Worn Leather, Closed Pages

"He says she'd be proud of me. I believe him. But I'd give anything to read it in her handwriting instead of hearing it in his voice."

The kitchen wrapped around me like a held breath finally released.

After the greenhouse—the strange plants, the revelations about perception, the sound on the gravel that had made Dad go tense and watchful—the familiar warmth of this room felt like medicine. The smell of coffee and simmering syrups, the sunlight falling through leaded glass in patterns I'd known my whole life, the worn oak cabinets that had witnessed every significant moment of my childhood. I dropped my sketchbook onto the table and felt some of the tension drain from my shoulders.

Whatever had been out there, watching us, it couldn't reach me here.

I claimed my usual chair—the one with the slight wobble that everyone else avoided but that I'd always loved. There was something about sitting on the edge of stable, about having to adjust constantly to stay balanced, that suited the way my mind worked. Isla thought I was being ridiculous when I'd tried to explain it once. You're romanticising a broken chair, Maeve. Maybe. But it was my broken chair, and I wasn't giving it up.

I spread my sketches across the table, looking at what I'd captured in the greenhouse. The shimmering leaves. The Skye variation with its too-early buds. Forms I'd been drawing for years without knowing they were real, now confirmed as actual plants I'd actually touched.

"That greenhouse really is something else," I said, running my fingers over the pencil lines. "I mean, if the café doesn't win best booth at the festival, we could just show people what you've got growing out there. That would definitely get their attention."

Dad's back stiffened as he moved to the kettle. "The greenhouse isn't for show, Maeve. And it's certainly not for winning festival awards."

The sharpness in his voice surprised me. I'd meant it as a joke—mostly as a joke—but something in his reaction told me I'd touched a nerve. The kettle clicked on with more force than necessary.

"Relax, Dad," I said, softening my tone. "I was only joking. Well, mostly joking." I watched his eyes dart toward the window, seeking the greenhouse in the distance, and felt a flicker of unease return. "Although you have to admit, those plants with the moonlight leaves would make for an impressive display."

He set a mug of tea before me—Earl Grey with a splash of milk, exactly right—and some of the tension eased from his shoulders. "The plants aren't meant for display," he said more gently. "They're part of what makes the café special, yes, but not in ways that are immediately visible."

Not immediately visible. I thought about what he'd told me in the greenhouse—perception, connections, possibilities. The way the plants' processed leaves helped people see things they might otherwise miss. I took a sip of tea and let the warmth settle into me, wondering how many times I'd drunk something at the café that had quietly shifted my way of seeing without my knowing.

Dad gathered the notes scattered across the table, placing the nearly finished festival menu at the centre with a fresh sheet beside it. I noticed soil still visible beneath his fingernails, as though the greenhouse had marked him in some way he couldn't quite scrub away.

I picked up one of the sample menus, scanning the drinks we'd been developing. "Leaves & Beans Latte, Raspberry Mocha, Portal Cappuccino..." I paused, eyebrow raised. "You really think anyone's going to understand the 'portal' reference?"

The name had always seemed whimsical to me—Dad's attempt at being mysterious, maybe. But after today, after learning what the plants could do, I wondered if there was more to it than marketing. Portals. Doorways. The threshold spaces I'd been drawing since childhood.

"They don't need to understand it," Dad replied, selecting a pencil from the cup by the window. "They just need to remember it. People are drawn to the unusual, the mysterious. It makes them curious." He gave me a look that felt weighted with meaning I couldn't quite parse. "Sometimes what they don't fully comprehend is what stays with them longest."

The words settled into me strangely. I'd been living with partial knowledge my whole life—sensing that my family held secrets without being told what they were, understanding that certain topics produced careful silences without knowing why. Maybe that was deliberate. Maybe the gaps were the point.

"Listen to you, sounding like you've got a marketing degree tucked away somewhere," I said, twirling my pencil between my fingers. "And here I thought you were just a coffee guy."

"I've picked up a few things over the years."

I opened my sketchbook to a fresh page, ready to work on more festival designs, but my attention kept drifting to Dad. He was writing something on the menu, erasing it, writing it again. His focus seemed scattered, and I knew why. The greenhouse. The sound on the gravel. Whatever he thought had been watching us.

I'd felt it too. That wrongness in the air before the sound came. I hadn't imagined it—I was certain of that now. Something had been out there.

"You know, if you keep doing that, we'll still be writing the menu when the festival ends," I teased, leaning across to nudge his arm. A few drops of tea sloshed over the rim of my mug, creating tiny amber pools on the worn wood. More rings to join the countless others.

Dad looked up, and something in his expression shifted. Softened. The worry that had shadowed his face receded, replaced by something warmer.

"And if I left it to you, everything would be written in bubble letters and decorated with glitter pens."

"Don't knock bubble letters until you've tried them," I shot back, affecting an exaggerated pout.

We both laughed, and the sound filled the kitchen, bouncing off copper pots and weathered walls. For a moment, everything else fell away—the greenhouse, the secrets, the sense of being watched. There was just this: Dad and me, working together, the easy rhythm of teasing that had carried us through eight years of learning to be a family with a missing piece.

