Page 59 of Finding Home

“I hope you’re right.” Cole rubbed his forehead. As well as telling him not to work, his doctor had told him to keep his stress levels to a minimum. Talking about the Sargeson Group made his blood pressure spike.

“Do you want to have dinner with me tonight?” Cole asked Julie. “After all the home baking that’s come my way, I thought I’d cook something myself.”

“That could be interesting,” Julie said with a laugh. “What did you have in mind?”

Cole grinned. “Mac and cheese, the healthy kind.”

“I didn’t know there was a healthy version,” Julie teased. “I’ll bring a salad and some dessert. Does five-thirty suit you?”

It was perfect, in more ways than one. “I’ll see you then.”

Before Cole joined Noah in their temporary office, he closed his eyes and thought about all the good people he’d met in Sapphire Bay.

Maybe that was what had kept his grandfather here for more years than he could count. And maybe, Cole thought, that’s what would keep him here.

Chapter 37

The boxes had been in Julie’s storage cupboard since October, stacked behind a bag of rock salt and a spare set of curtain rods she’d never used. Cole carried two of them into the living room and set them on the floor without being asked. Then he went back for the third.

Julie pulled the flaps open on the first box. She hadn’t looked at any of this since she’d packed it at the old apartment, her then-life reduced to categories—kitchen, linen, Christmas—each sealed with the same brown tape. She’d assumed that unpacking here would feel like starting over. Something dutiful and a little bleak.

It didn’t feel that way now.

“There’s no system,” Cole observed from behind her.

She looked at the tangle of lights and wax paper and folded tissue. “There’s never been a system.”

Cole crouched beside the box and began lifting things out with the careful attention he gave everything that mattered. He turned a small ceramic reindeer over in his hands.

“One of Meg’s,” Julie told him. “She made it in fourth grade. The antlers have never been right.”

He examined the lopsided antlers and set it gently on the coffee table.

They worked for a while without much talking. Julie untangled strings of lights by the window while Cole sorted through tissue-wrapped ornaments, laying them out in a loose row.

Julie’s cottage wasn’t large. That was part of why she’d worried when she’d confirmed Meg and Daniel’s visit. One spare room and a grandchild who was always in motion took a lot more space than Julie did.

But everything was ready now. She’d made the spare bed with the heavier quilt early that morning, before Cole arrived, and pushed a portable cot into the corner, anchoring it against the wall so it couldn’t shift in the night.

Meg would sleep in the living room on her pull-out couch. She’d stacked a thick duvet in the corner of the room, with a fluffy pillow and fresh linen ready for her daughter.

That was all she’d managed before Cole knocked on her door.

He took her artificial tree out of its box and set it on the stand.

“The lights need to go on the tree first,” she said.

“I know how a tree works, Julie.”

“You’ve never decorated one with me.”

Cole’s eyebrows rose. “I’ve put up a few trees in my time.”

She handed him the untangled string. “Then you’ll know to start at the top.”

Cole stood and took the lights from her without comment, which was how she knew he’d been intending to start somewhere else entirely.

She’d bought the tree the previous week from the general store. It was a decent size for the space—nearly five feet, which was as tall as the ceiling would comfortably allow—and it was propped in its stand near the front window where it would be visible from the street.