“Isn’t this whole thing so weird? What we’re doing?” she asked.

“I don’t really care if it’s weird. I’m just glad it’s happening. And not because I want to break a curse either.”

She smiled.

I cleared my throat. “So how does the boyfriend thing even work for you?” I asked. “You know, with you moving so much. If you get into a relationship, is it just long distance or…?”

“Well, right now relationships aren’t working. That’s why we’re doing this, right?”

“I mean, yeah. But if you did like someone. You know, in theory.”

She shrugged. “It hasn’t happened yet. By the time I’m ready to move on to the next assignment, it’s usually just sort of petered out.”

“And if it didn’t peter out?”

“I don’t know. It’s never happened.”

She looked back into the room at Amber’s bags. “I should probably look for Stuffie,” she said. But she didn’t get up. She peered at the luggage like she dreaded opening it and I wondered if she might find something in there she didn’t want to see.

“Are you unpacked yet?” I asked, changing the subject.

“Yeah. All done the day we got here. It was just two bags.”

I raised my head to look at her. “Two? What about all the stuff you accumulate?”

“I don’t accumulate. I don’t get attached.”

“To what?”

She shrugged. “To anything. You know how you get a new phone and you save the box? I don’t do that.”

“You don’t save your phone box? What if you need it?”

She gave me an amused look. “Have you ever actually needed your phone box, Justin?”

“Well, no—”

“There you go. I bet you have a whole closet full of clothes you never wear anymore. A bin full of random wires and chargers that don’t go to anything—”

“They go to something.”

“You’ll never use it. Most of the stuff we hang on to we don’t actually need. My entire life packs into two large suitcases. And if it doesn’t, I leave whatever doesn’t fit.”

“That is almost terrifying,” I said. “No wonder you abandon plants.”

“I prefer the word ‘re-home.’”

“You don’t want to live somewhere? Like, find a forever home where you can plant things in the earth?”

She looked back at her mom’s luggage. “Maybe one day. But so far I haven’t found a home I’d want to stay at forever.”

“Maybe home isn’t a place. Maybe it’s a person.”

She blew a soft breath through her nose. “Maybe it is.”

She got up and went to the first bag and laid it on its side to unzip it.

“What exactly are you looking for?” I asked.

“A stuffed animal,” she said, rummaging around the clothes. When she didn’t find it in the first bag, she went to the second one. I knew exactly when she spotted it because she made a little happy gasp.

I watched her from behind, clutching something to her chest. “You got it?”

She nodded. “I never thought I was going to see him again.” Her voice was a little thick. She turned with a bright smile and showed me a droopy, gray, dirty unicorn with a floppy horn and a missing eye.

“Wow,” I said. “He looks… old.”

She looked down at him like he was a baby. “Yeah. Have you ever seen those YouTube channels where they restore dolls like this? I want to do that one day. Have his stuffing replaced and have him cleaned. Get his eye sewn back on.” She brushed a gentle thumb across his forehead.

I watched her looking at this doll lovingly and just smiled softly at her.

I knew that feeling. The feeling that you’re getting back a piece of your childhood. Like at Christmas when Mom would hand me a tin of her cookies and I’d be catapulted back to six years old eating them with Dad in front of the fireplace.

I deflated again, remembering what this Christmas was going to look like. And the Christmas after that, and the Christmas after that…

Amber’s voice floated up from the deck. “Emma? Justin? Lobsters are ready!”

We made eye contact. Like maybe neither of us wanted to go back to the real world. But we did.

The real world doesn’t like to wait.

CHAPTER 11 EMMA

When I got back to the cottage an hour later, Maddy was in the screened-in porch, reading. She wore shorts and flip-flops, and she was drinking a beer. She set down her book when I came in.

“Hey,” I said, flopping into a chair. “Neil dropped me off in the yacht. He wanted to take Mom for a sunset cruise.”

She rolled her eyes. “I wonder how long the honeymoon’s gonna last. I give it a week.”

I didn’t answer. Though a week sounded about right.

“So, how was it?” she asked. She seemed de-escalated now that a few hours had passed.

“Fine. She seems okay.”

“Did you get Stuffie?”

I got my purse from the floor and pulled him out to show her.