to be when I sleep in the city. It's not a home, like I?—"

He paused and swallowed, and I knew he was thinking of his perfect family, Jessie and Trev. How happy they'd been. Their home.

I couldn't help myself, I rushed him, putting my arms around his chest and laying my head on his shoulder. "You're between homes right now, that's all. Nothing wrong with that."

Slowly, he relaxed into me, wrapping his arms around me and laying his head atop mine. "Yeah. Between homes."

I wanted to ask him to move into the inn and stay forever. I—we—would happily be his home. Not just the building, but me and Grandma and Peanut. Hell, even the rest of Cider Landing. That would be way too much, though, so it was best to limit myself to current things. "How about dessert? I didn't plan anything. Anything you especially like?"

It was a lie. I'd planned a dozen desserts for his visit, and had fresh churned peach ice cream sitting in the freezer to go with a raspberry-peach crumble. But food was always a good, safe topic for conversation, and the one everyone expected me to turn to in times of stress.

So I did.

For a moment, he just breathed against the top of my head, then he nodded. "Yeah. Oatmeal cookies. They're my favorite. With... with chocolate chips. No raisins allowed."

I'd always been a fan of raisins in oatmeal cookies because that was how Grandma used to make them, with raisins and walnuts, but frankly, chocolate chips went with everything.

They were chocolate, for fuck's sake.

"Oatmeal chocolate chip it is," I agreed, but I didn't step away from him.

For a long time, we just stood there like that, in the middle of the heron room, arms wrapped around each other.

Marsha and Ezra had been running the general store my entire life. I thought they'd inherited it from her parents in like... the seventies or something like that. Either way, I didn't remember a time before it. They were slightly older than Grandma, in the way of close contemporaries—in that Marsha had once mentioned babysitting Grandma when she was a kid.

Half the time, when Grandma accompanied me to the store, we ended up stuck there for hours chatting about bygone eras in Cider Landing when some guy I'd never heard of had been mayor, and so and so the town gossip who'd broken up half a dozen marriages. I didn't mind too much, since that meant I could spend hours looking at the strawberries, and pick the very best ones.

I was almost sorry when I didn't bring her, in fact.

Except that today wasn't about Grandma and her friends... until it was.

The store was silent when we walked in, planning to buy the ingredients for Connor's cookies and rush back out, and immediately it struck me as wrong.

Marsha was standing alone at the checkout, looking... exhausted. She was easily seventy, yes, maybe even eighty, but I'd never seen her looking so beaten down in the near-thirty years I'd known her.

"Marsha?" I asked, skipping the store altogether and heading straight to her. "Is everything okay?"

She turned a strained smile on me, but shook her head. "It's... It's nothing, I'm sure. That old husband of mine just wasn't feeling himself this morning, so I'm on my own. It, ah, it's not quite the same without him, you know?"

A lump started forming in my throat. Ezra. He'd been a good friend of Grandpa's. He'd been a cheerful ray of sunshine in Cider Landing as long as I'd been alive, growing his fruits and vegetables and willing to stop and talk to anyone about them. About gardening. About anything at all.

Fuck me. All the people who meant anything to me other than Connor were... well, they were old. It was one of those things that happened, of course. I knew it. I'd known it for as long as I remembered.

It had just never been more obvious than the last few years, that everyone I loved was on the way out. A decade, two on the outside, and I was going to be alone in the world.

I stayed with Marsha for a while, talking, but her heart wasn't in it any more than mine, and we got the cookie ingredients and left.

"You want to talk about it?" Connor asked as we got into his car.

"My grandparents raised me. Their friends are their age. And they... well, you know."

"They're getting older," he said, nodding, because of course he understood and wasn't jumping to call me a selfish asshole for thinking of how all this affected me. "And you don't have a group of younger people who'll still be here when they're gone."

I couldn't even speak, just nodded.

We drove for a while, around in circles rather than right back to the inn. Finally, Connor turned and looked at me. "You know, Cider Landing actually has a pretty good reputation for having experienced mental health professionals. Maybe... maybe you should talk to someone. That couldn't be a bad idea, could it?"

And hell, but he was right. I probably needed all kinds of therapy. Not that I could afford it, but... well. It'd just be one more thing on the pile of mounting debt. He wasn't wrong. I did need it.

Still, maybe it could help more than me. "You're not wrong," I hedged. "But I don't... I don't want to do it alone. I'll go if you go too."

He lifted a brow at me. "Why do I feel like you don't just mean to hang out and wait for you?" When I returned his bitch-face, he sighed, but after a moment, he nodded. "Okay. You're not wrong. We could both use someone to talk to. Let's give it a shot."