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“You were meant to,” Tammy replied.

Ricky dried his hands and turned toward me with a knowing smile. “Besides, if a certain sheriff happens to turn up at your house later to share the news, you’ll have something decent to offer him.”

I felt warmth creep into my face. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Of course you don’t.”

Tammy laughed, and I tucked the cake into my bag before either of them could say anything else. I knew they were teasing me because they cared, and because they had watched me struggle with the idea of letting Josiah back into my life. They weren’t trying to force me into anything. They simply wanted me to be happy, and they had never been particularly subtle about it.

I said goodbye and headed home in the middle of the afternoon. The house was quiet when I arrived, with sunlight stretching across the living room floor and Sylvester curled up in his favorite chair. He lifted his head when I came in, blinked at me as though I had been gone for an unreasonable length of time, and then stretched before padding over to investigate my bag.

“No, you can’t have the cake,” I told him.

He sniffed the air anyway, apparently unconvinced by my position.

I put the cake in the refrigerator, checked his food and water, and settled down at my laptop. I had a manuscript to work on, and the afternoon offered a welcome chance to concentrate. I managed several paragraphs before I needed a break, then returned to the page and made a little more progress. I still had questions about the case, but they were questions for Josiah and his deputies to answer and it looked like they had a pretty good picture of what had actually happened. The afternoon slipped into evening. I made myself a light supper, fed Sylvester some of the canned food I’d started giving him after my recent shopping trip, and tidied the kitchen before settling back down with my laptop. It was a little after seven when someone knocked at the front door.

I didn’t need to look through the window to know who it was. Still, I took a moment before answering, not because I was uncertain whether I wanted to see Josiah, but because I was learning to give myself room to feel what I felt without immediately deciding what it meant. When I did open the door, he stood on the porch with his hands in his jacket pockets. He looked tired, the sort of tired that came from a long day of difficult conversations and paperwork, but his expression softened when he saw me.

“Hi,” he said. “I hope I’m not interrupting anything.”

“You’re not. Come in.”

He stepped inside, and Sylvester appeared almost immediately, weaving around his legs as though he had been expecting him. Josiah bent to scratch behind the cat’s ears, and Sylvester responded with an enthusiastic purr before trotting toward the living room.

“I see I’m still in his good graces,” Josiah said.

“He’s very forgiving when people know where to scratch.”

“Something I should remember.”

I led him into the kitchen and offered him a seat. “Would you like something to drink? I’ve got coffee, tea, or hot chocolate.”

“Hot chocolate sounds good, if you don’t mind.”

“Not at all.”

I filled the electric kettle and got out two mugs. Once the water boiled, I stirred instant hot chocolate mix into each mug, then added a little cold milk to cool the drinks enough to enjoy. It wasn’t anything fancy, but it was warm and comforting, and the familiar routine gave me something to do while I gathered my thoughts. Sylvester wasted no time climbing onto his lap from under the table, turning twice before dropping heavily against him as though he had personally arranged the evening. Josiah smiled and adjusted his position to accommodate the cat, keeping his hot chocolate well out of reach when Sylvester lifted his nose to investigate.

“Don’t encourage him,” I warned. “He already believes everything in this house belongs to him.”

“Maybe he’s right.”

“Don’t you start.”

I brought out the slice of Smith Island cake Tammy had sent home with me, placed it on a plate with a fork, and set it on the table in front of him. Josiah looked from the cake to me, then smiled.

“That looks good.”

“It is. Tammy made it yesterday, and she sent me home with it. She and Ricky thought you might happen to drop by later tonight.”

“I’m glad she did.”

We ate cake and drank our hot chocolate while the evening settled around us. For a little while, we talked about ordinary things: my writing, Sylvester’s latest attempts to persuade the neighborhood that he needed feeding at every house, and Ricky’s determination to claim credit for the success of Sunday lunch. Josiah laughed at the story about the potatoes, and I found myself relaxing in a way I hadn’t expected.

There was something quietly familiar about having him in my living room. He had been part of my life once, long before the years of silence and the hurt that followed his leaving. Now he sat on my couch with a cat on his lap, drinking hot chocolate and listening to me talk about my day as though this were something we had done a hundred times before.

I caught myself imagining him coming home from work to this house, not as a visitor who needed to be invited in, but as someone who belonged here. Someone I could tell about my day while he loosened his tie and settled beside me. Someone who might share Sunday dinner with my friends, help me feed Sylvester, and make the ordinary parts of life feel less solitary.