It wasn’t perfect, but the disguise was enough.
“You’d know best,” Naomi finally said. “Let’s go.”
A few moments later, she, Naomi, and Grace stepped outside. Rowan settled into the passenger seat as Naomi buckled Grace into the car seat behind them.
The drive into town took twenty minutes. Rowan watched the mountains through the passenger window as Naomi drove, the ridgelines cutting clean against the sky.
She hadn’t let herself think about how much she’d missed this landscape. It was easier from California to pretend she hadn’t.
Then the town of Blue Ridge Hollow came into view.
She’d forgotten how it looked—or maybe she’d just stopped letting herself remember.
The brick storefronts lining Main Street looked as they had when she’d last been here, like the town had quietly decided sometime around 1955 that it had everything it needed and saw no reason to change.
A handful of cars sat parked along the curb, and a few people strolled along the sidewalk with an unhurried pace that would have driven her crazy at one time.
Now it made her chest ache.
Los Angeles never stopped moving. There was always somewhere to be, something to prove, someone watching to see whether you were still relevant. She’d spent the last decade matching that pace, convinced it meant something.
Standing still had always felt like falling behind.
She wasn’t sure she believed that anymore.
Naomi found a parking spot down the street from the pharmacy and loaded Grace into the carrier against her chest with practiced ease.
Rowan climbed out and pulled the brim of the cap down.
As the saying went,Here goes nothing.
CHAPTER 13
No one lookedup as Rowan, Naomi, and Grace walked along the sidewalk.
Naomi paused to look in the window of a small home goods shop where candles and pottery were arranged in careful groupings behind the glass.
“This place opened last spring,” Naomi said. “Micah got me a lemon-scented candle from here for my birthday.”
“Did you like it?”
“I did. I just couldn’t tell him that because then he’d think candles were a good gift.”
Rowan chuckled.
They walked a little farther, Grace making contented sounds against Naomi’s chest.
Rowan glanced sideways at her sister. “So . . . speaking of Sheriff Sutherland.”
Naomi’s cheeks turned pink.
Rowan laughed. “Oh wow. You’ve got it that bad, huh?”
Naomi shook her head, trying unsuccessfully to hide her smile. “It’s anything but bad.”
“I can see that.”
Naomi adjusted the blanket tucked around Grace as her expression softened. “He’s just . . . he’s a good man.”
