The only way it doesn't hurt

Part Five

I didn’t reply. Not because I disagreed, but because every time someone said that, a quiet ache bloomed in my chest. I had promised my sister I’d keep her safe. And I had. But sometimes the weight of that promise curled itself around my ribs and reminded me of everything I’d lost in the process.

“Baking helps,” I said instead, a little too brightly. “It slows my mind down when I need it.”

“You’ve always had that quiet storm thing going on,” Maya mused, tearing a piece off a cookie I’d passed her. “Calm on the outside, thoughts running marathons underneath.”

I smirked. “Thanks. I think.”

Isla crawled into my lap without warning, holding up her latest drawing. “This fox name Rosie,” she declared. “She sleep on flower.”

I kissed the top of her head. “She looks peaceful.”

“Like Isla,” Maya said gently.

We stayed like that for a little longer, all three of us tucked into the soft edges of the morning.

Maya was tracing one of Isla’s fox drawings with her finger, nodding solemnly as the little one explained that this one was “sleeping in a flower bed because she tired of chasing bees,” when I noticed the flicker of a look cross her face—like a thought had just elbowed its way to the front of her mind.

I knew that look.

She was about to change the subject.

“So,” she said, stretching her legs out beneath the table and nudging Isla’s foot playfully, “you missed quite the little storm at the gallery yesterday.”

I raised a brow, tilting my head. “Oh?”

“The London team came,” she said, casually picking up a colored pencil Isla had dropped. “Right on time, full of charm and coffee breath. You’d have loved the chaos. Theo was his usual theatrical self—he walked in like he was unveiling a new museum wing. Naomi was cool and collected, already rearranging half the space with her eyes. And Leah, that girl practically bounced through the door.”

I smiled. “She sounds young.”

“She is,” Maya said, her tone fond. “Young, sharp, and apparently obsessed with your work.”

My hands stilled over the sketch I’d been shading—just some quick thumbnails for a page in the next storybook. “Wait, really?”

“Dead serious,” Maya said, now sprawled comfortably again. “She walked straight over to the children’s section, found your old fox-and-fawn prints, and made a beeline to me. I swear, her eyes lit up like she'd met a celebrity.”

I blinked. “But she doesn’t even know what I look like.”

“Exactly,” Maya said, grinning. “Which made it even better. She asked if the illustrator was local, and when I said yes, she nearly melted into a puddle of joy. You’ve got a fan.”

I felt a flicker of warmth behind my ribs. It wasn’t the first time someone had liked my work, of course—not after years of commissions, book deals, and gallery prints—but there was something different about this. Maybe because it was unexpected. Maybe because it reminded me that even here, in this quiet town tucked against the sea, something was still reaching outwards.

“Then I made her whole day worse,” Maya continued with a wink, “by telling her you couldn’t make it.”

I groaned. “Ugh. I wanted to go. Truly. But I couldn’t push the deadline for the manuscript again. The publisher’s already extended twice.”