Elowen's POV
I smiled, small and easy, and shook my head.
"As long as everyone's doing fine," I said. "That's all that matters."
Stellan looked at me for a long moment, not quite with surprise but with something quieter, like a question he'd been carrying had just been answered.
"You've grown up," he said, and it wasn't flattery.
I didn't know what to say to that so I said nothing, and the silence between us was the comfortable kind, the kind that didn't need filling.
He exhaled and glanced back at the car once before turning to face me properly.
"All right. Take care of yourself out here. If you run into any kind of trouble, you call, not just the practical kind." His voice was level, the way it always was, the doctor in him never fully off the clock even standing on a pavement at
