Maybe it was just the feeling that had become so familiar over the past weeks that she no longer tried to argue with it.
She was driving home.
The lane curved through the pines, late afternoon light flickering gold between the trunks. By the time Pine Cottage came into view, Meryl felt that quiet easing in her chest she had once only ever felt in passing—never in arrival.
The cottage looked almost finished now. Not picture perfect. Not the kind of polished, over-styled place that belonged in a magazine spread. Better than that. Real. The porch stood straight and sound. The rose by the gate had recovered beautifully from its hard pruning and still held a few stubborn blooms. The windows caught the light cleanly, and the garden, though not yet tamed in every corner, looked more like the sketches in Hilda’s journal.
Meryl parked beside Spencer’s truck and smiled to herself.
He was here. She hadn’t expected him. He’d muttered something about an important job he needed to do back at his workshop.
She gathered her bag and portfolio, climbed the porch steps, and let herself in.
The house greeted her with its familiar hush, the soft settling sounds of old timber, the faint scent of beeswax and fresh paint, and something warm from the kitchen. But almost at once she felt it.
Something had changed.
“Spencer?” she called.
No answer came, but there was a faint sound from the sitting room. A shift. A scrape. Then silence again.
Curious, she moved toward the doorway and stopped dead.
The window seat.
For a moment, she could only stand there and stare.
It fit the alcove so perfectly that it looked as though it had always belonged beneath the bay window. Solid oak, beautifully made, the wood stained to match the restored trim, the hinged seat lifting slightly at one side to hint at storage beneath. A long cushion in deep blue ran across the top, and the late light falling through the glass turned the whole thing golden.
Meryl crossed the room slowly, almost reverently, and laid her hand on the smooth wood.
It was real.
Spencer had built it without telling her. That man could keep a secret.
Then her fingertips brushed the detail carved into the side panel, and her breath caught.
Ferns.
A delicate curling pattern worked into the wood with such care that it felt part of the piece rather than added to it. Familiar enough that she knew at once where it had come from.
One of her sketches. Not even a proper sketch. Just a thoughtless doodle in the margin of her notebook while they had been talking one evening.
He had noticed.
Meryl traced the curling frond with the tip of her finger, and something inside her gave way all over again.
“Do you like it?”
She turned.
Spencer stood in the doorway, leaning lightly against the frame, as if he had been there a moment and hadn’t wanted to interrupt. There was a smear of sawdust near his wrist and a small nick across one knuckle, and despite everything they had already built together, despite everything they had already said, the sight of him standing there looking just slightly uncertain made her heart twist.
“It’s perfect,” she said, and heard the thickness in her own voice.
His expression softened. “I’m glad.”
“The ferns,” she said, looking back at them. “You saw that?”
