Chapter 2 Arrival in Lavender Hill.

Lavender Hill was exactly as Ethan remembered-and not at all.

The primary street, once a purveyor of teenage magic and Sunday farmer's markets, now had a more measured cadence. Older brick buildings stood with the kind of grace that comes only from age, not from strife. Ivy crawled up shop windows, and wooden signs softly creaked in the breeze. It wasn't new or remarkable, but it had a kind of sacred silence-like the town itself was caught between memory and dream.

Ethan parked the truck just ahead of the post office, its flaking paint and suspended flower boxes swaying gently beneath a carved wooden sign. As he stepped out, a familiar scent rose from the ground: lavender. Earthy and faint. The town's tongue. Its breath.

He passed a café with a faded blue awning. "The Violet Hour", it read. The same sign it had when he was sixteen and too shy to say hello to the girl with the honey-colored braid behind the counter and eyes the shade of dusk. The door jingled as it opened, releasing into the street the warm, homey scent of bread and chamomile.

Is that who I think it is?" a voice called from behind the counter.

Ethan turned, squinting into the sunlight pouring through the window. A small woman with silver curls and a flour-covered apron had her hands on her hips, a smile tugging at her cheeks.

"Clara Monroe," he said, smiling despite himself.

"In the flesh," she said. "And you're taller. Still broody, though."

He laughed. "That hasn't changed, apparently.".

Clara rounded the counter and pulled him into a flour-scented hug, warm and close. "Your grandmother would be so pleased you're home. She always said you'd return when the time was right."

"Perhaps the lavender called me," he joked softly, half serious.

Clara moved back, her expression darkening just a little. "It does that. This place. it remembers.".

Ethan gazed out into the town square through the window. "Yeah. I think it does.

The road to Lavender Hill Estate snaked through the town and up to the edge of the valley, where the earth dropped away into a sea of purple. The old gate was half open, as if in anticipation of him. The gravel crunched under the wheels as he swung into the long, curving drive. Gradually, as a secret is revealed, the house came into view.

Whitewashed and worn, the two-story farmhouse stood amidst fields once a deep purple that now rolled like gentle waves around it. Time had gently pulled on its bones-peeling paint, tilted shutters-but it remained lovely. Still alive.

He stepped out of the truck and remained still, letting the wind howl around him, carrying with it a tune only the world could provide. The lavender smell was stronger here. More intense. It reminded him of his grandmother's shawl, her stories, her soft humming on summer nights when she believed no one was listening.

The door creaked as he opened it.

Inside, the house was quiet, shaded, and cool. Dust motes swirled in the sunbeams cutting through the windows. Furniture, ghostly in its white coverings, stood sentinel in the corners, watching. But there was no terror. Only a soft sort of greeting. As though the house had breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of him.

He went room to room, yanking sheets from off old chairs, running his hands along worn banisters, passing by framed photos that blurred the line between then and now. One in particular stopped him-a black-and-white photo of his grandmother in the lavender fields, a young girl standing beside her.

Elara Quinn.

He hadn't thought of her in years-not since the summer they'd shared long silences and half-promises, orchard laughter and one almost-kiss beneath the moon. She had been gentle and wild, like the wind just before a storm. And she had vanished without a farewell.

The memory flickered and was lost as he turned toward the front porch again, where the fields stretched out endlessly below.

There, in the distance, just at the edge of the lavender, was a figure.

Same blond hair.

Same stillness.

Elara.

She didn't move, but he knew that it was she. Even from afar, even after years. The line of her shoulders, the silhouette of her presence-it all came flooding back, like the sound of his name being spoken in a voice he hadn't heard in years.

He stepped off the porch slowly, boots sinking into the ground a bit. As he walked, the air changed. Grown heavier. Charged, somehow. Lavender brushed his hands as he passed, gentle as whispers, as if in memory of him.

But by the time he reached where she'd been-she was gone.

There was just the soft thrum of the wind now, and the faintest depressions in the earth where her feet might have been. Or maybe he'd imagined it. Maybe it was memory playing tricks on him.

But something stirred in his chest. Something that had lain still too long.

When he turned back to the house, a low wind swept past him. And this time there was no mistake:

A whisper.

"Welcome home, Ethan."