Page 22 of The Matchmaker's Cottage

“How far isit again?” he asked as they walked, entering a copse of trees and finding a path. He couldn’t remember the last time he had walked this route. Regardless, time had always felt different when doing things as a child—either long enough to feel like years or short enough to feel like seconds.

The trail wound through the tall pines, the ground uneven beneath their shoes and dappled with the late-afternoon light shining between the trees. Leaves still clung sturdily to their branches, though most were imbued with hues of rust and gold, trembling overhead as the breeze rustled through them with a cool, metallic scent that hinted at rain. To their right, he could still hear the sounds of the water, see the land sloping down toward the lake. If he peered between the branches, he could just see the water glimmering through the trees, the sun reflecting like diamonds off the gray-blue surface.

Eventually, the path curved just enough for the cottage to disappear behind them, and Ethan felt a weight lift from hischest that he hadn’t realized was there. There was obviously something about being back in that place that had settled on him heavily. He refused to consider all the reasons why that might be.

It was nearing evening, but the days still carried the length of summer in them, the light barely starting to wane. In a few short weeks, it would be dark at this time. Despite the presence of the sun, Ethan noticed a few clouds creeping in, creating a bit of an overcast haze in the sky. Added to the scent he had caught on the breeze, it spoke of only one possibility.

Hope we make it back before it rains,he couldn’t help but think. Sure, he’d been willing to make the journey into town for a brief look, but that didn’t change the fact that he was still exhausted and hungry. He didn’t particularly relish the thought of getting caught in a thunderstorm on top of everything else.

“About fifteen minutes on foot,” she responded in answer to his question, side-eyeing him as though she was surprised he couldn’t remember. She glanced at her watch. “It works out if we’re back by around five o’clock, because then Maggie can put dinner out for all of us to eat.”

“She’s a good cook?” he wondered, just to make conversation. It didn’t matter what she could or couldn’t make at this point—he’d eat any of it. His stomach grumbled at that thought, and he began to regret not taking Julia up on her offer of bread and cheese.

“Oh yeah, she’s great.” She chuckled. “Better than me, that’s for sure.”

“You cook.” He was surprised by her self-deprecation. Julia had always been making them concoctions—as teenagers, then in their college years, and even after, when they’d worked at therestaurant together, she would find ways to scrounge up things and turn them into a meal.

“I bake,” she corrected. “And maybe throw things together out of desperation and starvation. But I can’t do what Maggie does. She makes these sumptuous meals, three or four courses, that have people just swooning. I swear, it’s the one thing that keeps us—”

Whatever she had been about to say died with the click of her teeth as she snapped her mouth shut. He watched her jaw work in apparent consternation before her face cleared and she shrugged.

“I’d be lost without her,” she finished finally.

“So, Maggie cooks and Norman…” He trailed off, waving his hand vaguely. “Takes care of the outside?”

Julia nodded. “Basically. Norman just…showed up one day,” she said with a dry laugh. “I found out from Maggie and her family that he lives in town and he’s always been the type to lend a hand. When he’d heard that I bought this place, he just started coming by. And I wasn’t in a position to say no, because, well, I needed the help. The gardens were wild, the grounds needed a lot of attention…” She trailed off, realizing how that must sound, then added lightly, “I think he just likes to keep things beautiful around here. It’s funny how people appear exactly when you need them.”

Her words struck a chord. Not the comment on his mother’s abysmal outdoor upkeep, which he’d obviously already known. But her last sentence. It only drove home the reminder that, for all those people whohadbeen there for Julia, Ethan hadn’t.

Smothering a sigh, he buried his hands in his pockets, and they walked in silence for a bit. He wanted to keep hearing hertalk and explain the development of the place after it had stopped being his shared history with her.

“So,” he began, treading carefully. They walked a few more paces before she looked up at him, probably curious about where the conversation was leading. “This place. The cottage—sorry, bed-and-breakfast, whatever.”

“Donwell.”

He thought maybe he hadn’t heard her right. “Pardon?”

She sighed. “It has a name. Didn’t you see the sign? It’s called Donwell Cottage.”

“Why?” Aside from the oddness of hearing that it had a name, it wasn’t a name he was familiar with at all. It wasn’t a name in his family or hers that he knew of, and it felt completely out of left field.

“It was on the property deed. Donwell Lane. That’s the original name of the street that leads to the cottage.”

Ethan didn’t know what was more surprising: that the old dirt road to the cottage had an actual name or that his parents had kept the original deed to the place.

“Donwell.” He rolled it around on his tongue. “I like it.”

“Great,” she said dryly, as though his opinion couldn’t have mattered to her less.

“My parents—do they…?”

“They love it,” she answered shortly.

The first drops of rain made their appearance, still few and far between enough to make him question if that was actually what he was feeling.

He’d known that his parents, especially his mom, still kept in touch with Gem on occasion. The rare times he spoke with them through FaceTime—the sort of conversations where dropped Wi-Fi and the sight of his parents’ foreheads weremore prevalent than actual words being exchanged—his mother would always try to find a way to bring up Julia, to tell him something about her plans for the cottage or how she was doing. Ethan would change the subject quickly, and his mom would get that disappointed tone in her voice, another quiet disapproval that loomed over his life, until he was able to wrap up the conversation and vow to try again next month.

It wasn’t that he hated his parents. They were decent enough people, even if his mom did still indulge in her wine a bit too much and his dad’s stoic apathy toward anything that wasn’t sports-related didn’t leave a lot of room for father-son bonding as they both grew older. But, in their defense, his parents had seen their fair share of hardships, too. All those attempts to grow their family beyond just one child, culminating in losses that had come quietly, privately, and far too often. No one had been to blame for any of it, but over the years it had all contributed to an ever-widening chasm. Now their relationship had settled into what it had always been, in a way: strained and marked by grief.