As Riggs charged across the yard toward the shed with Ford, Cadence snapped a picture of the exterior and texted it to her sisters before she regretted it. It had been a hard summer for all of them to be without their mom, but it brought them closer, too.
Her phone buzzed with a series of texts, but not from Sophie or Tessa.
Janine:We need the Providence Drive property live on the MLS today.
Janine:Can you make that happen?
Janine:Are you there?
Janine:???
Cadence started a reply, but lost service halfway through. “Oh, well.” Her boss knew how to activate a listing. Maybe she hadn’t done it in a while, but Cadence had already done all the prep work. She’d reach out later.
Digging the keys out of her purse, she slowly took the steps up to the porch. How many times as a child had she run up these in some urgent hurry to tell her great-aunt about something she saw? Oh, the hours she’d spent reading books in the sunlight on this very deck.
Tessa:Use that pic for the listing. Got a price yet?
Guess I got service back.Turning her phone to silent, Cadence shoved it in her purse and made her way to the front door. Tessa would have her listing price tomorrow. Until then, Cadence could have one day to herself to relive some of the better memories. One day to pretend she was visiting.
The front windows that reflected the stark blue sky stretched toward the roof peak and felt so much more massive now that she was standing directly in front of them.
The front door stood off to the side, as not to obstruct the view from the interior. Cadence retracted the deadbolt and took a deep, steadying breath before stepping across the threshold and into her forgotten childhood summer.
The great room that greeted every guest who ever stayed at the Sunset Ridge Lodge welcomed Cadence with its familiar cathedral ceiling and antler chandelier. It amazed her to think there was still an upstairs bedroom above its height. Daylight poured into the room, highlighting the mixture of peeled log and cedar woodwork. A pair of leather loveseats, four recliners, and a longer couch circled a coffee table, all centered on a moose and bear patterned area rug.
“It doesn’t get more Alaskan than that rug, huh?”
Startled, Cadence spun around to find Ford standing on the mat at the front door. He’d shed the button-up shirt, leaving him in a white T-shirt that hugged muscular arms. She should look away, but her gaze froze on his biceps.
“I was hoping to grab a dish of water for Riggs.” His words shook away her short trance.
“Of course.”
Cadence remembered the path to the kitchen in the back of the house. “Wow, Aunt Patty did some updating in here.” Gone were the black appliances. In their place were stainless steel everything. It felt bigger than before, too. “A gas stove with double ovens?”
“That thing is top-of-the-line, commercial grade. I helped install it a couple years back.”
“Tessa would love this.”
“Tessa?”
“My older sister. She’s a chef.”
Ford moved around her toward an upper cabinet and pulled out a plastic bowl. His familiarity didn’t go unnoticed.How much time does he spend here?Cadence had once known where everything was. But when she went to the cupboard that held drinking glasses over a decade ago, she found dessert plates in their place. “Wow, everything is still here, isn’t it?”
“Everything.” Ford filled the dish with water from one of two sinks.
Cadence assumed it would be easier to sell an Alaskan lodge if it was fully furnished and equipped with dishes, linens, and decor. It would allow them to increase the asking price, too. She set the envelope on the marble countertop and pulled out the appraisal again.
“I’ll be about an hour if you want a ride back,” Ford said. “Riggs’ll probably hang out on the front deck.”
Cadence nodded her response, already absorbed in the documents. Combing through the appraisal felt like a betrayal. Had her sisters forgotten what this place once meant to them?
She abandoned the stapled packet and decided to roam the lodge to snap a few pictures. But she had only to step into the living room to catch sight of Riggs sitting at a window, staring in.
Spotting her, his tall ears perked.
“Sorry, Aunt Patty.” From what she remembered, pets had never been allowed in the main lodge, only in the outer cabins. But Riggs looked so lonely, standing there on the porch looking in. And Cadence wasn’t ready to leave.
