Page 78 of The Matchmaker's Cottage

Of all the things Julia expected Ethan to say, that wasn’t even on the list. She blinked, trying to orient herself, her hand fumbling for the back of a chair as her knees threatened to give way. Her chest tightened with that familiar pressure—the one that always came before an episode—and she forced herself to breathe slowly, carefully, willing the room to steady.

Ethan’sboss? Her grandfather? Ethan’sboss? Her mind scrambled to piece it together. Hank had never once mentioned the name of his company or even what he did for a living aside from the fact that he did it in the city, and she’d never asked. Despite his kindness, he was still her mother’s father, and that alone made things complicated. The wound of her mother’s absence ran too deep; it was easier to keep their conversations light, safely skimming the surface. And Ethan, for his part, had never mentioned the man behind his business. Had she even seen any letterhead with the nameFordhamon it? In an email, maybe? Would she have noticed? The realization hit with enough force to knock the air from her lungs.

“Yes,” Hank said, nodding with a wince, as though reading her thoughts. “I do work with this young man here.”

“Work with?!” Ethan spluttered. “You are literally CEO of the company. And you’re—you’re alsowhat? Julia’sgrandfather? I mean—how? What is even happening?”

“Ethan,” Julia said firmly, hoping to bring him back from the brink, even as her own heart raced. “I know just as much as you do here. Yes, Hank is my grandfather and it looks like he’s also your boss, and I guesshe can be both of those things.I know it’s crazy. I think it’s crazy, too. But it’s obviously the truth.”

The words came out steadier than she felt. Beneath them, something old began to stir—that familiar guilt she thoughtshe’d buried years ago. The thought that, if only she’d told him more back then—about her plans for the future, about the money her grandfather had set aside, about how she’d started to rebuild some small connection with him—maybe then this wouldn’t feel like such a betrayal. Maybe telling him about his parents’ plans wouldn’t have felt like such a betrayal, either.

Ethan and Julia had left things in pieces that night, saying harsh words they couldn’t take back. Words that had cut deeper than either of them had meant. And she’d carried that hurt with her for years—like a stone she couldn’t set down, even though she told herself she was done with it.

At the time, she’d been too angry, too raw, to hear him out. He’d tried, she realized now—tried to reach out, to offer some clumsy apology that might have bridged the silence between them. But she hadn’t been ready. She’d been too determined to hold on to her hurt, convinced that if he really cared, he’d try harder. That he’d find a way through her stubbornness and prove her wrong.

His parents had been disappointed, to say the least, but to their credit, they hadn’t retracted their offer. They’d said they would talk to Ethan, make him see reason. But even they hadn’t been able to penetrate his hurt.

Eventually, the calls stopped after going unanswered for so long. And she’d let that become the story she told herself: that he didn’t care enough, that he never really had. It was easier back then to be sure of that than to admit she might have pushed him away.

Now, with years behind her and the sharp edges of that night dulled by time, she could see how tangled it all really was. How they’d both let pride and fear turn them into strangers. She hadn’t told his parents not to share things with him aboutthe cottage transformation, but whatever they had said hadn’t inspired him to come see it.

She also hadn’t reached out and offered him the chance to take a look.

Now she wasn’t sure what that meant for them—if it meant anything at all—but she knew she didn’t want to carry that burden anymore. She didn’t want to pretend that he had been the only one who’d let it slip through their fingers. She fumbled to pull back the chair and sat down heavily then, realizing Ethan had done the same.

“So.” Ethan laid his hands on his knees, fingers splayed, inhaling and exhaling deeply as he appeared to try to get his bearings. “So, my boss, Mr. Fordham,Henry Fordham, is your grandfather? Your mother’s dad?”

“Yes,” both Julia and Hank responded simultaneously, and then exchanged a glance.

“I mean…” Julia continued hesitantly, looking away. “I didn’t know he was your boss.” Her gaze shifted to Hank, almost accusatory. “I didn’t know.”

“Yes, well, I suppose it’s my turn to share,” Hank said, looking pointedly between the two of them and taking his own seat. “If you’ll allow me?”

They nodded, leaning in.

“When Julia’s mother left us in her late teens, her mother and I were…shattered. We kept asking ourselves what we’d missed, what we could have done differently. She had always been…challenging.” He said the word slowly, carefully, as though turning it over in his mouth and finding it too small for everything it needed to hold. “There was a quiet storm in her. A sense that something inside her hurt, even when she couldn’t name it. We told ourselves it was just the usual teenagepushback, but looking back…” He exhaled. “Looking back, I think she was carrying more than any of us understood.”

He rubbed a hand across the table absentmindedly. “We should have taken her to someone who knew what they were doing—doctors, counselors. We didn’t have the language for it then. Our generation wasn’t good at recognizing when a young person was struggling in ways you couldn’t see on the surface. Maybe we would’ve found a diagnosis, or at the very least a way for her to feel less alone. But we didn’t. And that…well. That’s on us.

“When we finally tracked her down years later, she was married to Julia’s father and had Julia. We reached out, but she kept her distance.” His voice softened. “I don’t blame her entirely. She wasn’t well—and not in the way people usually mean, but in the way that makes the world feel sharp and confusing. It was easier for her to push us away than try to explain something she’d never had help untangling.”

A faint smile touched his face. “Julia’s father called us the next day. Good man. He wanted to support his wife, but he’d seen things that scared him. Mood swings, anger that came out of nowhere, a fear of being left, followed immediately by threats to leave, moments when she’d say she felt…hollow, like something was missing inside her that she couldn’t fix.” He let the weight of that hang in the air. “He was asking for guidance. We wanted to help him, but we were stuck in the same place we’d always been—loving her, worried for her, and utterly unprepared.”

He fell quiet for a moment before continuing. “We told him to stay in touch, and he did. We learned when she had left the family. Her attempts to reach out again, here and there, but not to return. And a few years later, we got word—because wewere still listed as her next of kin—that she had…” He paused, swallowing hard. “She had passed.”

The silence that followed was thick and gentle.

“We were never told whether it was an accident or whether life had simply become too heavy for her. I don’t know that we’ll ever have that answer. What I do know is that she was a girl who struggled more than anyone ever realized.” His voice wavered. “Losing her meant all the hoping and waiting—imagining she might walk through our door again—was suddenly gone. It was the end of a chapter we’d never wanted to close.”

He gestured toward Julia with a trembling hand. “And it meant she’d never get the chance to come back to you.” Julia had been listening to the story, one she had already known for ages, for as long as she had known Hank was her grandfather. But hearing it again cracked open something raw and vulnerable inside her, something she tried to keep hidden. She knew tears were streaking down her cheeks unchecked, but she couldn’t bring herself to move, to wipe them away.

Ethan glanced at her, and she could feel the weight of his gaze. Then he reached over to squeeze her hand. When she looked at him, his eyes were glassy as well.

Clearing her throat, she said, “I found out about all of this when Hank told me all those years ago. I asked my dad why he’d never said anything about the trust fund. If he had even known.”

Hank nodded, a quiet agreement in his eyes. “He’d known. And he was a proud man. Wouldn’t take a penny for himself, said the sale from the cottage was enough to get him by.”

“Right,” she said, her voice softening. “Then, when your parents came up with the idea…” She shrugged, the remnantsof awkwardness and fear around the situation, the decision she had made, closing up her throat.