“Come walk with me?” she asked.
“Oh, I—” I hesitated, glancing toward George, who was already nosing through the bushes.
She waved a hand dismissively. “You can bring him along if you’d like. I could use the company.”
But the way she kept walking, not waiting for an answer, made it clear I didn’t really have a choice.
Reluctantly, I nodded. “Okay.” Then rushed to fall into step beside her.
The quiet between us stretched comfortably at first. Our breath fogged in the cool morning air, each exhale minglingthen disappearing. The forest was alive around us—birds calling from the branches, sunlight filtering through the pines, even the ground seemed to hum beneath our feet. George trotted ahead, tail wagging, stopping every few steps to investigate something new.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Mrs. McHenry said after a while, her voice soft but certain.
I nodded, swallowing past the tightness in my throat. “It is.”
For a moment, I just let myself look—really look—at everything. The dappled light through the trees. The shimmer of dew clinging to the grass. George’s happy, oblivious tail wagging away. And somewhere behind all that beauty was the ache of knowing that these were my last moments here.
“I’m going to miss it,” I said softly. But even as the words left my mouth, I knew I didn’t just mean the lodge. It was Dean. It was George. It was this strange, unexpected sense of belonging—to something that felt like family.
Mrs. McHenry smiled faintly. “It does that,” she said, her voice calm and sure. “There’s something about this place that speaks to your soul. You can’t quite name it, but you feel it all the same.”
I nodded, my gaze drifting over the trees swaying gently in the morning breeze.
“This land,” she continued, “was the first place where Dean seemed to come alive again after his parents died. He was just a boy—quiet, careful, older than his years. Charles used to take him down to the dock in the evenings, and I’d watch from the porch as they fished in silence. He never said much, but something about this place… it softened him. Healed him in ways even we couldn’t.”
Her tone softened, touched with sorrow. “Losing people that young—it leaves scars you can’t always see. For Dean, those scars whispered a cruel kind of truth: that everyone leaveseventually. So, he learned to love carefully. To keep his heart where no one could break it.”
My throat ached.
“For a long time, I wasn’t sure he’d ever let himself truly fall in love. He was caring, always—generous, thoughtful—but guarded. As if loving too much meant risking everything he’d built to survive, and he wasn’t going to do it.”
The path curved back toward the cabins, sunlight filtering gold through the trees. “That’s why I was so delighted when I heard about you, Vivienne,” she said softly. “When he told us he was engaged, I don’t think I’d ever been so happy. Seeing you two together this week…” Her smile wavered, tender and full of hope. “It’s been the highlight of my life, dear. Because I know now—he’s finally learned to open his heart.”
Her words landed like a weight I couldn’t carry, heavy and undeserved.
Mrs. McHenry slowed and reached for my hand, her grip gentle but sure. “Thank you for walking with me,” she said. “And thank you for loving my boy.”
She released my hand and turned down the path toward her cabin, the soft crunch of gravel fading until she was gone.
For a long moment, I just stood there, her words echoing in my chest with a quiet ache.If only she knew the truth.
George trotted ahead, bounding up the steps to our porch. Then, without hesitation, he slipped through the slightly open door, leaving me standing there alone beneath the rising sun.
My pulse quickened.
Dean.
I took the steps two at a time, a smile already tugging at my lips before the words even left my mouth. “I thought I wasn’t going to see you until dinner?—”
But the rest caught in my throat.
Mason stood in the kitchen, his back to me, as he rifled through something on the counter. He swore when he heard my voice, then spun to face me.
“I knocked,” he said quickly, his cheeks coloring. “The door was unlocked. Dean asked me to grab some files from his briefcase?—”
My gaze flicked toward the living room, where Dean’s briefcase sat, half-unzipped on the couch. Mason paused, following my line of vision, and let out a relieved breath.
“You’d never know Dean was a Boy Scout,” he muttered with a short laugh. “His directions are shit.”
