She shivered, lifted her shoulders even as he felt her skin warm. “Xander,” she murmured, and lifted a hand to his head. “I’m glad you came with us.” She drew the blanket tighter around them and snuck her hand beneath the edge to lift her cup to her mouth. “This is one of my favorite times of year.” She took a deep breath, let it out as he tightened his arms around her waist. “Every moment is ripe with possibility.”
Xander rested his chin on the top of her head, listening for the waves crashing beneath the continued good cheer of the town.
“Thank you for having shared it with me.” He hadn’t meant it, but the words felt a bit like a goodbye.
She turned her head, looked over her shoulder and found him watching her. There was such affection in her eyes, he felt the walls he’d built up around his heart crumble. She didn’t say another word, simply curled into him more securely. But he knew she was thinking the same thing he was.
He couldn’t stay.
No matter how much he might want to.
* * *
“CALLIOPE?”
“Yes, poppet.” Calliope glanced over as Stella came inside from the garden. She was muddied from head to toe, her hair a tangle of curls, but her cheeks were pink from the crisp December air and the promise of the holiday market a few hours away. “You and the girls finished practicing your sandcastles?”
“Yes. Calliope, what’s happening with Mama?” She walked over to where Calliope was wrapping Abby and Jason’s wedding gift, a handmade dream catcher threaded with dried lavender and thyme.
Calliope needed the boost, the distraction, from the growing unease that a new bank of storm clouds were on the horizon, none of which had to do with Alethea or anyone else’s heartbreak other than her own. Her time with Xander, the happiest days of her life, was coming to an end.
She’d felt it the other night at the bonfire. Could feel it as easily now as she felt the sunshine on her face or the wind against her skin. “What do you mean about Mama, Stella?”
“I saw the papers by the computer. Is this because of me? Did I make Mama sicker?”
“What?” Calliope had never imagined Stella could think such a thing. “Oh, my beautiful girl, of course not. Come here.”
She turned on the bench and held out her arms. Stella came over and sat on her lap, not fitting as well as she used to.
“Goodness, you’re getting so big.” She tucked Stella into her arms and stroked her hair. “I want you to listen to me, Stella, because you need to believe this. I will never, ever lie to you. Ever. What’s happening with Mama has nothing to do with you. Her illness has gotten to the point where we can’t manage it anymore. Hildy and Mama’s doctor both agreed she needs to be someplace special. But Stella...” Calliope swallowed hard. “We won’t have her much longer. Her mind is shutting down. She’s not really with us anymore. She hasn’t been for a very long time.” She pressed a kiss to Stella’s temple. “And it has absolutely nothing to do with you.”
“It’s not because she hates me?”
“She doesn’t hate you, poppet.” Calliope squeezed her eyes shut and struggled for the right words. “I don’t think she even knows who you are, what you are to her. Just as she doesn’t recognize me anymore. Whoever Mama was, she’s gone, Stella. And soon, her body will be, too.”
“Are we going to go and say goodbye?”
“Would you like to?” Calliope hadn’t been sure, not until now, if she should even give Stella the option.
“I think maybe I would. I know she won’t know who I am, but I don’t want to regret not saying goodbye. Isn’t that what you’re always saying? Don’t live with regrets?”
“It is what I say.” And yet Calliope had the feeling she’d be living with a lot of them. “If you want to go, I will find us a car and get us there. But it’s okay if you change your mind.”
“I bet Xander would take us,” Stella said. “He likes us.”
“He does, doesn’t he?” As evidenced by the unbridled attention he’d paid Calliope and Stella since his triumph over his stifled muse. He’d come to the farm yesterday to help with the market, fitting so perfectly into her world it had felt someone showing her what she could never have. “But remember what I told you, Stella. He won’t stay. He can’t. He has a life somewhere else.”