In the Weeds (Lovelight #2)(18)

“I’ll help you fix it this week, if you want,” Nova tells me, urging me forward and gently guiding me towards the house. She probably knows I’m about three seconds away from getting the toolbox out of my truck and reconstructing the whole thing. Guilt pricks at me. It’s been too long since I’ve asked my parents if they need anything.

“Stop,” Harper admonishes as soon as we step onto the porch. She smacks me once with her spoon. Of all my sisters, she’s the one that looks most like me. Dark blonde hair, blue-green eyes, an almost permanent frown. She’s two years younger but she might as well be my twin. “You’re beating yourself up before you even enter the house. That must be a new record.”

“No. Remember Christmas Eve two years ago? He forgot the stick of butter mom asked him to bring and he almost took out the mailbox heading to the grocery store. He didn’t even make it out of the driver’s seat before he started beating himself up.”

“Or when he forgot about Nessa’s dance recital. I thought he was going to sink through the floor.” Harper’s lips curl up at the edges and her gaze cuts to me. “You didn’t even miss it. You just got the date wrong. You were feeling guilty about potentially missing something.”

They dissolve into a fit of giggles and I push through the both of them into the house. It doesn’t bode well for me that the teasing has already started. I can usually count on Nova to be on my side but not tonight, apparently.

Garlic and rosemary drift down the hallway from the kitchen as I toe off my boots. Fresh baked bread and a hint of honey. I can hear the low murmur of my mom and Nessa chatting, my dad wheeling backward in his chair to poke his head around the corner as Nova and Harper follow me in.

“You adopting a duck?”

I roll my eyes and shrug out of my jacket. I contemplate returning to my truck and asking my mom to bring dinner out to me. She probably would. Nova loops her hand around my wrist before I can turn for the door and tugs me down the hallway into the kitchen, directing me to the island in the center. Her grip is scary strong for someone so small. She manhandles me until my arm is exposed under the light, the cuff of my sleeve rolled up so she can see the ink that decorates every inch of my skin.

“Can I get a drink first?”

“No.”

She doesn’t bother looking up as she traces one of the vines that starts at my elbow and curls down over my wrist. She added some flower buds to it about two weeks ago, and they’re almost fully healed.

“They look good,” she tells me, flipping my wrist and poking around at my skin with almost clinical detachment. She started tattooing me when she was sixteen and decided she wanted to be an artist. She apprenticed at a shop down the coast, but no one would let a teenager practice on their skin. So I volunteered. Every tattoo on my arms is by her, an interesting progression from my left arm to my right. Now that she’s one of the most sought after artists on the East Coast, she’s been going back over her work, adding detail and cleaning up old missteps.

“I want to fix this one,” she tells me, poking at a tiny oak leaf on the inside of my wrist. The edges are slightly blurred from too much pressure from the gun, a wobble in the crisp lines. I pull my arm out of her grip and roll my cuff back down.

“Nope.” I like that one. It was one of the first she ever did, and she had been so fucking proud when she pressed that cool wipe over my skin, wiping away excess ink. It’s a good memory, and I don’t want to change it. “You can harass me into other changes after pie.”

“And you can come say hello to your mother,” my mom says over her shoulder, stirring something that smells like cinnamon and honey. I wander over to the stove and press a kiss to the back of her head.

“Hi, mom.” I reach for a sliver of roast carrot from the pan, enjoying the sharp crunch and answering sweetness.

“These from the farm?” I ask. I already know the answer. The carrots are from the farm, and the bread is from Nessa, and the music is a playlist Harper made over the summer, and the delicate bouquet of wildflowers drawn on the back of her arm is by Nova. My dad whittled the spoon she’s using, and this whole kitchen is filled to the brim with pieces of my family. The love between my parents and for all of us, mixing together with thyme and butter and pie until all the tension I usually feel in a room full of people is back in the hallway, shoved in the pocket of my coat. I’ll pick it back up later, I’m sure, but for now I’m settled.

I’m home.

Food is served and conversation dissolves within minutes into a spirited discussion of some dating show, the volume of my sisters’ and dad’s voices rising until they’re all yelling over each other.

When my dad first had his accident, he sat in the dark of his bedroom all day every day, caught in a depression that was almost as crippling as the fall that paralyzed him from the waist down. Nessa started sitting in the room with him, right at the edge of the bed. She’d turn on some show about housewives behaving badly and he’d pretend not to be interested.

Now they have weekly viewings.

Harper glances at me from across the table as Nessa shrieks something about chardonnay. “Do you want your earmuffs?”

I nod, grateful she offered and I didn’t have to ask. She tugs open a drawer in the china cabinet behind her and pulls out a fluffy pair of pink earmuffs. I thought Nessa had been making fun of me when she bought them for me three years ago, but she had been insistent that they would help.