Chapter 29
TWENTY-NINE
KRISTA
Sunday, Day Three of the Summer Swap
By the time Krista pulled into the gravel drive at her grandparents’ house, the sky was turning that deep summer blue that only showed up after a long, hot day. It made the trees look darker and the lake look closer, like the world had edged in for the night.
She turned the pickup off and sat there for a second, fingers still wrapped around the steering wheel.
Alice was okay. Not great, not fine, but okay. There had been talk of “age-related bone density” and “adjusting expectations.” Krista had only heard half of it.
The front porch light clicked on before she could move. The screen door creaked open and Joe stepped out, hand braced on the doorframe.
Krista’s mood instantly shifted. The light caught the scruff along Joe’s jaw, the dark sweep of his hair, the worn T-shirt clinging to his shoulders. His forearm flexed where he gripped the frame, muscles tightening under tanned skin. Heat spread low in her belly .
She instantly smiled. She wasn’t sure what he was doing at her grandparents’ house. It didn’t matter. He was here.
She stepped out of the truck and he came down the steps, long strides eating up the distance, meeting her halfway along the gravel drive. He smelled like soap and smoke and the faintest hint of something savory and spicy.
He kissed her softly, his hand sliding up her cheek, fingers curving into her hair. Heat sparked along her skin at the first brush of his mouth. It was a “welcome home” and an “I’ve missed you,” all in one gesture, and her knees went a little weak.
“Your day go okay?” he asked, stepping back.
“As well as expected,” she said, walking toward the cabin. “You survived the Hideaway?”
“Barely,” he said. “Mrs. C. tried to tip me in crumpled coupons and life advice and my bumblebee art looked like tortured butterflies.”
A laugh pushed up, surprising her. “I’m almost afraid to ask what Elsie posted.”
“She loved it,” he said. “Apparently people love seeing my artwork.”
“I bet they do.” Krista smiled.
“After that, I came back to the campground, split and bundled some wood to sell and stopped by the bees. Thought they’d want to hear about Alice’s fall. They send their regards.”
Krista was almost speechless. “You did all that? At least let me get us dinner.” Krista wasn’t about to make a four-course meal, but she could get them woodfired pizza from the Kettle or maybe Chinese food.
“Already taken care of. I made jambalaya. Thought I could heat it up for you and Walt when he got back. He gave me the keys.” Joe motioned to the house.
“Oh…” It took Krista a second to process Joe’s level of kindness. “Well…he’s sitting with Gram for a while longer. Want to have a drink on the back porch while we wait for him?” Krista suggested.
“After you.”
They slipped inside, Krista going to the fridge and pulling out two beers. She twisted the caps off, tossing them in the trash, and handed one to Joe. “To making it through another day.”
He clinked his bottle to hers.
The porch wrapped around the back of the house, overlooking the campground and the lake beyond.
Tonight, the air was soft and cool against her skin.
The last of the sun brushed the tops of the trees, turning the leaves copper at the edges.
She could see the flickering of a few campfires through the trees, the faint movement of people down by the water.
She sank down on the step beside Joe, her thigh bumping his. The boards were warm through her shorts. The sounds of the campground floated up on the evening breeze with kids laughing, a screen door slamming, and someone chopping wood.
And yet, she couldn’t ignore the anxiety that creeped up her spine at everything there was to do. Everyone she needed to take care of.
Her shoulders slumped before she could stop them.
“Hey,” Joe said softly, bumping her knee with his. “It’ll be okay.”
Krista was not as convinced. “I just keep thinking about all the things I haven’t done yet. It’s like everything I put off because I was too busy is coming due at once.”
Her throat burned. She blinked hard at the lake.
“I know I’m being dramatic,” she muttered. “I just…”
“You’re not being dramatic,” Joe said quietly.
She almost laughed.
Joe’s hand found hers again without comment. His thumb brushed over her knuckles, slow and steady.
“How long have you been doing all of this?” he asked. “The double duty. Or triple, I guess. Campground, Hideaway, grandparents.”
“Feels like forever,” she said lightly. Then she sighed.
“Really? Since before Grandma got sick. They were already slowing down. I stepped in more the last five years. Opening the Hideaway was supposed to be my thing. My dream. But I also opened it ten minutes from here for a reason. I keep thinking that if I just work harder, juggle better, it’ll all balance out. ”
“You still think that?” he asked.
She thought of the empty sand order, the storm drains, the hospital forms. The sales offer she hadn’t even looked at.
“No,” she said.
They sat with that for a moment.
Fireflies flickered off and on in the trees, tiny floating lights. Somewhere near the south end of the campground, a group of kids burst into laughter, then quieted just as quickly.
“You ever think about not staying?” Joe asked softly. “Before all this. Before the fall.”
