Page 27

It had been just over a week since the sanctuary, like the trees that had withstood the fire, had found its rhythm again.

The sanctuary buildings, still partially charred in places not yet replaced, stood like quiet sentinels to survival.

There was beauty in their battered edges, in the signs of life having been fought for.

Burned brush had been cleared, and new plants, low brush, hardy blooms, were being coaxed into the soil by volunteers with trowels and calloused hands.

Smoke from the hearths rose into the still morning air, curling slowly into the sky like prayers.

Inside this quiet rebirth, Natalie moved silently, not wanting to engage.

She wore dark jeans, and a charcoal-colored fleece jacket zipped high to her chin, her hair always tied back tightly, as though keeping it bound could also tether the rest of her fraying self.

Her features had become pale, cheekbones more defined, dark circles gathering like ink beneath her eyes.

Her lips were rarely painted with the half-smile that once came so easily.

She walked briskly between the outbuildings, clipboard in hand, her boots firm against the dirt paths. Every so often, someone would call her name, and she would turn with a look so detached it felt like a stranger answering.

Mason had stopped trying. Not because he didn’t want to try, she knew that, but because each time he reached for her, she pulled farther away.

His face, once open and gentle, had become more guarded.

The faint laugh lines at his eyes now deepened more with weariness than joy.

His usual earth-toned shirts and jackets hung slightly looser on his frame, as though he’d lost a few pounds without noticing.

But his smile for Davey remained.

Davey had shed something too, some old layer of teenage bitterness that had long kept people at arm’s length.

He now wore a sturdy denim work jacket, his sleeves often rolled up to the elbows, revealing forearms speckled with dirt and wolf hair.

He moved with purpose, his gait confident, and he met people’s eyes when he spoke.

The boy had become a man almost overnight.

Olivia watched from her porch most mornings, wrapped in a wool shawl and sipping black coffee from a chipped mug.

Her once-severe limp had softened into a steadier walk, thanks to physical therapy and stubbornness in equal measure.

Her face, lined with sun and sorrow, still carried the kind of warmth that settled people even when her eyes gave her away.

She had noticed how Natalie flinched slightly when someone spoke to her too suddenly. How she lingered too long alone in the barn after chores. How her laughter, when it came at all, sounded hollow.

The tension between them remained thick as mist. One gray afternoon, as clouds gathered low and heavy over the ridges, Olivia found Natalie in the tack room, her back turned, rummaging through a storage bin.

The air was laced with the scent of leather and dust. A storm was coming, one of those early winter squalls that blew in off the mountains without warning, sheeting the valley in sudden sleet and wind.

Outside, the trees bowed in the rising gusts.

“We need to talk,” Olivia said, her voice edged but calm.

Natalie didn’t look up. “Now’s not a good time.”

“You’ve been saying that for a week.”

Natalie straightened slowly, her hair frizzy from the weather, cheeks pale. Her eyes, once so expressive had dulled to slate.

“I haven’t had anything worth saying.”

Olivia crossed the room slowly, her cane tapping against the concrete floor.

“This isn’t about Mason anymore, is it?”

Natalie let out a quiet, bitter laugh, then dropped a length of rope to the ground with a thud. “No, Liv. It’s about everything.”

The silence between them stretched thin. Outside, a shutter clattered in the wind, the sky dimming further as sleet began to whisper against the windows like fingernails tapping glass.

Olivia studied her. “You look like you haven’t slept.”

“I haven’t,” Natalie replied. “Not really. Not since the fire and I lost hope.”

“Hope for what?”

Natalie leaned back against the wooden shelf, crossing her arms tightly. Her voice cracked, barely audible above the wind. “That someone would choose me. Wholly. Without the ghosts.”

She looked up finally, meeting Olivia’s gaze. “Do you know what betrayal does, Liv? It doesn’t just cut. It stains. It gets in your blood.”

Olivia’s eyes were glassy. “I never meant…”

“But you did,” Natalie interrupted. “You meant to protect Davey. You meant to protect Mason. You just didn’t think about me.

I’m your oldest friend. The one who stayed in touch.

Believed in what you were doing even if from a distance, and what joined us was friendship, a real bond that miles and years couldn’t separate, and it feels like you betrayed all that. ”

The wind howled louder now, shaking the windowpanes in their frames, pushing cold air through every crack in the tack room walls, but Natalie didn’t feel it. Her hands were shaking. Her heart thudded somewhere beneath her ribs, too heavy, too loud. In the distance, thunder rumbled over the ridge.

She turned without another word to Olivia.

Her boots scuffed against the concrete as she walked out of the room, the door clicking softly closed behind her.

She didn’t go back to her cabin. Instead, she veered off toward the side building, the one that housed the staff restrooms and supply lockers.

It was empty this time of afternoon, and she was grateful for the solitude.

Her fingers trembled as she unlocked the door and stepped inside.

The fluorescent light flickered overhead, casting a sterile glow over the tiled walls and cracked mirror.

She moved automatically, her body knowing what to do even as her mind screamed to freeze.

She locked the door behind her. Reached into the deep pocket of her fleece jacket.

Her fingers brushed something small, rectangular, wrapped in crinkling foil.

The pregnancy test. She’d bought it in town two days ago and had carried it with her since. Like a stone in her pocket. Like a secret too big for her to leave anywhere else. She stared at it in her palm for a moment, her breath fogging in the cold air. Then she opened it.

Her hands moved numbly. The test was simple, one line for not pregnant, two for positive. She read the instructions three times anyway, as if repetition would slow the beat of her heart.

Then she did what she had to do. The silence in the bathroom was absolute. She placed the test on the edge of the sink and leaned against the counter, gripping it tightly. Her knuckles went white.

