His steadiness steadied me. I carried on with the details of the mill house: contracts, a request for a gardener, deciding whether the property’s old apple trees needed grafting. In the paper bureaucracy the house became real; as the deposit cleared and the surveyors walked the field, I could stand on the rough-cobbled porch in my mind and see Angel gathering herbs, Conley leaning into the banister, my hand threaded between theirs. The dream hardened into something both fiscal and soulful.
When the first weekend at the mill arrived—mere months after we’d first sketched it—it was both awkward and perfect. The drive out of the city shed noise like a cloak, and for the first time in ages I felt my shoulders unclench in a way that had nothing to do with exhaustion and everything to do with be