“Sometimes,” she admitted. “In that vague, late-night way. I always thought I’d go to Europe after college, maybe with Robyn. Backpacking, or some kind of solo soul-searching trip. See Paris. Get lost in Rome. Take pictures of pastries and pretend I understand wine.”
“Good plan,” he said. “Highly recommend.”
She nudged his knee with hers. “Of course you do. You’ve actually done it.”
“Some of it,” he said. “Not as much as you might think.”
She glanced over. “Thought you’d been all over the world.”
He shrugged one shoulder. “I’ve been a lot of places. Not everywhere.”
His fingers tightened slightly around hers.
“My childhood, moving between foster homes, forced me to be at good at packing up, starting over, not getting attached to stuff I’d have to leave. When I found photography, it felt like the perfect match. Travel. Write, take pictures. In and out. No roots to trip over.
“But after a while,” he went on, “that became its own kind of…empty. You sit in enough hotel rooms and hostels, you start to realize every place looks the same when you never stay long enough to learn which grocery store has the good bread or who makes the best lemon bars in town.”
Her mouth twitched. “Lemon bars are an essential metric, obviously.”
“Obviously,” he said. “I like my work. I love a good story. But I started to realize that what I was jealous of wasn’t other people’s trips.” He nodded toward the campground. “It was their coming home.”
The words hung there, warm and heavy.
Krista’s grip on his hand tightened.
She studied his profile in the soft porch light. The strong line of his nose. The faint stubble he hadn’t bothered to shave yet. The tired around his eyes.
“You spend your whole life learning how to leave,” she said quietly, “and then you have to teach yourself how to stay.”
He glanced at her. “Yeah. Maybe.”
“I don’t know if I ever learned how to leave,” Krista admitted.
“I talk about it. Complain. Say I wish things were different. But when push comes to shove, I’m the one who stays.
Who picks up the slack. Who keeps this place running.
I love my grandparents. I’d do it all again.
But sometimes I look at my life and think, when did it stop being mine and become everybody else’s? ”
The words felt too honest, too exposed. She almost wished she could yank them back.
“I want both,” she said, barely louder than the creak of the porch boards. “Is that selfish? To want to take care of them and still…have something that’s mine? To travel someday, even. To not always be the one plugging leaks in everything. ”
“It’s not selfish,” he said. “It’s human.”
She breathed out, shaky. “You make it sound so simple.”
“It’s not,” he said. “I know that. But it doesn’t mean you don’t get to want it.”
They sat like that for a while, the porch light humming, the sky darkening fully. The campground settled deeper into the night around them.
Krista let her head tip sideways until it rested lightly against his shoulder. He didn’t comment, just shifted enough to make it easier, his cheek brushing briefly against her hair.
And in that quiet, she finally let herself want it all—the life here, the dreams out there—with this man beside her.
Joe cleared his throat softly. “I almost forgot,” he said, reaching for his phone. “Jackson texted me. He knows a spot that might match Isabel’s description. Wanted to know if we’re up for hiking it tomorrow still. Told him I’d get back to him.”
Krista sat up a little straighter. “I’d like that. I might only be able to get away for an hour, but…”
“It’s just the distraction you need right now?” Joe guessed.
“Exactly.”
By the time they’d finished their drinks, Walt had returned. They settled in around the table as a family would, eating Joe’s delicious jambalaya and settling down for the evening.
“I’ll see you tomorrow?” Krista asked finally, walking back toward her truck, ready to head to Joe’s tent while he went to her apartment.
“Bright and early. We’ll get that hike in. Then you can take some foodie shots around Maple Falls while I work at the Hideaway.”
“It’s a date,” Krista replied, meeting Joe in the small space between where their vehicles were parked.
Joe leaned in and gave her a quick kiss, the kind that could’ve lingered if they weren’t standing outside her grandparents’ house .
Later that night, under the stars with the fire crackling around her and the scent of woodsmoke rising in the air, Krista snapped a photo of Joe’s tent, with the stars above, the arms of the Milky Way twisting into infinity.
She didn’t know everything about photography, and it was just on her phone, but she thought she’d done a decent job.
She quickly sent the photo to Elsie and Joe for her evening update titled: Joe’s Tent Under The Stars.
A moment later Elsie replied.
Elsie: This is gorgeous!!!
Joe: Yeah, beautiful job, Krista. Your best photo yet.
Elsie: Can’t wait to see the foodie pics tomorrow. The Pumpkin Pie Bakery is sponsoring!!!
As she settled in for the night, Krista thought that she might not be able to have everything. But she could have tomorrow. And for now, tomorrow was enough—especially if it meant Joe’s hands on her again, that low, steady attention that made her forget the rest of the world existed.
She just had to stop thinking about what came next.