She worked faster, less carefully. A chunk of plaster came loose with the next strip of paper, leaving a pockmark in the wall.
“Damn it,” she breathed, running her fingers over the damage.
This wasn’t like her. She was usually meticulous with this kind of work. She’d prided herself on her attention to detail. Now she was making rookie mistakes, rushing through tasks she would normally have approached with care.
The realization hit her with unexpected force: she was doing exactly what her mother had always done. Cutting corners. Rushing through. Making things just good enough because one day they would be left behind.
Don’t waste time making it pretty. We’ll be gone before the paint dries.
Her mother’s voice came back so clearly she almost looked over her shoulder. How many times had she heard those words growing up? How many half-finished projects had they left behind in how many houses?
Meryl set down the scraper and leaned against the wall, suddenly tired. This was her mother’s pattern, not hers. At least, it hadn’t been hers until now. Until Pine Cottage had started to feel too much like something she might miss.
She walked slowly back downstairs, her footsteps heavy on the treads. In the sitting room, her gaze caught on the brass latch at the window, then the cleaned hearth, then the stretch of wall where every repair now seemed to carry his handprint. The house was quiet, but not in the peaceful way she’d once found comforting. This silence felt hollow, as if the cottage itself was holding its breath, waiting to see what she would do next.
Meryl crossed to the kitchen and opened the cabinet where she’d stored Hilda’s journal. She hadn’t looked at it since that day with Frank, but now she found herself turning the pages again, tracing her finger over Hilda’s neat handwriting.
Some houses are only shelter. This one is a home.
The words seemed to look back at her, challenging her current approach. Hilda had never rushed. Never cut corners. Never treated Pine Cottage as anything less than a place worth caring about properly.
Meryl closed the journal and set it on the counter. Then she moved through the house slowly, room by room, seeing it with new eyes, or perhaps with the eyes she’d been trying not to use since she received the job offer.
The sitting room, where the brass fixtures caught the afternoon light. The kitchen, where they’d cooked that simple pasta dinner that had turned into something else entirely. The porch they’d rebuilt together, solid and true. The garden where the rose was beginning to recover from its ruthless but necessary pruning.
None of these places felt anonymous anymore. None of them felt like they could belong to just anyone.
She stopped at the fireplace, where her hand went automatically to the mantel. Spencer had spent an entire afternoon restoring it, carefully removing layers of old paint, revealing the grain of the wood beneath. She remembered watching his hands work, steady and sure, the quiet pleasure in his face when the true beauty of the piece emerged.
“Oh,” she said softly.
This was what she’d been trying not to see. Not just that, the cottage had become something more than a project. But that she had allowed it to matter—allowed him to matter—in a way that now made the thought of leaving feel like something she would have to survive rather than something she could simply do.
The truth hit her with painful clarity: she wasn’t protecting herself by rushing through these final tasks, by trying to makePine Cottage less special, less personal. She was already grieving what she would lose when she left.
And the knowledge that she was grieving something she hadn’t even lost yet—that was the worst part. Because it meant Pine Cottage had already worked its way past her carefully constructed defenses. It meant Spencer had too.
Meryl sank onto the sofa, suddenly exhausted. Her list lay abandoned on the side table, the tasks she’d been so determined to power through now seeming hollow and insufficient.
For the first time since her arrival, she allowed herself to truly imagine leaving—not as an abstract future event, but as a concrete reality. Locking the door one last time. Driving away down the winding lane. Never again seeing the way the evening light turned the kitchen golden, or feeling the solid planks of the porch beneath her feet, or watching Spencer’s hands move over wood with that quiet certainty.
The thought didn’t bring the relief it once might have. Instead, it sat heavy in her chest, a dull ache she couldn’t rationalize away.
She’d spent her entire adult life avoiding exactly this feeling—this sense of connection, of belonging, of having something to lose. She’d thought she was being practical, sensible, clear-eyed. Now she wondered if she’d just been afraid.
Outside, the light was beginning to soften toward evening. Meryl stood and moved to the window, looking out at the mountains beyond the cottage. They were the same mountains she’d seen every day since her arrival, but somehow they looked different now—not a backdrop to a temporary stay, but part of a place she had begun to know and love.
For the first time, Meryl could no longer pretend that walking away would be easier. In truth, it would be anything but.
Chapter Twenty – Spencer
After he’d gotten home from Pine Cottage, he’d tried to work on the window seat. Normally, working with wood soothed him. But not today.
His hands had lost their steadiness. He’d fumbled the chisel twice, and the third time it had slipped, gouging a line across the oak where no line belonged. The wood deserved better than his distracted attention.
Go to her,his bear urged.She’s pulling away. We’re losing her.
“I know,” Spencer said aloud to the empty workshop. “But barging in won’t help.”
