Page 66 of Wherever You Are

Fire roars in the warm, spacious living room. The lake house feels as big as a lodge with vaulted ceilings and balconies that overlook robust leather furniture, wooly rugs, and the stone fireplace.

In the corner, wrapped gifts sit beneath a real fir tree, recently chopped. No ornaments hang on the branches because no one bothered to redecorate. The first fully glammed-out Christmas tree had a hidden nest of spiders.

It was a whole holiday fiasco.

I flip a page and hear the distant cries of a baby.

Must be Luna Hale or Eliot Cobalt, both newborns. The media is rampant with “baby fever” articles about Rose and Lily. Mostly, I think they’re trying to determine how many children Rose and Connor will have.

The Cobalts want anempire, and right now Rose is pregnant with baby number five. But truthfully, I don’t know what constitutes an empire. Five? Six? Fifteen?

I mean…I can’t imagine fifteen Cobalt babies. That’s…a lot.

Cries grow louder.

From the other side of the window nook, Garrison lifts his head from his laptop. He glances up at the tier of balconies. Hearing the baby wails too. When he drops his head, his eyes meet mine, and his feet rub against my feet. His black wool socks caressing my mustard-yellow ones.

My lips slowly rise. Not much can beat these quiet moments with Garrison Abbey. Sharing company and doing normal everyday things together.

“Do you ever think about babies?” Garrison asks suddenly and abruptly.

“Uh…babies…like the small kind?” Oh God…

What other kind are there, Willow?

Garrison licks his lips, a smile forming. “I mean, we can talk about thebigbabies in the house, but I think Lo has already taken a lot of our time this trip.”

I match his smile. “Sorry…I think all functions shutdown at the wordbabieswhen referring to my life. I’m rebooted now.”

“And?” he asks.

“And…” I take a deep breath and nudge my glasses. “I never thought much about them before. I’ve just been focused on getting into college, paying for college, and now trying to survive college.” I close my book and hug the hard binding to my chest, thinking. “But I want the traditional route, I guess. Marriage. Then maybe a baby.”

“Ababy.” Garrison emphasizes the singularity of the sentence.

I shrug. “One seems like a good start…or end…or I don’t know. What do you think about babies?” Our eyes search each other deeply and eagerly, but my body roasts from head to toe. We rarely discussafterI graduate and what lies beyond our early twenties. I still have five semesters left in college, and those upcoming years seem like a millennium.

“Marriage first,” he says into a nod. “Then a baby, maybe.”

“Ababy,” I repeat his emphasis.

“One,” he says, definitive. “Siblings are…” His Adam’s apple bobs, swallowing hard.

His brothers.

He’s cut all three of them completely out of his life. He never talks to them. Rarely talksaboutthem. They’re just gone, erased from his world. For good reason. But so much pain remains. Scars on bone buried under muscle and skin.

He lost his brothers.

I found mine.

But I did lose someone, too. “My sister,” I say softly, remembering. “I tried calling her this morning.” Back in Maine, my family still has a landline home phone.

Garrison frowns. “I thought you were done trying.”

I squeeze the textbook harder to my chest. “I guess, now I am,” I mutter. “She picked up and told me not to call. She said the holidays are for family and I’m not a part of hers. That if I wanted to talk to our mom, I should call her directly.”

But I wanted to talk to Ellie.