We’ll go back tomorrow.
Juniper sat by herself for a few seconds in the dark. Her phone lit up when she moved it, her mother’s last text still framed in gray. She thumbed the screen open and typed quickly:
I’m coming over.
Hitting send, she stuffed her phone in her pocket and didn’t wait for a reply.
* * *
The porch lights were on when Juniper pulled down the long drive of her parents’ acreage, illuminating the tall, two-story farmhouse and a patch of deep snow in front of it. Her heart bucked behind her ribs at the familiar sight. When she was a teenager, Law and Reb had always left the porch lights on to welcome her and Jonathan home, even if they had gone to bed hours before. The light poured from the generous front windows like a beacon, the glimmer of a lighthouse signaling shelter. A haven.
But tonight was different. It was close to eleven o’clock, but Reb wasn’t sound asleep. Instead she stood framed in the cold flicker of the now rarely used lights. At least one of the bulbs needed to be replaced, and it shuddered out a warning in some incomprehensible Morse code.
“What’s wrong?” Reb shouted, holding open the door with one hand and her cardigan closed with the other.
Juniper had barely stepped from her car and was too far away to attempt a response. So she hurried through the shin-deep snow, trying to keep her feet light as she broke through the thin crust of ice. It was no use. The bottoms of her jeans were caked in white and stiff from cold by the time she reached the place where her mother stood waiting.
“Law hasn’t had time to shovel the walk,” her mom explained, ushering Juniper inside and fussing over her with an old towel that she grabbed from a hook near the door. “You should’ve gone through the garage. What are you doing here anyway?” she demanded, smacking the snow off Juniper’s jeans with one end of the towel. Every slap was more aggressive than the last, and Juniper’s frozen calves began to sting with each new blow. She snagged the towel the next time it came near and gently eased it from her mother’s hands.
“It’s okay,” Juniper said. “I’ll do it.”
“Is Willa okay? Where is she?”
Juniper was surprised by what sounded like raw terror in her mother’s tone. Clearly, almost losing her son had been deeply traumatizing—even more so than Juniper had realized. She tossed the towel back on the hook and pulled Reb into her arms. The older woman was slight, more fragile than Juniper remembered, as if long hours in the ICU had somehow diminished her. She was also trembling—though Juniper couldn’t tell if it was because she was scared or cold. Maybe both.
“Willa’s fine. Everyone is fine,” Juniper said, turning her mother toward the kitchen. She kept one arm firmly around Reb until she could ease her onto a bucket seat stool at the counter. “I’m going to make you a cup of tea. When’s the last time you ate?”
“What?” she sounded confused. “I don’t know. Supper? Did we have supper?”
“That’s what I thought.” Juniper filled the kettle with tap water and set it on the stove to boil. Then she pulled open the refrigerator to rummage around for something to feed her mother. There wasn’t much. Half a gallon of milk that had just passed its expiration date, a couple of wrinkly apples, and some leftovers that were questionable at best. But there were a few eggs nestled in the divots of a cardboard container. Jackpot.
“What are you doing?” Reb asked, plaintive and sounding not at all like her usual unflappable self.
“Scrambling you some eggs.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Reb huffed, but she didn’t say anything more, and in just a couple minutes the nonstick pan was sizzling with butter. The scent filled the kitchen and made Juniper’s stomach rumble. She realized that it had been hours since she had eaten, too.
“Where’s Law?” Juniper asked, stepping away from the stove to fill a mug with hot water. She set it in front of her mother with the tin of teabags and a sprig of mint she pinched from the plant on the windowsill.
“Chores.” Reb waved her hand over her shoulder in the direction of the barn. “I don’t know exactly. He said he needed to take care of some things at home, so we left everything at the Rainbow House and hopped in the car. I could have stayed back, you know. I should have.”
“Well, I’m glad you’re here,” Juniper said carefully, grateful that Law wouldn’t interrupt them for a while at least. “There’s something I want to talk to you about.”