I bent over my sketchbook, letting my pencil find its own path. Vines emerged first—always vines, spiralling up the margins of the page like they were trying to escape into the wider world. Then leaves, those distinctive lobed shapes I now knew were real. Then something that might have been a doorway, half-hidden among the foliage.

I was adding texture to the frame when Dad spoke again, his voice quieter than before.

"She'd be proud of you, you know."

My pencil stopped mid-stroke.

"Mum?"

He nodded, suddenly very interested in the menu before him. "She always wanted you to find something you loved, something you could pour your heart into. Seeing you so excited about the café... I think it would have made her really happy."

The words hit me somewhere I hadn't braced for impact.

She'd be proud of you.

I'd spent eight years wondering. Eight years trying to remember her clearly, trying to hold onto fragments that slipped away like water through fingers. Eight years measuring myself against an absence, against the mother-shaped hole in my life that nothing and no one could fill.

And here was Dad, telling me she'd be proud. That I was becoming someone she would have wanted me to be.

My throat tightened. I stared at my sketchbook, at the half-formed doorway emerging from the vines, and tried to find words that wouldn't crack when I spoke them.

"Well," I managed after a moment, keeping my voice gentle because anything else might break something, "it helps that I've got you to show me the ropes. Even if you do obsess over every little detail."

"Somebody has to," Dad replied, and I could hear his own relief at the lightened moment. "Otherwise, you'd just cover everything in vines and call it artistic vision."

"Hey, vines are classy," I protested, but my smile was back, and I bent over my sketchbook again because looking at Dad right now felt like too much.

She'd be proud of you.

I let the words sink in, let them find a place to live alongside all the uncertainty and the half-memories and the hunger for confirmation that what I thought I remembered was real. Maybe this was enough. Maybe these small gifts—a moment of Dad's unguarded emotion, a glimpse into what Mum might have felt—were all I could expect. All anyone could expect, when someone was gone and all that remained was what they'd left in the people who loved them.

My pencil moved without conscious direction, adding details to the design. I was working on a border of intertwined leaves and coffee beans when I noticed Dad had gone quiet.

Not the comfortable quiet of shared work. A different kind of stillness.

I looked up and found him standing at the counter, his back to me, holding something. A small leather-bound notebook.

Something in his posture made my breath catch.

"Dad?" My voice came out sharper than I'd intended, curiosity cutting through. "What's that?"

He turned, and I saw his expression shift—caught, somehow. Guilty. He was already tucking the notebook into his back pocket, the movement too quick, too deliberate.

"It's nothing," he said.

But it wasn't nothing. I'd watched my family deflect questions my entire life; I knew what it looked like when they were hiding something significant.

"That definitely wasn't nothing," I said, hearing frustration edge into my voice. I pointed at the pocket where the notebook had disappeared. "Was that one of Mum's things?"

The question hung in the air between us.

I'd seen that leather journal before—the initials in the corner, worn almost smooth but still visible. E.C. Eloise Campbell. My mother's handwriting, preserved in leather, hidden among the spice jars like it was just another kitchen item rather than a piece of her that had survived.

And Dad had it. Had been reading it. Had that look on his face like whatever was in those pages mattered enormously.

"Not yet," he said, his tone gentle but firm. "When the time's right, I'll show you."

When the time's right.

The words landed like stones. The same promise I'd been hearing my whole life, the door that kept closing every time I thought I was finally being let through. This morning in the kitchen—when the time's right. In the greenhouse—when the time's right. And now this, my mother's own journal, kept from me until some undefined future that seemed to recede every time I reached for it.

I wanted to argue. Wanted to demand he show me now, tell me what she'd written, let me have this piece of her that I hadn't known existed. She was my mother. Those were her words, her thoughts, her observations. Didn't I have a right to them?

But I saw the set of his jaw, the careful blankness he'd arranged his features into, and I knew pushing wouldn't get me anywhere. Not today. Not after everything that had already happened.

"Fine," I said, and returned to my sketchbook with less enthusiasm than before.

My pencil moved, but my focus was scattered now, fragmented by the mystery Dad had dangled and then pulled away. I added vines to the border—aggressive vines, thornier than I'd intended—and tried not to think about what might be written in those worn pages.

What had Mum understood about the plants? What had she noticed, documented, theorised? Had she known about their effects on perception, about the Skye variation and what its early blooming might mean?

The questions multiplied, and I had no way to answer any of them.

Dad squeezed my shoulder as he passed, and I felt the apology in the gesture even if he didn't say the words. His hand lingered for a moment—warm, solid, trying to bridge the gap his secrecy had created.

"Come on," he said, picking up the menu. "Let's get this finished. The festival won't wait for us to perfect every detail."

I sighed, theatrical resignation masking the frustration I wasn't ready to let go of. "Fine. But I'm still adding vines somewhere, whether you like it or not."

"I wouldn't expect anything less," he said, and settled back into his chair beside me.

We worked in companionable quiet after that, the tension gradually dissolving into the rhythm of creation. Dad made notes on the menu while I refined my designs, both of us pretending the notebook in his pocket wasn't sitting there like a question neither of us would answer.

But I knew it was there. Knew he'd read something that had affected him, something my mother had understood well enough to write down.

When the time's right.

I added one more vine to my design, letting it spiral up toward a doorway that seemed to open onto nothing.

The time would come. I'd make sure of it.