Epilogue
. . .
Rosalind
Evelyn cries when she holds the finished catalog. “This is exactly what I wanted. It’s better than I imagined.”
In six short weeks, I’ve launched Hollow Peak’s backcountry lending program and matched thirty-two households with their starter collections.
My system hums along on index cards designed at Jace’s kitchen table.
But it wasn’t the flawless execution that made my throat seize.
It’s Evelyn’s tear-streaked face and the certainty that for the first time, I hadn’t only built a system. I’d found a home.
She closes the binder. “I want you to stay and work here. I can’t pay city money, but we’ll figure out something to make it worth your while. You belong in Hollow Peak.”
Her words wash over me, a lifeline. To belong. Not just to a project, but to a place, a person, a life.
“Yes,” I whisper. “Thank you.”
She hugs me.
I drive back to Denver. My life—what little of it mattered—fits into my leaky hatchback and two boxes shipped ahead with the rest: books, clothes, my grandmother’s vanilla extract, and the consulting binders I’ll never open again. It’s less than I owned six weeks ago, and somehow, infinitely more.
I stand in the empty space, the air cool and still. I wait for a tug, a pang, any whisper of regret or nostalgia. My chest is empty.
My hands, surprisingly steady, reach for the lock. Nothing. I lock the door and leave the key with the landlord.
I call my mother from a gas station on the way to Hollow Peak, because if I don’t call her until I’m settled, she’ll find out from Margaret, who discovered everything from someone, somehow, by a mechanism I haven’t been able to track.
The line clicks. “Rosalind?”
“Hey.”
“Where are you? It sounds like a parking lot.”
“It is. I’m calling to let you know I’m moving.”
A pause. “Where to?”
“Hollow Peak, Colorado. At the bookstore I consulted for.”
The quiet grows.
“Sweetheart,” Mother says. “Are you sure that is wise?”
Her question settles over me, heavy and familiar from twenty-eight years of it. My fingers tighten on the phone. She’s not cruel, but she doesn’t know how to ask anything else.
“Yes, I’m sure it’s wise,” I say for the first time ever. “I’m also moving in with someone.”
The static hisses, the silence heavy with her disapproval. I square my shoulders against it.
“You met someone at the bookstore?” She sounds confused.
“No. In a cabin. During a rockslide, actually. His name’s Jace. He’s a lumberjack. Reads Wendell Berry. Even carved me an aspen bookmark. And he has a dog named Spool.”
“Rosalind.” Her voice is softer, uncertain, almost fragile. “Are you happy?”
The question stops me. She’s never asked me that before.
As a cold wind blows, I lean on my car. Tears prick my eyes. “Yes. I’m very happy.”
A long breath. “Tell me about the dog.”
I tell her about Spool, his missing ear, and how he sleeps across the foot of the bed. I tell her about Mae and the cinnamon rolls. I tell her about Jace and how he turns the handle of my coffee mug toward where I stand.
She listens and doesn’t ask me again if it’s wise.
When we disconnect, I sit in the driver’s seat of my hatchback, the phone still warm in my hand.
I think about Margaret and the conversation she’ll have with my mother about her crazy sister and the lumberjack thing. I’m sure Bradley will smirk into his wine.
I don’t care. I drive toward the mountains.
The San Juans rise on both sides of the road, green with late spring. The snow has pulled back to the highest ridges. Wildflowers line the switchbacks: purple, yellow, and white. The aspens have leafed out, their new leaves trembling in the breeze.
I drive with the window down. The air smells like I’m almost home. The road is smooth, repaved where the rockslide tore it apart, and the fresh asphalt is darker than the old.
I have only ever driven away. From the job or someone who made me feel like a compromise. Always moving, an emergency snack bag full, a binder full of plans for someone else’s project.
Not today.
Hollow Peak appears below me the same way it did the first time. Brick and timber. Steam from the hot springs. Mountains behind everything.
I park on Main Street. Crooked, same as the first day.
Mae sweeps the sidewalk outside the Switchback. She looks up, leans the broom against the wall, and folds her arms. “You’re early for a Sunday morning.”
“Couldn’t sleep.”
“Makes two of you.” She tilts her head toward the mountain. “Mr. Side-Eye’s been on that porch since dawn. I know because Theo drove past at six-thirty and called to tell me.” She picks up the broom and points it at me. “Go put that man out of his misery.”
Evelyn stands in the doorway of Bluebird two doors down, a coffee cup in one hand, grinning. She raises the cup at me. I wave.
A whole town is watching me return. But it’s time for me to go home.
For good.
Pines and aspens close in on both sides of the logging road. As the road climbs, branches scrape the hatchback’s roof. The ruts are familiar now. I know where the rocks jut up, where the mud gets soft, and where to ease the wheel to avoid the worst of the washboard.
The trees open, and the cabin is there. The porch light is on.
Ten in the morning, and the yellow bulb glows over the weathered timber. He must’ve left it on all night. Maybe he’s left it on every night since I drove away.
Jace sits on the porch steps, Spool beside him.
He stands when he sees my car.
I park and turn off the engine. The quiet of the mountain fills my ears. Wind in the aspens. A bird somewhere in the pines. Spool’s nails on the porch boards as he stands, tail wagging.
I get out.
Jace comes down the steps. His hair is pushed back, his flannel rolled to the elbows. The scar catches the morning light, the raised line I’ve traced with my fingers, kissed in the dark, and memorized like the lines on my palms.
He stops in front of me and stares at me straight on. The man the town nicknamed has decided not to do the gesture anymore.
His arms go around me, and he lifts me off the ground. My arms circle his neck. As he holds me, his breath shudders.
Spool barks. Once. Offended.
I laugh.
“The dog can wait.” Jace doesn’t put me down. “Let’s go inside.”
He carries me into the cabin, which smells like coffee and woodsmoke. The bookshelf is how I left it. The index cards sit in a neat stack on the kitchen table.
“I added a card to your catalog,” he says. “It’s on top.”
I pick it up. His handwriting is blocky, all capitals, the letters pressed into the card like he bore down on the pen.
ROSALIND EGAN. FILED UNDER: HOME.
I press the card to my chest with both hands. The same way I held the aspen bookmark.
He leans on the doorframe, one shoulder pressed to the wood, watching me. The corner of his mouth lifts.
On the counter beside the coffee mugs is a flyer. The Timberline Tavern. Friday night. Live music and burgers.
He has circled it in pen. Thick lines.
“Mason stopped by Tuesday,” he says. “Said the stool at the bar has been empty too long.”
My eyes blur. I set the card down on the stack and hug him.
His chin rests on the top of my head. Spool settles against both our legs.
Outside, the porch light is still on. The coffee is hot. The books are on the shelves. The mountains are out the window.
I’m twenty-eight years old. I have a sister in Boston who closed on her second house this year and a mother who asked me once if I was happy. I have a man holding me with a dog at my legs. And I have a card catalog on a kitchen table with my name on the top.
I’m home. Finally.