Outside, the storm had begun in earnest. Wind lashed at the trees.

The tin roof rattled above her head. Somewhere far off, a door slammed, and a dog barked nervously.

She didn’t look at the test right away. Instead, Natalie sat on the closed lid of the toilet, her elbows resting on her knees, hands cradling her face.

The test sat on the edge of the sink, cruelly silent.

One minute had passed, maybe less, but it felt like time was dragging its feet just to punish her.

Her mouth was dry. Her chest tight. The storm outside pelted the small frosted-glass window, wind and rain lashing in urgent rhythms, as if the sky itself was unsettled by what was happening inside.

She forced herself to breathe. In, out. Don’t panic.

But how could she not? Her heart thumped too loudly, too fast, as though it were trying to keep up with the thoughts ricocheting in her head.

What if it’s negative? Relief. No. Not relief.

Something like disappointment, buried deep beneath the fear.

And what if it’s positive? The word swelled inside her, pregnant, a word she hadn’t dared truly feel since the last time. And even then, it had been a ghost of a thing, a hope she’d barely let take shape before it had slipped away, dismissed as a moment of foolishness.

But now? She wasn’t sure which answer would break her more.

Pregnant.

Not pregnant.

Two sides of a coin she didn’t know how to hold anymore. Her hands went to her stomach reflexively, pressing gently against the soft flatness beneath her sweater. She tried to picture it, something small and forming inside her. The beginning of a heartbeat. A seedling of life.

The image came with a stab of pain. This was supposed to be a joyful thing.

The moment that changes everything in a beautiful way.

The movie scene where the woman smiles through tears, touches her belly, runs to tell the man she loves.

But this wasn’t a movie. And she couldn’t run to Mason. She didn’t even know if she wanted to.

Her eyes burned, but she refused to cry. Not yet. She looked up at the ceiling and closed her eyes, trying to find silence in the storm of her mind. And that’s when the memories came, uninvited, sharp-edged.

Giles.

That damn apartment. The marble countertops.

The way he used to brush her off with a distracted kiss and always a late-night phone call he never explained.

She remembered being late once, just over a week.

She’d stood in the bathroom with shaking hands and a test clutched like a lifeline.

She’d wanted it so badly to be positive, to mean something.

She remembered staring at that single line and feeling her chest cave in, not because she wanted a baby at that moment, but because she’d wanted something that would tie them back together.

Now here she was again.

Only this time, there was no illusion of repair.

No fantasy that something broken could be mended by a child.

She didn’t want a fix. She didn’t want salvation.

She just wanted truth. A future. Something that made sense.

A gust of wind rattled the door, and she jumped, her eyes flying to the test still face down on the sink.

The minutes had passed now. Surely enough time.

She gripped her knees, her palms damp. Still, she couldn’t look.

Not yet. Because once she did, there would be no going back.

The world would split into before and after.

She let out a trembling breath, lifted her head, and whispered to the empty bathroom, “Please be something I can handle.”

Another breath. Then she stood slowly, her legs stiff from tension, and crossed the small room to the sink.

Her fingers reached out. She turned the test over.

She stared at the test. Two lines. Bright.

Unmistakable. Natalie pressed both hands flat to the counter to keep from falling.

Her legs felt watery. Her lungs couldn’t find air.

She was pregnant. Pregnant.

She swallowed hard, her reflection in the mirror pale and stunned. She didn’t cry. She didn’t speak. She just stood there, watching her own face as it folded in on itself, as something ancient and electric passed through her chest like a bolt of lightning.

Her first thought, before anything else, was Mason.

His face. His hands. His face when she’d ran away from him.

Her heart surged and cracked at the same time.

This wasn’t how she’d imagined finding out.

Not in a bathroom with bad lighting and cold fingers.

Not in the aftermath of silence and fractured trust.

She thought of the first time she had let herself truly imagine a life with him, on the porch, by the fire, when the stars had shimmered overhead, and he’d looked at her like she was something holy.

That version of Mason, the one before secrets, before truths, he would have held her hand right now. But this version? She didn’t know.

Natalie slid slowly down the wall and sat on the cold tile floor. Her hands covered her stomach. Her body felt foreign. At once miraculous and terrifying. She didn’t know if she should be happy. She didn’t know if she had it in her to hope again. Not now. Not like this.

A memory surfaced then, unbidden. A different bathroom. A different house.

Years ago, Boston. Their bathroom with the rainfall shower and cold marble floors.

She had been late. Only by a few days, but her heart had leapt.

She remembered how she'd sat on the edge of their tub, gripping a test just like this one, and hoping. Hoping with everything in her that it would be two lines. That maybe a baby could bring her and Giles back together. That maybe she wouldn’t have to carry the feeling of being invisible in her own marriage.

But that test had come back negative. And when she told Giles, hoping for some expression of disappointment, he had only nodded and gone back to scrolling through his phone. She hadn’t realized until that moment how desperately alone she had already felt.

And now here she was again. Alone. Pregnant. Only this time, the father was a man she truly loved, and who had almost broken her heart. Tears sprang to her eyes, hot and blinding.

Would Mason want the child? Would he see it as a miracle or a complication? Would Davey feel abandoned all over again?

And Olivia. how could she possibly lean on Olivia after everything they'd said?

After the distance that had stretched between them like fault lines.

Natalie let her forehead drop to her knees.

The storm raged outside, thunder grumbling over the hills, wind shrieking through the eaves.

And inside the quiet, bleach-clean bathroom, Natalie sobbed.

Not from regret. Not from joy. But from fear. From hope. From knowing she stood again on the edge of something life changing. And she had no idea if she would fall, or fly.