Page 61 of Finding Home

“I’ll come with you.”

She started to say he didn’t need to. Then she stopped and reconsidered. “Okay,” she said instead.

Cole kissed the top of her head. “They’ll like it here.”

She wasn’t certain whether he meant the cottage, the town, or Montana. “Meg will be difficult to read,” Julie said. “She overthinks things. She’ll walk in, look at the cottage, and form an opinion in the first thirty seconds. After that she’ll spend two days pretending she hasn’t.”

“And Daniel?”

“Daniel will ask you about the resort.”

“I can handle that,” Cole told her.

“He’ll ask a lot of questions.”

“Still fine.”

Julie smiled. “If you get overwhelmed, go into the kitchen. I’ll shoo everyone away to give you time to recover.”

Cole laughed. “I’m sure they’re not that bad.”

Julie hoped not. Meg and Daniel hadn’t held back on wanting to know about Cole—she just hoped they gave him enough time to take a breath between questions.

She thought about what it would be like to see them come through the front door. Meg would be first, because Meg always made sure she was. Then Daniel with Maddie and Nellie, and all the noise and movement that came with them. They’d fill the cottage with the kind of chaos she’d spent years keeping at a careful distance.

She didn’t want that now.

“Are you ready for all of this?” Cole asked.

Julie looked around the cottage.

The tree was lit. The beds were made. The star was sitting slightly off-center on the highest branch, and garlands of tinsel were draped across the room.

“I think so,” she said. “And if we’ve missed something, it doesn’t matter.”

Chapter 38

The highway south of Kalispell was dry but the sky had the flat grey weight of snow that hadn’t decided to fall. Cole drove with the heater on low and Julie’s directions open on the dash mount, though he’d driven this road enough times to know every exit.

Julie had the flight tracker open on her phone. She’d had it open since they left Sapphire Bay.

He didn’t mention it.

She’d told him that morning she wasn’t nervous, and he’d accepted that the way he accepted most things she told him about herself—with the understanding that she knew her own mind better than he did, and that the truth of it would show up anyway.

It was showing up now.

She was holding the phone in two hands instead of one.

He turned off the highway and followed the signs toward the terminal. Kalispell’s airport was modest enough that you could cross from one end to the other in under three minutes. He’d used it a dozen times over the past year. Parking, when you arrived early, was never the problem people said it was.

He found a space on the second row and cut the engine.

Julie was already checking the gate information.

“Meg’s on time,” she said. “Daniel’s flight shows it’s twenty-two minutes away.”

“So they’ll come through about the same time.”