Welcome to Maplewood, Penny
Chapter eight
Penny
Salt and gravel crunch lightly under my feet as I walk up the short path beside the house, and the first thing I notice when I look up is that Evan’s already outside.
Arms folded loosely across his chest, leaning back against the side of the house in a dark long-sleeved thermal pushed up at the forearms. He straightens when he sees me and steps forward before I can get a word out.
“I’ve got it,” he says, reaching for the duffel bag slung over my shoulder.
“Oh. Thanks.” His hand brushes over my arm as he unhooks the strap, and I pretend not to notice.
I notice.
Gus suddenly appears at the porch steps and barrels down toward me before I can say anything, his tail windmilling hard enough to throw off his balance.
I laugh and drop my hand to give him some quick pats, grateful for the interruption and something easy to focus on that doesn’t come with a hundred layers underneath it.
“Hey, mister,” I murmur as he leans into my hand, whining softly. “Miss me?”
“He’s dramatic,” Evan says, shaking his head.
“Good. I like dramatic.”
His mouth twitches, and it does something small and inconvenient in my chest. I stay crouched with Gus for a second longer before I straighten, brushing my hands off against my jeans as I look over at Evan.
“You didn’t bring much.”
I shrug. “Didn’t really feel like there was much worth bringing.”
The words sit there heavier than I meant them to be, and I feel the instinct to soften them, to dress them up into something easier—but I don’t.
Evan nods and doesn’t ask what that means. It should feel like respect, and it probably is, but something familiar in me twists anyway. Because maybe it’s just easier not to look close enough to care. Easier to take what I offer at face value and leave the rest alone.
My eyes drop to the skin of his forearm below his hitched up sleeve, the movement pulling muscle tight as he adjusts the grip on my bag. It’s unfair, honestly, how my brain immediately stops being useful. I clear my throat, dragging my focus back where it belongs.
“So, Elle’s at a playdate?” I ask as we move toward the side gate.
“Yup,” he replies. “With a friend she made at school end of last year. She’ll be there another couple hours—gives you time to settle in.”
“Into my glamorous new life in your backyard?”
Hazel eyes meet mine over his shoulder. “You haven’t seen it yet.”
I pause for half a second before he pushes the gate open for me, and gestures for me to go first.
The backyard is tidy enough for winter. The lawn is flat and pale with frost, and the flowerbeds along the fence are cut back to dark stems and frozen soil. A small vegetable patch sits off to one side, covered for the season, and a swing hangs from the bare branches of an old oak near the fence.
At the far end, tucked neatly between a row of evergreens, is a small standalone building.
It’s painted white with blue trim around the windows, with a small porch off the front door, only big enough for a little outdoor table and chair to sit to one side.
“That’s not what I was expecting when you said guest house,” I admit.
“What were you expecting?”
“Something more… shed-adjacent.”
“It’s not a shed.”
“I can see that.”
He unlocks the door and pushes it open, stepping inside first to flick on the lights. I follow him in, my gaze moving slowly over everything as it comes into view. It’s a properly self-contained studio, and it’s cute.
A small kitchenette runs along one wall. There’s a bookshelf with a few neatly stacked paperbacks, and a beautifully made bed taking up most of the room, with fluffed-up pillows and cushy-looking comforters. On the other side, through an open doorway, I can see a small ensuite bathroom.
I step toward it and stop.
“There’s a bath,” I say, unable to keep the note of delight out of my voice.
He leans against the wall. “There’s a bath.”
“You didn’t mention that.”
“I didn’t think it would be a deciding factor.”
I glance back at him. “You underestimated me.” He watches me as I step fully into the bathroom, running my fingers lightly along the edge of the tub. “This is really nice.”
“It’s fine.”
I move back into the main room, taking it in properly now. The place smells faintly of fresh linen and wood polish. The cushions are plumped. A knitted throw is folded neatly over the back of an armchair. Miss Mabel’s touch, I’m guessing.
