Chapter 5
EVAN
Morning light slanted through the kitchen window, catching the steam rising from Evan’s coffee mug.
Outside, a cardinal landed on the bird feeder Emily had installed the first week after they’d moved into the new house—bright red against the green blur of the backyard, the lake glinting silver beyond the trees.
Six months. They’d been in Blueberry Hill six months now, and some mornings he still woke up disoriented, reaching for his phone to check emails that no longer came.
“She’s down.” Emily appeared in the doorway, baby monitor in hand. “Finally. I thought she’d never stop fighting it.”
“She gets that from you.”
“She gets that from your mother.” Emily crossed to the coffeepot, poured herself a cup, and settled into the chair across from him.
She was still in her robe, hair piled in a messy bun, and she looked more relaxed than he’d seen her in years.
The tight line that used to live between her eyebrows—the one that appeared every time a siren wailed or a car backfired—had smoothed away sometime around February.
She loved it here. Had loved it from the moment they’d driven into town the first time, the lake reflecting a sky so blue it hurt to look at.
While Evan had gripped the steering wheel and wondered what the hell she saw in this place, Emily had rolled down her window and breathed deep, like she was inhaling something she’d been starving for.
“You’re brooding,” she said now.
“I’m thinking.”
“You’re brooding. You get this little furrow right here—” She reached across the table and pressed her finger between his eyebrows. “Dead giveaway.”
He caught her hand, held it. Her fingers were warm from the coffee mug, and he could feel the slight roughness of her palms. She’d started gardening a few weeks ago, something she’d never had time for in Seattle.
Their backyard was now a chaos of raised beds and half-finished plans, tomato cages waiting to be planted, herbs already sprouting in containers on the deck.
“The wedding was nice,” she said. “Your mom looked so happy.”
“She did.”
“Will’s good for her. Steady. I really like him.” Emily sipped her coffee. “It’s strange, isn’t it? Watching your parents start over.”
“Parent. Singular.” The bitterness crept in before he could stop it. His father was probably on a yacht somewhere with yet another young girlfriend—posting pictures of his “new chapter” to social media like the old one hadn’t included three children and thirty-five years of marriage.
Emily squeezed his hand. “Parent singular,” she agreed. “Your mom’s the only one who counts.”
The cardinal flew off, a red streak against the morning.
Evan watched it go, thinking about yesterday—his mother in her simple dress, the lake behind her, Will’s weathered face soft with something that looked a lot like wonder.
The whole town had turned out, seemed like.
Francesca from the bookstore had done a reading, her voice carrying clear across the water.
Bo had stood next to her, badge gleaming, looking at her like she’d hung the moon.
And Grace had been passed from arm to arm, cooed over by women Evan was still learning to recognize, until she’d spit up spectacularly on Francesca’s shoulder and everyone had laughed like it was the best thing that had ever happened.
That was the part he couldn’t get used to. In Seattle, a baby vomiting on a stranger would have been mortifying, apologized for endlessly. Here it was just... part of things. Part of the mess of living close to people, knowing them, being known.
“I need to tell you something,” he said.
Emily’s hand stilled in his. “Okay.”
“It’s not bad. At least, I don’t think it’s bad. It might be crazy. It’s probably crazy.”
“Evan.”
“Dean Whitfield offered me a job.”
She blinked. “Who?”
“Dean Whitfield. From the community college. He plays poker with Will on Thursdays—apparently that’s a thing here, Thursday poker—and Will mentioned me, and the dean asked if I’d be interested in teaching some business courses.” The words came faster now, tumbling over each other.
“Intro stuff—accounting basics, small business management. The pay is... well, it’s not what I was making. It’s not even close to what I was making. But there’s great health insurance, and he said there’s room to grow, and the schedule is flexible, and—”
“Evan.” Emily was smiling. “Breathe.”
He breathed. The coffee had gone lukewarm in front of him, and somewhere outside a dog barked—probably the summer people at the other end of the lake with the retriever, the one that went nuts every time a squirrel crossed the yard.
“When did this happen?”
“Thursday. I met with him Friday morning before the rehearsal. I wanted to tell you then, but Grace had that diaper situation, and then Mom needed help with the flowers, and—”
“You’ve been sitting on this for three days?”
“I wasn’t sure what to think.”
Emily released his hand and sat back, cradling her coffee mug. He couldn’t read her expression, and for a moment he was back in their Seattle living room last year, the night everything had almost fallen apart.
She’d wanted to leave after the shooting.
Not the shooting itself—no one they knew had been hurt that day—but the knowledge that it had happened three blocks from their house, at the grocery store where she shopped every week, in the checkout line she’d stood in a hundred times.
