The Derbyshire valley had a way of reclaiming what was hers. Three years had turned the raw scars of the renovation into a seamless marriage of mossy stone and shimmering glass. The mill didn't look like a building that had been "fixed"; it looked like a structure that had finally reached its intended form, settled deep into the riverbank like an ancient tree that had survived a lightning strike.
Julian stood on the stone bridge he had reinforced the previous summer. He wasn't looking at the structural integrity of the arches this time. He was watching a three-year-old boy in miniature Wellington boots attempt to "engineer" a dam out of smooth river pebbles.
"River, the current is too strong there," Julian called out, his voice echoing with a warmth that had become his baseline. "Move