“You’ve got a third bedroom in the house, don’t you?” I ask, turning to him.
“Yeah.”
“And yet I’ve been demoted to the backyard.”
“Demoted?” he repeats, one eyebrow lifting.
“I mean, this is beautiful, and I’m very grateful,” I rush, because I am. “I’m just checking whether this is part of the Evan-Approved Safe-Distance Package.”
His jaw tightens for half a second. “It’s not that.”
“Mm.”
“I figured you might want your own space,” he says evenly. “You’re new to town and new to us. It’s a lot.”
I tilt my head slightly. “And the third bedroom wouldn’t give me the space I need?”
“That’s inside the house.”
“That’s generally how bedrooms work.”
His eyes narrow just a fraction. “Elle’s routine works better when the house stays the house.”
“And your schedule is always this predictable?” I ask. “Because I thought firefighter hours were…” I wave a hand vaguely. “Chaotic and horrifying.”
A corner of his mouth shifts. “They can be.”
“Comforting.”
“Rhodes mostly keeps me on days when he can,” he says. “Seven to seven.”
“Your chief schedules around childcare?”
“He schedules around keeping his firefighters functional.” His mouth flattens. “And yeah, he knows I’ve got a five-year-old and a village I’m already abusing the hell out of.”
My chest softens a little at that. “That’s good of him.”
“It is.” He blows out a breath. “But it’s not perfect. If there’s a big call, I go back in. If we’re short, I pick up. Sometimes I get held over or end up on a double, and then I’m scrambling like everybody else.”
“So that’s where I come in?”
His eyes come back to mine. “That’s where consistency comes in. For Elle. The guest house is yours, but if I get held over or called back in overnight, the third bedroom’s there.”
“That makes sense,” I say quietly.
And it does. I get why he’s doing this. It’s not about me, it’s about protecting the space that belongs to him and Elle.
But I still feel the quiet pang of being set gently on the outside.
It’s familiar enough that I breathe through it carefully, telling myself it’s just a boundary and not rejection.
It simply means I’ll have to prove I can be trusted, that I can fit into something that already exists without shifting it too much, or breaking it.
I walk a slow circle through the space again, noticing the newer trim around the windows, the slightly different shade of paint compared to the main house.
“This was built more recently,” I say, brushing my hand along the edge of the kitchenette counter.
“It was.”
I turn to face him fully, my curiosity getting the better of me. “Did you build it?”
“Mostly. Had a few people help.”
“For what reason?”
There’s a small pause.
“For Stacey.”
“Elle’s mom?”
“Yeah.” He exhales quietly, eyes fixed briefly on a spot beyond me, like he’s gathering the right words. “She struggles with addiction. We moved here originally to get away from the crowd she ran with in the city, thought it might help her stay clean. And it did, for a while.”
I hold still, listening carefully, not wanting to interrupt.
“But when Elle was barely one, she went back to Toronto for a weekend and ended up swallowed back up by it. She, uhh, kept coming back every now and then, saying she was getting clean,” he continues.
“Third time, I thought if she had a space that was hers, close enough but not in the house, maybe it’d help. ”
I glance around the room again. “And did it?”
“No.”
The word lands without any softness wrapped around it.
“She relapsed,” he says. “Sold half the furniture I put in here, brought guys back from Neverland I didn’t know. It stopped being safe. She was never here for long, but still managed to trash the place. When I hired Miss Mabel, she helped me fix it up after.”
There’s no bitterness in his tone at all. The way he’s talking is almost like he’s repeating something he’s memorized that didn’t directly affect him. As though he’s said it enough times that the emotion has worn from it.
“I won’t have that around Elle,” he adds firmly, as though saying it aloud anchors it again for him.
“No,” I agree gently. “And it sounds like you gave her chances.”
“I gave her boundaries,” he corrects quietly. “She broke them.”
“But you rebuilt it again,” I say softly, gesturing around the room. “That tells me you don’t like leaving broken things broken.”
