جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 460

Chapter 451SILVIAHe packed a small bag himself, methodical about it in a way that struck me as older than his years, folding a change of clothes with careful corners, tucking a toothbrush into a side pocket, the wolf going in last, cradled on top like something precious that needed protecting from the rest of the contents.Downstairs, Sophia met us at the door, crouching to Ollie's level with a warm smile. "Have fun with Grandma and Grandpa, sweetheart," she said, and reached to pull him into a hug.I watched him go stiff, just slightly, the same reflexive tension I'd noticed in him for years now around his mother's touch, though he let the hug happen, his arms coming up around her in a mechanical approximation of an embrace that lasted exactly as long as courtesy required and not a second longer."Bye, Mom," he said, stepping back the moment she released him.Xenois appeared then, wiping his hands on a towel, having clearly come from somewhere in the kitchen, and Ollie's whole post

Chapter 453SILVIAHe didn't answer immediately. I watched his shoulders go tense, his whole small body curling slightly over whatever he'd found, and when he finally sat back, there was something cupped carefully in his dirt-stained palms."What did you find?" I asked, leaning closer.He opened his hands slowly, and I saw it—small, faded, half-buried in clinging soil that he brushed away with careful, reverent fingers. A hair clip, or what had once been one, the kind of small, delicate thing a young girl might wear, its original color impossible to determine beneath years of dirt and weather, one edge slightly bent as though it had been stepped on at some point before finding its way into the earth.I frowned, turning it over in my mind, trying to place it. We'd had no young girls in this family in years—not since Xena, and she'd been gone so long now, long before this particular garden bed had even been planted. I couldn't imagine how something like this had come to be buried here,

Chapter 455OLLIEThere was Grandma. There was Mom. There was—Xena.The name arrived in my head from somewhere, some overheard conversation, some scrap of family history I'd absorbed without really meaning to. Dad's sister. I didn't remember much about her, only that she'd died a long time ago, before I was even born—before any of us were born, actually, years and years before, back when Dad was still young himself. There were a few pictures of her around the house sometimes, tucked into corners, and Grandma got quiet in a particular way whenever her name came up, the kind of quiet that meant you weren't supposed to ask more questions.But it couldn't have been her. She'd died before I was born. There was no way she could have been in the garden with me at three years old, laughing, helping me bury a hair clip like it was pirate treasure.I didn't have a nanny. I was almost sure of that, though the certainty wavered a little the longer I sat with it—surely I would remember something

Chapter 457OLLIEIt was me, in the rose bed. The same rose bed. I was kneeling in the dirt with a little red shovel, and I was laughing so hard my eyes were shut. There was dirt on my face and dirt in my hair and dirt all the way up my arms.And behind me, up on the porch, Grandma and Grandpa were sitting on the swing together. Grandpa had a cup in his hand. Grandma was pointing at me and laughing too.I looked at it for a long time.Then I looked at it again.My chest started to go tight, the way it did right before my heart did the funny thing the doctors always asked about."Grandpa," I called.The back door opened. Grandpa came in wiping his hands on his jeans. "What's up, champ?""Who took this picture?"He came over and bent down next to me, his knees cracking loudly. He squinted at the frame. "Oh, that one. That was a good summer. You dug up half the yard that year.""Who took it?""I did," he said, easy. "I take all of them. You know that.""You're in it."Grandpa stopped smi

Chapter 459SILVIAI waited until Ollie went upstairs to pack his bag. Then I went into the little study by the front door, closed it behind me, and picked up the old phone. I always used the old phone for the calls that mattered. I could hear people properly on it.My head still hurt. It had started in the hallway, the moment I bent down to look at that photograph, and it had not let go since. A small, sharp pain right between my eyes, like a thumb pressing in.Xenois answered on the third ring. He sounded tired. He always sounded tired these days. Peace, it turned out, came with a lot of paperwork."Mom. Is everything okay? Is Ollie okay?""He's fine," I said. "He's had a lovely time. He ate four pancakes. Your father burnt all of them.""So nothing new." I could hear him smiling. "What's wrong?"I looked out the window at the garden. The rose bed was still messy from yesterday, the dirt turned over where Ollie had dug."He found something in the garden," I said. "A little hair clip