Page 52 of Knot in the Wedding Cards

I sadly can’t roll my eyes at my mother.

I wipe my feet.

She goes back to the dough. Roll, quarter-turn, roll, the rhythm that could calibrate clocks. I come in and stand across the counter from her the way forty years of fishermen have stood waiting for their coffee, and she lets the silence season properly before she uses it.

Because my mother has never once in her life rushed a crust or a reckoning.

"So." Roll. Quarter-turn. "Which is it, Cadence?" The full name. Loaded and aimed. "Did you come home for her, or for the work?"

There are performances for this.

Ma, I'm wounded. Ma, it's a job.

I stood in a hallway five days ago and retired the performances, so I give her what I gave Nolan, the unvarnished grain.

"Both. The work brought me. She's why I got on the plane instead of finding a reason not to. Both, Ma. I'm not going to insult your pie crust by pretending otherwise."

"Hm." She flips the dough, drapes it over the tin, trims the edge with four moves of the thumb I have never successfully copied. "Then hear me before you unpack.”

I have to keep myself prepared for the potential war she’s yearning to ensue on her child.

“Amber Whitlock is not a place, baby. You can't come home to her like she's a harbor that held your mooring. What you're missing, what's got that look on you that you think your good jacket hides, isn't only the girl. It's the boy you were when she looked at you. Right at that man of the past, who left in a car five years ago. He's not her problem to give back." She sets the pin down. Looks at me, all the way, the way only mothers and customs officers look. "You want the woman you desperately loved back? You’re gonna have to build the man you wish tobecome for her. Here. In daylight, where all those who judged her back then now have to judge you and your lot of cowardly Alphas to see if you’re worthy of their gossip hype.”I hate how her words are nothing but true.“Whether or not she ever looks at you again is all on her. Can you do that?"

That’s a heavy question to burden me with so early in the day.

"I don't know," I say, honestly. "I'm going to try it sober, with applause, which is new."

She arches an eyebrow my way, but decides it’s a worthy response.

"Good answer."

Then, at last, she comes around the counter, flour to the elbows, and hugs me.

My mother is five foot three and hugs like a dock cleat.

I stand in the middle of the Tide Table with my chin on her head and my eyes shut, breathing coffee, pastry, and that longing aroma of home. If my scent slips its leash for a second, blood orange and sandalwood and salted caramel going warm all through my family's café.

There's nobody here yet, but us, and she'd never tell.

I’d dare to admit it, even to myself, it’s good to be home.

The bell over the door goes at half past, and my brother walks in hauling a monitor speaker, sees me, and sets it down with the specific care of a man giving his hands something to do.

"So it's real," Theo says. "The suitcase sighting. Dot Pearson had you at the streetlamp by nine-fifteen. Ruth had it by nine-thirty. Mom knew before you cleared the harbor road, so don't look surprised. This town has better distribution than the wire services."

He crosses over and hugs me, quick and hard, one thump between the shoulder blades. Then he steps back before it gets to be a thing, and there it is between us, the old warmth with theold splinter still in it, the thing we talk around every Christmas call.

Not today.

Today's the day the splinters come out, apparently, so while Mom slides the pie in and starts the second crust.

I pour us both coffee, put my brother on a counter stool, and finally say the thing I've owed him longer than I've owed almost anyone.

"Theo. The wedding. There's a piece you half know, and you should have the whole of it." His face goes careful. Mom's pin keeps rolling, slower. "The morning of, documents came to Beckett. From Alistair Whitlock, through a lawyer, timed to the hour, and they were clearly creating the perfect trap. I’m not going to get in the logistics, cause obviously…it’s too long ago to bring up matters that can’t be changed, but we panicked because it was a load of threats. One of them directed to you.” It’s the first time I’m actually admitting it to someone outside of our pack.

It feels far too late to give me a sense of relief…

“Your conservatory acceptance. The scholarship money. Alistair had, or claimed to have, ways of making that evaporate, along with August's family accounts and the Lantern House's loans. Felt like a damn triple threat amongst a list of other disasters that would be forced and targeting the lot of Honeybell Harbor and ruin so many lives if three unsuitable boys put a ring on his daughter's designation.”