CHAPTER FIVE: ROOTS AND ROUTINES
Mornings in Calderhallow always smelled like salt and bread.
Down the lane from the bed-and-breakfast, a baker named Joslin started his oven before dawn. The scent drifted through the narrow alleys like a whispered promise of comfort. It made waking up easier, even after a night of broken sleep.
The attic room was tiny, with slanted ceilings and creaky floorboards, but it had one thing I didn't realize I'd crave so deeply: quiet.
No shouting.
No forced smiles.
No poison in the air.
Just Ember's babbling. Nova's sleepy yawns. And me, holding on.
I settled into a rhythm in Calderhallow.
Mornings were for work sweeping, mopping, polishing the brass knobs on the guestroom doors. Miss Dalia liked things done a certain way, but she wasn't cruel. She let me keep the twins in a playpen in the linen room if they were quiet. Most days, they were little angels mostly because they could see me through the open door.
Afternoons were for the girls. Walks to the nearby park. Picking daisies. Sitting on the cracked bench under the lemon tree and letting them crawl all over me while the townsfolk passed by with curious but kind glances.
Evenings were harder.
After dinner and bath time, after songs and bottles, I was alone again not with people, but with thoughts. Those were harder to hush.
I hadn't told anyone what I used to be.
Not Miss Dalia.
Not the lady at the clinic who helped when Ember had a fever.
Not the kind old man from the grocery store who always slipped extra fruit into my bag "for the little ones."
No one in Calderhallow knew I once wore diamonds and dined with royalty.
They didn't know the name Tasharina Ravenwood.
Here, I was just Rina Hale.
A young mother with tired eyes and calloused hands.
And it was better that way.
Sometimes, I caught glimpses of who I used to be.
Like the way my fingers still moved over perfume bottles on shelves at the pharmacy remembering how I once blended notes of oud and rose into masterpieces.
Like how I still instinctively noticed scent trails the lemon oil in Miss Dalia's polish, the lavender sachets in the guest rooms, the vanilla in Ember's shampoo.
It was still in me. The perfumer. The dreamer.
But I kept her quiet.
She didn't belong in Calderhallow.
Not yet.
Liora finally visited when the twins were six months old.
I remember the exact moment I saw her standing at the edge of the town square with her oversized scarf and too-bright lipstick, dragging a suitcase behind her like a stubborn pet.
I dropped the laundry basket right there on the cobbled stones.
"Liora?"
She grinned, arms wide. "In the flesh."
We hugged for what felt like hours.
And for the first time in months, I let myself cry.
"I got a new job I can do remotely," she explained over tea that night. "Not much, but enough. And I'm tired of you doing this alone."
"I wasn't alone," I argued.
She raised a brow. "Sweetie. I love you, but you were drowning. I could hear it in your silence."
She moved into the guest room at Miss Dalia's without asking.
The twins adored her instantly. Ember clung to her like she'd known her all along. Nova giggled every time she heard Liora sing badly off-key.
It was chaotic, noisy, beautiful.
And for the first time in a long while… I felt okay sharing the weight.
Liora brought color back into the cottage.
She painted a mural of stars above the twins' crib.
She convinced Miss Dalia to let us take over an unused back shed and slowly started turning it into something else "a creative space," she said.
"What for?" I asked, sweeping the floor.
She shrugged. "Whatever you want it to be when you're ready."
I wasn't ready.
But I was curious.
Months passed.
Seasons shifted.
Nova started speaking in fragments. Ember preferred squealing.
They were walking now more like sprinting in circles and my life revolved around tiny shoes and snack cups and bedtime negotiations.
But something inside me was changing too.
Not rushing.
Just… shifting.
Like roots spreading beneath the surface.
I didn't know what it meant yet.
But I knew one thing for sure:
I wasn't just surviving anymore.
I was building something.
Some nights, Liora and I sat on the porch with chipped mugs and shared silence.
Then one evening, she looked at me and said, "You know this isn't your ending, right?"
I looked up.
"What?"
"This," she gestured at the town, the cottage, the stars, "is a chapter. A beautiful one, sure. But not the end."
I didn't respond.
Because deep down, I knew she was right.
Something was coming.
I didn't know what.
Or who.
But the wind in Calderhallow had begun to shift.
And the past… the past was never as far behind as we liked to think.