His gaze snaps away for a moment, the muscles in his jaw shifting just enough to betray a quiet vulnerability. “Leaving it broken wouldn’t have helped anyone.”
I swallow and nod, taking a step closer to close some of the space between us without quite thinking about it.
“You don’t do things by halves, do you?”
He frowns slightly. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You built her a house.”
His eyes hold mine. “She’s Elle’s mother.”
I nod. “And we do whatever we can to protect the people we love.”
His jaw shifts again, emotion flashing there so briefly, I almost miss it before he locks it back down. I turn back toward the bedroom before I can think about it too closely.
“For what it’s worth,” I add lightly, “I would never do anything to put Elle at risk. But I appreciate you need time to know that.”
He exhales through his nose.
“This isn’t about keeping you out.”
I turn and unzip my bag and start pulling out clothing, folding them into the small dresser next to the bed while he lingers by the doorway.
“I grew up in a big house,” I say after a moment, because it feels fair to offer something back. “With huge rooms I wasn’t allowed to use and furniture nobody was allowed to actually sit on.”
He doesn’t interrupt.
“Three stories, and somehow, I still spent most of my time trying not to take up space in it, especially after my dad passed.” I smooth my hand over the drawer as I slide it shut. “It was the perfect house, but it never felt alive.” His eyes follow me as I turn back to him. “But this does.”
The corner of his mouth lifts slightly. “You’ve been here five minutes.”
I shrug a shoulder. “Still.”
He steps back into the room, his eyes darting between my own, studying me.
“You always test people like this?”
“Like what?”
“Poking at their boundaries.”
I grin. “Only the ones I’m interested in understanding.”
“And what have you figured out so far?”
“That you probably alphabetize your pantry.”
“I do not.”
“You absolutely do.”
He brushes past me toward the kitchenette, opening the one cabinet above the sink and gesturing inside.
“It’s by size.”
My laugh spills out before I can stop it. “Mmhmm.”
He turns back to me, a fraction too close. “You’re enjoying this.”
“A little.”
“That’s dangerous.”
“For who?”
His eyes flick down to my mouth and back up again. “Good question.”
For a second, neither of us moves, but then he slides past me again, as though he’s drawn the line and already decided to stick to it.
“If you need anything,” he says, gesturing vaguely toward the main house as he steps outside, “I’m roughly twenty steps away.”
“Twenty, huh?”
“Roughly.”
I glance toward the bathroom again.
“A bath,” I remind him with a wink.
He shakes his head slightly, huffing a chuckle.
“Welcome to Maplewood, Penny.”
I smile and watch him cross the yard, his shoulders squared and muscles rippling under his taut T-shirt with each step. The door to the main house closes softly behind him, and the guest house falls quiet.
I turn slowly, taking it in again. My hand runs back over the edge of the counter, imagining what it must’ve felt like for him. The furniture gone, the shelves empty. Everything sold off in pieces.
He built this once for someone he loved, who stripped it bare.
But when it broke, he rebuilt it again. Still believed in the good and the hope and the love. It’s evident in the fresh paint along the window frames. In the carefully selected cushion covers and the pretty bedside lamp. Even the spices stubbornly lined up by size in the cabinet.
He didn’t leave a wreckage, and that tells me more about him than anything he’s ever said.
Sunlight stretches in through the window, catching on the silver heels I tug from my bag and scattering light across the floorboards. My fingers hesitate, brushing against the worn edges of my journal tucked just beneath the remainder of my clothes.
I’ve kept it packed since I left Toronto, the pages filled with thoughts I couldn’t say aloud, truths I needed somewhere safe to keep.
I slide it out slowly, holding it in my hands before setting it down on the nightstand, because this feels like the first place in a long time that might be safe enough to let myself truly unpack.
Evan may have built this little house to hold boundaries, but right now, looking around this carefully rebuilt room, I don’t feel far from him at all.