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“Okay.” He was already moving. “I’ll get them.”

He brought everything in and I followed him into the front room. There was a bed beneath the window, his jacket thrown across the blanket. I stopped beside it.

“You’re sleeping in here?”

“I put my monitors in one bedroom,” he said from the kitchen.

“And the other?”

He appeared in the doorway. “Your things are in there.”

I carried Sparrow to the room at the back. Fourteen boxes stood against the wall, my whole Millfield life packed inside them.

Bathroom. Books, top shelf. Kitchen. Bedside drawer, W’s.

Austen’s handwriting. I ran my fingers over one of the labels. She’d opened drawers in the room I’d shared with Seb, folded my clothes and wrapped my mugs, knowing I wasn’t answering her messages. She’d made sure I could find every little thing if I ever wanted it back.

I’d never expected to see any of it again. When I left, I’d assumed Seb would have our room cleared and my things thrown away.

“Austen packed them,” Seb said. “I asked her. She wouldn’t let anybody else do it.”

“When?”

“The first weekend I was here.”

I frowned. “You kept it all in our room until then?”

“I left everything where it was.” He looked at the boxes. “Every day I thought I’d find you. I thought I’d get to explain, apologize and ask you to come home. I hoped you would.”

I looked at Austen’s handwriting again. For a year, my clothes had hung in our wardrobe and my books had stayed beside our bed. He’d left them there because he hoped I’d come back.

“What were you going to do with all this?”

“I didn’t know what you’d want. I brought it here so you could decide.” He glanced at the boxes. “I haven’t opened any of them.”

Sparrow hooked a finger through the collar of my shirt. I looked at Austen’s neat print. I missed my friend so badly I had to swallow before I spoke.

“You’ve been sleeping in the front room all this time.”

“It’s a bed,” he said. “It’s fine.”

He left me to read the other labels while he carried Sparrow’s travel crib into the front room. There were boxes marked Coats, Shoes. When I came back out, Seb was on his knees trying to lock the crib’s last side into place. I showed him the catch and he grinned at me. For a moment it was easy to imagine bringing Sparrow here again.

A laugh came from the kitchen. I knew it before I saw the laptop open on the table, its sound turned low.

Four squares. Lilac in the clubhouse kitchen. Indira with a baby over her shoulder. Bea, with the light behind her. Austen was close to the camera, laughing at something Lilac had said.

I hadn’t seen any of them in a year. Indira’s hair was shorter. Lilac looked tired in the familiar way she did when the boys had been up early. Austen still leaned in as if she could get closer to whoever was on the other end. I wanted to reach through the screen and touch her face.

Seb saw where I was looking and reached for the laptop. “Sorry. I thought the visit was off. I should’ve ended the call when you arrived.”

“Don’t,” I said.

And then Austen saw me. Her smile vanished. “Wren?”

I didn’t say anything for a second.

“Hi,” I said.