Chapter 6 - The Way Home
One year later.
The small coastal town of Anacortes, Washington, was quiet under a soft December drizzle. The air smelled of salt water, damp cedar, and pine needles.
On the hill overlooking the marina, a two-story craftsman house sat surrounded by Douglas fir trees, its windows glowing with warm yellow light.
Inside, a ten-foot Douglas fir stood in the corner of the living room, decorated with a chaotic, beautiful mix of homemade paper snowflakes, glittering glass ornaments, and a tiny gray stuffed elephant perched near the top branch.
In the kitchen, the counters were covered in flour, sugar sprinkles, and three cookie sheets lined with star-shaped gingerbread.
I stood by the kitchen island wearing a simple flannel shirt and jeans, rolling out a fresh batch of dough. My hands—once accustomed only to expensive pens and leather-bound briefs—were covered in white flour.
"Daddy! Look!" Luke shouted, running into the kitchen with a wooden spoon held like a sword. "I made a dinosaur cookie!"
"That’s a very impressive dinosaur, buddy," I laughed, leaning down to scoop him up with one arm, leaving a small flour smudge on his nose.
"He's supposed to be an angel, Luke!" Violet called out from the dining table, where she was meticulously placing silver candy beads onto a gingerbread man. "Not a dinosaur!"
"Dinosaurs can be angels too!" Luke argued back, giggling as I set him down on a chair beside his sister.
Cassandra walked into the kitchen from the hallway, wearing a thick knit sweater, her hair pulled back in a loose clip. She looked happy, healthy, her eyes bright with a peaceful, settled joy that had replaced every trace of the exhaustion she had carried two years ago.
She walked up beside me, reached out, and wiped a speck of flour from my cheek with her thumb.
"How’s the master baker doing?" she teased softly.
"The master baker is realizing that managing two three-year-olds with sugar rushes is significantly harder than managing an eight-hundred-million-dollar hedge fund," I replied, wrapping my arms around her waist and pulling her close.
She laughed, resting her head against my chest, listening to the steady, calm beat of my heart.
My phone, resting on the windowsill near the sink, chimed softly with an incoming email notification.
I didn't rush to pick it up. I didn't even look at the screen.
I already knew what it was. It was the monthly operational report from the Clara Prescott Medical Foundation. Last week, our first fifty low-weight thermal incubators had been delivered to rural regional hospitals across Ohio, Kentucky, and West Virginia. Three hundred premature infants were currently breathing safely inside them.
The company was thriving. The work was real. But more importantly, when five o'clock arrived, I closed my laptop, walked out of my home office, and sat on the floor to build Lego towers with my children.
"Damon," Cassandra whispered, looking up at me with her clear hazel eyes. "Are you happy?"
I looked past her to the dining table, where Luke and Violet were currently laughing hysterically as they tried to stick a silver candy bead onto the tip of Luke's nose. I looked at the rain tapping softly against the windowpanes, the warm fire crackling in the hearth, and the woman holding me in the middle of our kitchen.
"I used to think happiness was a destination you reached after you won every battle," I said softly, pressing a gentle kiss to her forehead. "Now I know it's just being where you belong."
May you like
Outside, the evening sky darkened into a deep, peaceful blue as snow began to mix with the rain, dusting the pine trees in white.
I took Cassandra’s hand, walked over to the table, and sat down beside my children to help them finish their angels—and their dinosaurs—just in time for Christmas Eve.
