Set the Stars Alight

by Amanda Dykes

Dash stopped in front of a stone wall flanked by two pillars, a white picket gate creaking open to his touch. Lucy’s breath caught as she stepped through to hydrangeas in full bloom leading to a Dutch door whose top was flung wide open. Its white paint was chipped and all the more lovely for it. The farmhouse rose up from the ground as if it had grown there, stone by stone, over the course of a thousand lifetimes. Wisps of smoke slipped from the chimney as a cool breeze blew off the distant Channel, and every step ushered her into an unseen veil of cinnamon and allspice. She ached so deeply, her feet slowed and finally stopped altogether. Dash turned. “You okay?” She blinked back the heat in her eyes, willing herself not to cry. “Silly,” she said, shaking her head. Dash tipped his head ever so slightly. She’d forgotten that about him, the way he would wait, the way he let silence invite talk. She shook her head as if to shoo away the ache growing inside. “It’s just . . . it’s a home,” she said, lifting one shoulder. Of course it was a home. She might as well declare the dirt brown and the buttercups yellow. Such a sparkling conversationalist. But she had not set foot inside a house that felt like a home in . . . well, not since her parents had gone. But Dash did not laugh. He did not smile, or continue on. He took a step closer to her and held out his hand. “Yeah,” he said. “And they’re waiting for you.”