Page 22 of Finding Home

Outside, the cold air made her breath catch. “Is there really a meeting?”

Rachel grinned. “Did you think I was rescuing you?”

“The thought crossed my mind.”

Rachel’s smile widened. “It was a little of both, but I meant it. We need someone with your marketing experience. Susan’s wonderful at organizing people, and Beth, Laurel, and Maria can bake anything. But nobody knows how to make other people care about something the way you do.”

The compliment landed with an unexpected weight. Julie thought about why she was in Sapphire Bay and what was missing in her life.

If she went to the meeting, the vandalism and the fire at Finley Point would still be there tomorrow, waiting for her attention.

Besides, there was also an apple cake at stake. And five women who thought that she belonged with them at their meeting.

“Did Susan really make profiteroles?” Julie asked.

“With chocolate frosting and fresh cream,” Rachel replied. I”’ve been thinking about them ever since we made them in class.”

Julie placed the groceries on the back seat of the truck. A couple of months ago, these women had been strangers. Now, without noticing when it had happened, they’d become friends.

And she wasn’t about to let that slip away.

Chapter 15

Cole crouched beside the porch steps of his granddad’s cabin. Carefully, he worked two fingers into the gap between the bottom riser and the frozen ground and found the front door key. The metal was cold enough to burn, but he held on until it came loose.

The skeleton key was tarnished with age and threaded through an old shoelace. When he was ten years old, Earl Morrison had pressed the key into Cole’s palm with a smile that made him feel special.

The bottom step, left side, his granddad had told him. In case you or your brother ever need the place and I’m not around.

His granddad hadn’t been around for more than fifty years, but the key still had the power to make his heart pound with a mixture of grief and gratitude.

The front door swung inward on stiff hinges. As Cole stepped inside the cabin, he let his eyes adjust to the gloomy interior.

He hadn’t been here in a long time. The single main room was smaller than he remembered. The wood stove still sat in the far corner, its iron legs planted on the square of hearthstone his granddad had laid. Two windows flanked either side of the door. The glass was cloudy with dust and the residue of hard winters.

Cole’s gaze wandered along the back wall. A narrow kitchen filled the end of the cabin. Overhead was the loft where he’d slept with James, his brother.

He ran his hand along the rungs of the ladder. Two generations of hands had worn the wood as smooth as a silk shirt.

He smiled as he remembered racing his brother up and down the ladder like two over-excited monkeys. Over the years, they’d enjoyed carefree summers, harsh winters, and lots of weekend getaways with their family in this small cabin.

Crossing to the shelf beside the stove, he picked up his granddad’s tin of matches. Most of what sat next to it was practical. There was a folded emergency blanket still in its packaging and a hand-drawn map of the surrounding trails. Whenever they’d discovered a new trail, his granddad had marked it on the map with a red ballpoint pen. After fifteen years of careful additions, it looked like a severe case of the measles had attacked the paper.

Beside the map was a framed photograph. The glass had a hairline crack along one corner, but the image beneath it was undamaged.

Earl Morrison was standing on the deck of the fishing cabin, his arms draped across the shoulders of two boys who bore a strong resemblance to him. Cole was gap-toothed and nine. James was fifteen going on twenty, and already taller than their grandfather.

Cole remembered the smell of the lake and the weight of a fish he’d caught that morning. And the way his granddad had called him capable before any adult in his life had thought to say it.

Cole’s dad had taken the photo. A part of him wished he could step back in time to the carefree weekends they’d spent together. He’d tell himself to enjoy each moment, to savor his grandfather’s wise words, and to be present in his family’s life.

As an adult, Cole measured his success by how many hours he worked and how much money he made. What he hadn’t realized was that the life he led was a roadmap for regrets and missed opportunities.

If his grandfather were here to see him now, Cole didn’t know what he’d think.

Setting the photograph on the table, he took a deep breath and sat in a chair.

Outside, the pines absorbed the wind without protest. Flathead Lake was a quarter mile through the trees in one direction, the Finley Point site less than two miles in the other.