Herald of chaos.

  Ethan had whispered it, barely audible, yet the words burned themselves into me like a branding iron. I stood in front of my bathroom mirror and stared at the reflection that suddenly felt unfamiliar. Brownish hair with faded summer highlights, brown eyes, an ordinary oval face. Mom's upturned nose. Her freckles.

  I wasn't ugly by any means. But I couldn't say I was some great, mesmerizing beauty either. With a sprinkle of foundation, mascara, and lip gloss, I could pass for pretty. Maybe.

  But like this… I was just me. Perfectly ordinary.

  And yet, somehow, I'd almost caused a riot today.

  I sniffed my shirt, then my armpit. Floral deodorant. Nothing that should have set boys vibrating like struck wires or shoved Ethan to the edge of whatever storm lived inside him.

  Dad had known the moment I sat in the car. His head snapped toward me, nostrils flaring in that barely perceptible, subtle manner. His eyes slid to the scrape on my hand.

  "What happened?" It was less a question and more a statement.

  I lied. Fumbled out a half-truth about cutting my hand on a locker, yet leaving out everything else. By the narrowing of his eyes, I could tell he didn't fully believe me. And the truth lodged in my throat like a piece of dry bread, because if he insisted on keeping me blind, then he didn't get to demand trust back.

  A gentle knock pulled me out of my spiral.

  "Kelsey?" Hailey's small voice drifted through the bathroom door. "You said we were gonna make Mommy's lemon cookies today."

  That one line nearly undid me.

  "Yes," I managed. "Give me a minute."

  I let out a breath I didn't know I'd been holding. I needed this. Something normal. Something that wasn't Cold Creek shadows or sharp lockers or boys losing their minds over a drop of my blood. Mom's lemon cookies were sunlight and warmth. Weekends and laughter. Dad pretending he didn't like sweets but stealing six. Hailey with flour smeared across her cheeks. The scent of lemon zest softening in sugar. Some other, happy time that was now fading into the past.

  I missed all of it.

  I missed Mom.

  Maybe today I could borrow a piece of her and pretend, for just a moment, that the world wasn't unraveling.

  ****

  The kitchen glowed with soft heat from the preheating oven. Hailey dragged a stool across the tiles and climbed up beside me with the fierce purpose of someone preparing for a mission.

  "I want to grate the lemon," she declared.

  "Absolutely not," I said, nudging her hand away from the microplane. "You're still too small, you could cut a finger. You can zest when you're older."

  She groaned but accepted the mixing bowl instead, dumping flour into it with enough force to trigger a small dust explosion.

  Behind us, the floor creaked. Dad's slow, heavy footsteps approached the doorway. For a moment he paused there, as though the sight of us caught him off guard. There were traces of sawdust in his hair, sleeves unrolled unevenly. He looked tired, yet something eased in his face when he saw us in the kitchen.

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  "What are you making?" he asked, though the lemon scent had already softened the air with its answer.

  "Mom's lemon cookies," I said.

  He went completely still, like a dying wind. His gaze drifted to the zest, the butter, the mixing bowl, then to me. A shadow of something deep and wounded crossed his face.

  "She made those on Sunday afternoons," he murmured. "Before movie night."

  I smiled. "We remember."

  He nodded, as if that mattered more than he could say.

  "Want to help?" I offered.

  For a moment he hesitated. Then he stepped forward, wiping his palms on his jeans as though he were preparing for something important and delicate, then rolled his sleeves back up to his elbows. When he reached for the wooden spoon, his fingers hovered above it for a moment, with a barely noticeable tremble, before curling around the handle.

  He stirred slowly, like each circular movement peeled away another layer of memory, and he was trying to savor each one. Hailey slipped her hand beside his to "help," and he adjusted his grip so she could push the spoon easily.

  His eyes flicked to the scrape on my hand. For a second he froze like his mind stuttered, then he pulled his gaze away too fast, forcing himself to focus on the mixing bowl instead. It was the kind of silence that said he had seen everything and chosen not to touch any part of it.

  "She always added extra zest," he said instead.

  "Yeah," I murmured. "Said it woke the dough up."

  His breath faltered, a tiny, involuntary catch. His shoulders curled inward, like the thought pressed too hard on a wound that had never healed.

  "Daddy, can I roll them?" Hailey asked, oblivious to the fissure running through the moment.

  Dad blinked hard, straightening. "Sure, pup. Let me get the tray."

  He moved easier now, not exactly light, but less burdened. As we shaped the cookies, the scent of lemon grew warmer, richer, filling the kitchen with something like hope, or the memory of it, at least.

  A faint creak broke the quiet.

  Jack appeared in the doorway, half shrouded in the dim hall, arms crossed, watching Dad with an expression I couldn't read. Like he was watching something he didn't quite understand, but wanted to.

  A moment later, Elise appeared behind him, her smile already polished, warm in all the wrong places. Her gaze moved from Hailey to me to Dad, lingering just slightly too long. She didn't enter. She watched.

  Like this moment mattered.

  Like it meant something she also needed to add up to her list of "normal."

  Jack's gaze swept over me and paused for a fraction of a second on the dried scrape. He didn't say anything, but Elise's eyes followed a beat later and the two of them exchanged one quick look that burned hotter than any question. Neither of them asked about it. The quiet felt heavier than if they had. Like their silence carried a meaning I wasn’t meant to understand yet.

  Dad felt their eyes, but didn't turn. He kept stirring, breath steady but shallow, jaw tight in a way that made it clear he was holding himself together by sheer will.

  In that moment, I realized something. I'd been so preoccupied with my own grief that I'd never fully let myself think about just how deep the wound went for him.

  At first, I'd been furious when he left us with Grandpa Gerard after the funeral and bailed, only to show up a week later, all messed up, telling us to pack our bags with zero explanation other than that we'd be moving to his hometown. Then it was this school, this town, this everything. I knew he grieved, but I only truly saw a glimpse of how much that day in the barn. And now.

  I don't know why, but my mind drifted to a pair of tiger parrots we'd had when I was eight. The female got sick and died, and the male stopped eating and drinking. I remembered how worried I'd been, begging Dad to do something, but he'd just shrugged and said there was nothing we could do. That it was natural. Some animals didn't heal when their mate died.

  I added the last scoop of flour and said softly, "It's almost like she's here, with us."

  Dad's eyes flicked to mine. Agony crossed them first, then something gentler, threaded with gratitude.

  "Almost," he said softly. "It is."

  For a moment, the kitchen felt almost like it used to back home, warm and held together by love.

  The cookies went into the oven, and the scent deepened, golden and sweet. Jack kept watching with that unreadable expression. Elise's too bright smile faltered, softening into something warmer, more genuine.

  Hailey leaned into me.

  "Smells like back home," she whispered.

  "Yes," I smiled. "It does."

  Dad looked at us, first Hailey, then me, for a brief, flickering second, and in that moment he suddenly looked like a tiny spark of life had reignited in his soul.

  And somehow, that steadied something inside me. Gave me footing I didn't know I lacked.

  And I felt, deep in my bones, that whatever crazy things lurked in this dreadful place, we still had this. Thin and fragile as spider's silk, but ours.