Page 45 of In Somnis

The door swings open again, and Sydney steps inside with a tray of dishes, catching my bad mood. She eyes the two of us, then glances around the room. “So.” She sets the plates down by the sink. “From the look on your face, I’m guessing you fucked up asking her to stay?”

I flinch. “She won’t be working here.”

“Pity,” Sydney says with a shrug. “The food seemed great.”

Yeah. Tell me something I don’t know.

“Don’t worry,” Jasper nods to himself. “I’ll meet her tomorrow and smooth things over.” I open my mouth to argue, but he steamrolls over it. “Nev, can we go? I need to ask Mabel for help with school stuff.”

“I need a few more minutes. I’ll have to wash the dishes before I head to the logging⁠—”

“I’ll finish up here,” Sydney cuts across me, already rolling up her sleeves. “You can head over.”

I stare at her for a second, waiting for the catch, but there isn’t one. She’s voluntarily helping.

Today is getting weirder and weirder.

“Uh… thank you,” I say, and when she actually smiles at me, my heart misfires in my chest.

Jasper tugs me toward the door by my elbow. “Yes, she smiled at you,” he mutters. “Don’t get all cringe about it.”

I yank my arm free. “I’m not cringe.”

“You so are when it comes to her. And I told you, she’s not the right pick. Your cards say⁠—”

“Jasp.” I scrub a hand over my face. The day already feels about three days long, and it’s not even mid-afternoon. “I am begging you, spare me with your woo-woo shit, okay? Just… walk.”

He huffs but obeys, and we leave the kitchen, cutting through the quiet hallway and out the back door into the garden.

Jasper steps ahead of me, no doubt fed up with my shitty attitude, crossing the patchy lawn and herb beds on our way toward the cottage at the far end of the property.

It used to be nothing more than an oversized garden shed, back when Mom, Jasper, and I were still crashing in a rusted trailer over at the logging yard, pretending it was temporary. When Mabel decided “temporary” had gone on long enough, she dragged us out of there and told us we could turn the cottage of her inn into something livable.

Now it’s home. It’s not big or pretty, but it’s sturdy, and sometimes it’s enough.

Jasper pushes the door open with a familiar creak, and the smell hits me immediately—incense, old wood, dried herbs, that faint sweetness of stale tea, and something smoky. I hate it, but I also, begrudgingly, think home when it hits my lungs, and that annoys me even more.

“Mom! We’re back!” Jasper calls out.

He disappears into the living room, but I detour to the kitchen instead, open the refrigerator to grab another bottle of lemonade. Maybe one right after another is excessive, but a soda-induced sugar rush before facing Mabel and my mother seems like a valid life choice. I take a long pull, let the cold sting the back of my throat, then duck under the low doorway into the living room.

And sure enough, there they are. Mom and Mabel sit together on the sagging couch, the television murmuring some daytime show I’m sure they’re not really watching. Jasper crouches on the floor in front of Mom and puts his tarot deck between his hands.

“Mom, look.” He carefully offers her the top card. “I practiced some more today, and I pulled The Star. It means hope, healing, like good things coming, right?”

Mom smiles, her blue eyes cloudier than they were before she got sick. “That’s nice, Nevan.”

Fuck.

Jasper’s shoulders droop a little. “I’m Jasper, Mom.”

“Jasper… I always loved that name. It sounds like someone who walks between worlds. You have a very special aura.”

I used to do that too. Show her my drawings. I stayed up late making them because I thought if they were good enough, she’d actually see me.

She’d smile, call me “my earth-born,” and drift right back to her crystals.

After a while, I stopped drawing things for her.