The Honeybrook Inn came into view first, the patchwork of old timber and newer paint, the flower boxes in every window still spilling over even this late in the season because Grandma refused to let them die until the first hard frost—rust-colored mums and the last of the dahlias, holding on with the stubborn determination she had apparently passed directly into her plants. The lights were on, warm and amber behind the windows, and the front porch had been dressed for the season—pumpkins along the steps, a wreath of dried leaves and bittersweet on the door, the rocking chairs occupied by a couple I didn’t recognize who were sitting with glasses of wine and the satisfied expressions of people who had found exactly the right place to be on a October evening. I waved at them out of habitbecause that was what you did when you grew up in a place where strangers were just future regulars.
I followed the drive around to the back of the property, past the lilacs gone bare and the rickety old swing set Grandpa had built for Paige and Piper when they were little and never quite finished because he kept adding onto it—a slide, a little clubhouse, a teeter-totter. Then past the small red barn and the chicken coop and the animal rescue enclosure, the last of the season’s hay bales stacked along the fence line, and parked in the gravel turnout my grandfather had built specifically for family.
The smell of the grill grew stronger. Charcoal, hot dogs, the faint tang of Grandpa’s special sauce that he refused to give the recipe for to anyone, including Grandma.
I sat in the car for a second. I took a breath. I told myself, very firmly, to stop smiling for thirty seconds and arrive looking like a person whose face contained no information whatsoever.
It did not work. I was already smiling again before I reached for the door handle.
I got out with the tin of shortbread and walked the familiar path through the back gate, and the chaos began immediately. The pugs reached me first, three small snorting torpedoes of pure black-and-tan affection who had collectively decided years ago that I was one of the great loves of their lives and were always personally offended that I did not live with them. They surrounded me at the gate, snorting and wagging and tripping over each other, and I crouched down to greet each one in turn while holding the shortbread tin out of pug range. Lois, the chocolate lab belonging to Eliza’s boyfriend, Nate, joined them a second later, sweet and gentle and entirely uninterested in the pugs’ theatrics, and shoved her broad head under my free hand for a scratch. Somewhere across the lawn, the goose let out a single warning honk for no reason I could identify, because thegoose was always either at war with someone or rehearsing for a future war.
“Hi, babies. Hi. Yes. I missed you, too. No, you cannot have shortbread. I don’t care what you’re saying with your eyes.”
I straightened up and looked across the yard, and there they all were. My family. The whole loud, layered, miraculous bunch of them.
Grandpa was at the outdoor kitchen he’d built out of barn wood and stone, tongs in one hand, a beer in the other, presiding over the grill in the role he always played—quiet, focused, deeply pleased to be the man in charge of fire. Grandma was at the long wooden table arranging a platter of corn, her silver hair pinned back in the loose twist she’d been wearing since I was a child, calling something to Grandpa over her shoulder that I couldn’t quite make out but that made him huff a small laugh into his beer. Piper and her fiancé, Ren, were at the far end of the table, setting out plates, their hands brushing every few seconds in the unconscious way of people who had been touching each other for a long time. Eliza was on the patio swing, half-laughing at something Nate was telling her, with his daughter, Tilly, tucked sleepily between them. Hunter, Paige’s fiancé, was at the grill with Grandpa, holding two beers, mid-conversation. Noah, her son, was at the prep counter next to Grandpa with a knife in his hand and the alarming culinary-school confidence of an eighteen-year-old who had recently learned how to break down a chicken. Her daughter, Lark, was sprawled in a patio chair, phone and soda in hand. Paige was nowhere in sight, which meant Paige was still at Twilight Tavern, which also meant Paige was about to show up at some point and immediately, infuriatingly, know everything I was trying to hide because I just knew Jasper would not be able to keep anything a secret from Paige.
And out at the rescue enclosure at the back of the lawn, Lucy and Spencer were leaning on the fence with Briar perched on the rail beside them, all three of them clustered around the long-necked, slightly self-important silhouette of Larry the Llama, the star of Lucy’s best-selling series of children’s books.
Grandma saw me first. She set the corn platter down and came toward me with her arms already open, and that look on her face she got when one of her granddaughters arrived—the look that said,there you are, finally; the day can begin. She was small and warm, and she smelled like vanilla and rosemary and the faint trace of smoke from the grill, and she pulled me into a hug that made me close my eyes for a second because I had been obsessing over Friday all week, and the warmth of her was immediately undoing me.
“There’s my girl.”
“Hi, Grandma.”
She took the shortbread tin from me and held it the way she held all of my baked goods—reverently, with one hand under and one hand over, like she was holding something fragile and slightly sacred. “Did you double the recipe like I told you?”
“I doubled the recipe. I used the almond version this time.”
“Good girl.” She turned to set the tin on the table and then turned back and looked at me. Her eyes did the small flicker they did when she was reading my face, and I knew exactly what she was discovering. I tried very hard to look like a person whose face contained nothing but cat stories and mild hunger.
I failed immediately.
“Cara.”
“Don’t.”
“I’m not saying anything,” she insisted.
“Yeah, but you’re saying it with your entire face.”
“My face is just sitting here. Neutral. At peace. Happy for you…”
“Grandma,” I huffed.
“I’ll wait.” She gave me a small push toward the grill with a hand on my back. “Go say hello to your grandfather.” Her eyes followed me the whole way.
Noah and Hunter waved to me, heading into the house as I approached the grill. Grandpa looked up when I came around the corner of the outdoor kitchen, and his face warmed with a smile. He was wearing the apron Lark had given him for Christmas two years ago, the one that saidI’m not arguing, I’m explaining why I’m right, which had been a joke at the time but which Grandpa had decided to take entirely literally and wear with quiet dignity ever since.
“There she is,” he said.
“Hi, Grandpa.”
He reached out with the hand not holding tongs and squeezed my shoulder. Grandpa was not a hugger at the grill—the grill required focus, and a hug interrupted the focus. He looked at my face for a second, the way Grandma had, but where Grandma had asked, Grandpa just took it in. He had a way of looking at a person that was almost more than a hug. It was the look of a man who saw you and wasn’t going to make you talk about it.
“You look good, kiddo. Happy. Glad to see it.”
“Thanks, Grandpa.”
