CHAPTER 4: GOING HOME

My shoulders were still shaking by the time I hung up the phone. Tears kept sliding down my chin and dropping onto my collar, and every breath came out broken and thick with crying. I let myself have that moment, then wiped my face with both hands and forced myself to focus.

I did one last sweep of the house, upstairs and downstairs, making sure nothing useful had been left behind. With a thought, I sorted everything sitting on the grass in my space and pushed it back toward the far end of the yard so I would have room to work. Then I stood in the doorway and took one last look at the home I once thought I would live in for the rest of my life.

I turned and walked out.

The elevator came quickly, since my building only had a handful of units per floor. I rode it down to the garage, got into my car, and started the engine. My first stop was the real estate office. Mirelle King had helped me buy this apartment, and she was the only person I trusted to sell it fast.

It was late August in Southen, still deep in summer vacation, and even at eight in the morning the sun was already scorching through the windshield. The roads were full of commuters. Half an hour later I pulled up outside the agency, where Mirelle King and a few of her coworkers were chatting comfortably in the air conditioning.

I pushed the door open. Mirelle King looked up and smiled the moment she saw me.

“Miss Quinn? What brings you here? Looking to buy another place?”

She was around my mother’s age, and something about her always made me feel a little more at ease. She poured me a glass of water before I had even sat down.

“I want to sell my apartment,” I said. “I already sent you photos and the door code. You can show it whenever you like.” I pulled the deed out of my bag and photographed it for her records. “I’m in a hurry to sell. I’ll go five hundred thousand under market. It’s only two years old, freshly renovated, and it comes with two parking spaces.”

Mirelle King’s eyebrows rose. “So suddenly? That duplex is beautiful. Have you talked this over with your mother?”

“I just spoke with her,” I said, keeping my voice calm even though my heart was pounding. “There’s one more thing. I need to rent a large warehouse with cold storage for six months, somewhere near the farmers market. Do you have anything like that?”

“Plenty, in the logistics park. Let me pull up the listings.” She could not hide how pleased she was at the extra business, and within twenty minutes I had settled on a ten thousand square meter warehouse. I signed the contract on the spot and paid six months of rent in one lump sum.

I did not waste time celebrating. I got back in the car and drove straight to sell my gold.

“My name is Quinn. I have a ten o’clock appointment with Mr. Palmer,” I told the receptionist when I arrived.

“Of course. Right this way.”

I had met Caelan Palmer months ago at a new energy vehicle expo, back when I was thinking about buying a car for Kairo. He worked in an industry that needed raw gold, and we had talked about doing some promotional work together once. I had already worked out most of the details with him over the phone on the drive over, betting that his factory would take whatever I could sell.

The meeting did not take long. I signed the paperwork and sold nine kilograms of gold on the spot. When I checked my account afterward and saw eight point three million yuan sitting there, I could not stop myself from grinning.

Two tasks down. I got back on the road and drove nearly an hour toward my family’s old house in the countryside.

Once I got off the highway, I passed rows of orchards with villagers selling fruit by the roadside, and I bought armfuls of it without thinking twice. I filled the trunk, then the back seat, and whenever the car ran out of room I quietly moved everything into my space and started again. I had picked this SUV specifically because it was big enough for the cats, the dog, and my entire family if it ever came to that. Watching myself buy out an entire stretch of roadside fruit stands, I almost laughed at how deep the fear of starving must have burrowed into me during those two years. Now that I finally had the chance, I could not stop myself from hoarding.

The car rolled along the familiar country road, and slowly the old three story house came into view, its blue tiles and white walls glowing softly in the midday sun exactly as I remembered them. Morning glories climbed the bamboo fence outside the courtyard, pink and purple petals swaying gently and letting off a faint sweetness in the heat.

I parked and pushed open the wooden gate. On the second floor balcony, fresh bedsheets hung out to dry, carrying the same old brand of laundry detergent my mother had used my whole life.

I stepped through the front door. The old mahogany sofa in the living room had been worn smooth by years of use. On the landing halfway up the stairs, the family portrait hung slightly yellowed with age but still perfectly clear.

Then I caught it. That familiar sour smell drifting from the kitchen, my mother’s pickling jars.

Every bit of longing I had carried for two years broke loose at once. My fingers trailed over the furniture as I walked deeper into the house, my chest aching with a joy I could barely hold.

I was home.

“Mom! I’m home!” My voice cracked and broke apart into sobs before I could finish the sentence.

My mother came around the corner just in time to see me wiping my eyes. She set down a bowl of freshly picked longans on the coffee table and looked at me with confusion, then alarm.

For a second neither of us moved. I just stood there taking her in, every small detail I had forgotten I missed. The gray streaks in her hair that had not been there before. The apron she had probably owned since before I was born. The soft worry lines around her eyes that deepened the moment she looked at me.

I did not wait any longer. I crossed the room and threw myself into her arms.

I pressed my face into her shoulder, feeling her heartbeat against my cheek, familiar and strange all at once. My tears soaked straight through her apron, and every grievance I had carried through two years of loss came pouring out of me in silent, shaking sobs.

“What’s wrong? Who upset my Nerida? You were fine when you visited last week.” She patted my back gently, then raised her voice toward the stairs. “Kairo Quinn, get down here right now! Your sister is crying her eyes out! Are you still up there playing games? Three, two.”

“Coming, coming, Your Majesty!” a voice called from upstairs, bright and unbothered.

I hiccuped through my tears at the sound of it. A moment later I heard footsteps on the stairs, and I lifted my head to see him.

Kairo had grown into someone I barely recognized and instantly knew at the same time. He was tall now, broad shouldered, his skin sun kissed from working outside, his face sharper and more defined than the boy I remembered. When he smiled at me, one canine tooth showed just slightly, the same as always, and something about that small detail undid me all over again.

“Kairo.” I said his name like I was testing whether it was real.

I walked over and pressed my hand to his face before I could stop myself, feeling the warmth of his skin under my fingers. The boy who used to trail after me everywhere had grown into someone who looked like he could carry the weight of the world if he had to. It struck me then how much time I had actually lost. Two years of watching him grow up only in my memory, imagining him older without ever knowing if he had lived long enough to become this.

“Sis, what’s going on with you?” He glanced past me toward the yard, his easy smile fading into worry. “Wait, where are Rex and Nido? Don’t tell me Rex ran off.”

“No, it’s not that. Come inside first.” I pulled the door shut behind him before he could ask anything else.

I sat both of them down on the sofa and looked at my mother and my brother, my chest tight with everything I still needed to say. I had thought about waiting, easing into it slowly, but there was no version of this conversation that would not shake them, and every hour I waited was an hour we could have spent preparing instead.

“Mom. Kairo. I need to tell you something important.”

They exchanged a glance, clearly confused by how serious I looked, and then nodded at me in unison, waiting.

I took a breath.

“If I told you the world was going to end in three months, would you believe me?”