Page 22 of The Mountain Man Lumberjack’s Claimed Bride

My phone buzzes on the nightstand. Not Hunter. Dani.

Dani:

Status report. Use the following scale: 1 = he showed up with flowers, 5 = still waiting, 10 = I'm booking a flight to Montana to commit a crime.

Me:

Solid 6.

Dani:

That's higher than a 5. What happened between 5 and 6?

Me:

Bette made soup. It was okay but not great, and I keep thinking about how Hunter's soup is better because he uses fresh rosemary from the garden patch behind the workshop,and I'm comparing soups now, Dani. I'm comparing soups. That's where I am.

Dani:

Soup comparison is a stage of grief nobody talks about. Hang in there. He'll come.

Me:

What if he doesn't?

Dani:

Then he's dumber than advertised and you deserve better than a man who can't recognize the best thing that ever walked up his driveway. But he will. Bette says he burned the agency letter in the woodstove.

Me:

She told you that?

Dani:

She tells me everything. We have a group chat now. It's called Operation Mountain Idiot. Maggie is also in it.

The phone goes face down on the quilt. Outside, Bette's street is quiet. A few houses, a general store, the diner visible two blocks over. Grizzly Ridge is the kind of town that goes still at sunset, everyone pulling indoors, lights coming on in windows, dinner tables being set.

Downstairs, Bette is moving through her kitchen with the particular energy of a woman trying very hard not to check her own phone every thirty seconds. Cabinets opening and closing.Water running. The clink of dishes being washed that are probably already clean.

A knock on the guest room door. "Nora? You hungry?"

"Not really."

"Okay." A pause. "He called me."

Every nerve in my body fires at once. My feet hit the floor before the thought completes. The door opens and Bette is standing in the hallway, phone in hand, expression carefully neutral.

"When?"

"Twenty minutes ago. He called, asked if you were here. I said yes. He said he was coming. Then he hung up because Marsh siblings communicate exclusively through incomplete sentences and abrupt disconnection."

"He's coming here?"

A small smile. "Get dressed."

Not dressed up.Just dressed. The same jeans from yesterday. A sweater borrowed from Bette that's too tight in the chest and too long in the arms, because his flannel is still draped over the back of my chair in his kitchen and I walked out without packing a single thing. Hair down because there isn't time for the clip and because, honestly, he looked at me differently the morning my hair was loose, and if a man is going to show up at his sister's house to fix what he broke, he should have to do it while looking at me properly.