He laughed softly. “Once you tell me why I’m really here, I’ll consider telling you why being a Bonner is anything but simple.”

Irene narrowed her eyes. “Let’s get this over with.”

She hopped out of the car and started along the winding path that led up to the house. Though it was worn and long past the need for a fresh coat of paint, flowers and greenery more than made up for the chipped wood. English ivy climbed thin, round columns that kept most of the overhang from sagging except after a particularly heavy rain. Honeysuckle shrubs grew on either side of the front staircase. Their offshoots wrapped around the rails, fire-orange blooms promising happiness and love. Oakleaf hydrangeas spread beneath the windows, the flowers already turned sepia beneath the summer sun. Bees buzzed from branch to branch.

She started for the stairs, and when she reached the door, she found Kaden still standing by the truck, hands in his pockets, head tilted back as he took in the house. Irene considered him for a second. His shadowed eyes. His open smile. It was the look of a man coming home, and it pulled at something in her that wasn’t pain or sadness.

“I didn’t miss much about Yarrow, but this…” Kaden trailed off.

The Victorian structure had been expanded over the generations—most recently by her mom, and before that by her grandparents. But rather than making the original architecture unrecognizable, the bay windows, transoms, and chimneys added to the house’s character. The roof hung low over a front porch that wrapped around the back of the home. Even the garden out front, though not shadow dark, felt a little bit magical.

“It really is something,” she agreed. “Now come on.”

Before Irene had opened her shop, if her neighbors needed help with their pain, they came right to her family’s doorstep. For a long time, it had been just her mother, Maura, easing the weight of their sorrow. The Haywood gift didn’t hit everyone. Most often, it skipped the boys and their children, like it had with her brother and Quinn, then came back when a daughter was born of a daughter—although there had been a handful of men and those who didn’t identify as either gender over the generations who’d had it.

“I’d have never left Yarrow if this is what I had to come back to.”

Irene glanced back at him and saw that he wasn’t staring at the house anymore. It had been a long time since someone looked at Irene with wonder rather than expectation. The awe in his voice stirred something in her, and a slow smile spread across her face. She held out a hand and a butterfly landed on her palm.

“Never seen a butterfly do that before,” he said.

Irene laughed. “They show up when I’m happy.”

Kaden reached a hand toward her. “Can I?”