He heard a familiar, deep voice behind her, shout, “Meg!” with an uncharacteristic squeak, and then Meg laughing, full-throated in a way he hadn’t heard in too long as she ended the call. He shook his head and let himself fall back onto the couch one more time.

He didn’t deserve her.

Amy had needed no convincing to visit her siblings at Gwynns.

She was still annoyed that it wasn’t her turn yet, after all, eager to grow up the way children always are, and any chance to sneak into the Academy was much appreciated. As Jack watched her—taking in all the details, memorizing the stone and brick and the smell of cut grass—he felt the shadow of his first moments, here. Gwynns was his first real home.

It did feel different now. He knew the campus in such an intimate way, the trees and the creek and the tower, but all of his memories were colored by an adult perception, the years changing his childhood, the knowledge of himself that he didn’t have, back then.

The whole place felt like his mistakes.

The air smelled like Theo.

He missed him. He would give anything just to have him here and love him properly the way he should have done, immediately and without reservations.

Okay, Jack. He shook himself. Get a grip.

Charlie had set up a private room in the dorm building—not, Jack was relieved to find, his personal quarters as headmaster—with a light brunch and a view over the big hill at the entrance to campus. Meg was already there, of course, and Jack gave her shoulder a little squeeze as they sat on squashy chairs by a marble fireplace. “All right?”

She nodded and held out her arms for an exuberant hug from Amy. “Mom, can you believe we’re at Gwynns?”

“We are?” Meg looked around, pretending shock.

“Mom...”

They laughed, so alike in the way they sounded, the way they looked. Textured auburn hair and freckles and too much fun like the bubbles in champagne.

The door opened. Johnny wandered in, eyes on her phone, clunky headphones over her ears. She was banging her head and totally ignoring everything around her. She threw herself down, legs splayed over an armrest and back crammed into the opposite corner of the chair, and kept rocking out.

“Teenagers are lovely, aren’t they?” Meg’s voice was as dry as the Antarctic. Jack laughed through his nose, and Amy giggled.

He heard quiet voices in the hall. He tilted his head at Meg, who shrugged, and he walked over toward the door. And there was Will, also listening to music—one earbud in and the other trailing off...

And attached to Jasper Beaumont. Okay then.

They looked so young. So very serious, a blond head leaning over his son’s black hair.

It ached.