A woman had died. A cashier. They’d watched the news coverage together, Emily white-faced and shaking, and when she’d said, “I can’t do this anymore,” Evan had thought she meant the city.
She’d meant everything. The job that consumed him. The house they’d bought as an investment, not a home. The life they’d built on ambition and momentum and very little else.
“I almost lost you,” he said quietly. “Last year. I almost lost both of you.”
“You didn’t lose us.”
“Because you gave me an ultimatum.” He met her eyes. “Because you told me if I didn’t figure out what actually mattered, you’d figure it out without me.”
“I remember.”
“And then I got laid off anyway, and it felt like—” He stopped, searching for words. “Like the universe was making the choice for me. Like I’d held on so tight to something that didn’t even want me back.”
Emily set down her mug. “Is that how you still feel?”
“No.” The answer surprised him with its certainty. “No, that’s the thing. At first, yeah. At first I was furious. All those years, all that work, and they just... let me go. Restructuring, they called it. Optimizing human capital. Like I was a line item on a spreadsheet.”
“You were to them.”
“I was.” He looked out the window again, at their yard with its messy garden beds, the lake beyond, the mountains rising blue and steady against the sky. “But I’m not anymore. And that’s... that’s actually okay.”
The baby monitor crackled—Grace shifted in her sleep, making those small sounds that meant she was dreaming about whatever babies dreamed about. Milk, probably. Warm arms. The strange new world she was just beginning to discover.
“My dad missed everything,” Evan said. “Every school play, every soccer game. And I told myself I was different. Told myself I worked hard because I cared, not because I was avoiding anything.” He shook his head.
“But I was turning into him. I could feel it happening. And then Grace came, and I held her, and I thought—”
“You thought you didn’t want to miss it.”
“I don’t want to miss any of it.” His voice cracked slightly, and he didn’t try to hide it.
“I want to be here. For her first steps and her first words and her first day of school. I want to know her teachers’ names and her friends’ names and what she’s afraid of and what makes her laugh. I want to be present.”
Emily rose from her chair, crossed to him, and settled onto his lap. Her weight was warm and familiar, her arms around his neck, her forehead pressed to his.
“Take the job,” she whispered.
“Yeah?”
“Take the job, Evan. Teach business to kids who actually want to learn. Build something that matters.” She pulled back enough to look at him, her eyes bright. “I didn’t drag us across the country to watch you mope around the house forever.”
“I don’t mope.”
“You absolutely mope. You moped through all of December. You moped through January. You only stopped moping when your mother put you to work on the inn renovations.”
“That’s not moping. That’s processing.”
“It’s moping.” She kissed him, quick and firm. “But I love you anyway. And I think you’re going to be an amazing teacher.”
The monitor crackled again, and this time Grace’s small cry followed—the hungry one, the one that meant she was done sleeping and wanted attention immediately.
“I’ve got her,” Evan said.
Emily slid off his lap. “I’ll make more coffee. Then we need to run into town, Ally needs someone to pick up more honey from her place because she sold out this morning at the farmer’s market.”
“Sold out?”
“Apparently, everyone at the wedding wanted jars to take home. She’s thrilled.” Emily was already at the coffeepot, moving with the easy energy she’d rediscovered since the move. “Oh, and Christina asked if you could help Ryan with something. I think about his internship?”
“Sure, though that kid is smarter than all of us.” It had taken Evan the longest to come around to his half-brother.
While he knew it wasn’t Ryan’s fault that Harry had an affair with Ryan’s mom, the hurt had lingered for months.
But now? Now, Evan saw the kid as family. Guessed people could change.
He headed for the stairs, Grace’s cries growing more insistent, and tried to remember the last time he’d felt this way. This certain about anything. The firm had never made him certain—only anxious, always chasing the next promotion, the next deal, the next proof that he was worth something.
Maybe worth wasn’t something you chased. Maybe it was something you built, day by day, in the small moments that added up to a life.
Grace was red-faced and furious when he reached her room, tiny fists waving in the air like she was fighting invisible enemies. He lifted her carefully, still amazed by how light she was, how completely she trusted him to hold her.
“Hey,” he murmured against her downy head. “Hey, it’s okay. I’m here.”
She quieted at the sound of his voice, her cries fading to hiccups and then to silence. Her eyes—already turning hazel, like his—fixed on his face with that unnerving newborn intensity.
“Your dad’s going to be a professor,” he told her. “How about that? Not exactly what we planned, but plans change. That’s something you’ll learn.”
He carried her to the window, showing her the view of the lake, the mountains, the world waiting outside. “This is home now. This is where you’re going to grow up. And I’m going to be here for all of it. I promise.”
From downstairs, he heard Emily call something about needing to leave in an hour. There was honey to deliver and a thousand other small tasks that made up a life in a place where people knew your name.
He had work to do.