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"This is Adam."

Judy released Zoe, stepped back, and looked at me. I was definitely being measured.

"Adam." She said it like she was testing its weight. "Well. Come in then."

The inside of the cabin was warm and close and full of color. Every flat surface had something handmade on it. The floors were the rugs, three of them visible from where I stood in the doorway, and they were remarkable. Not decorative. Alive. The patterns were intricate without being fussy, the colors the kind that come from dye baths rather than synthetic shortcuts. I'd looked at enough materials over the years, enough finishes and surfaces, to know when something had been made by hand with real artistry.

I crouched down and put my palm flat on the nearest one.

"Adam's an architect," Zoe said from somewhere behind me.

"Hmm." That was Judy.

I stood back up. In the corner chair, needles clicking steadily, sat a woman who was watching me. Assessing me. This had to be Janice.

She was thinner than Judy, more angular, with the same white hair but worn loose to her shoulders. She didn't stop working.

"The warp threads in that rug are hand-dyed walnut," she said. "Three dye baths. 1987."

I looked down at the rug again. "It's extraordinary."

She looked at me a beat longer. Then she went back to her needles.

Judy brought out coffee and something in a cast iron skillet that turned out to be a kind of apple cake I'd never encountered before, dense and barely sweet, with walnuts pressed into the top. We sat at the kitchen table and Judy talked. It was clear that she didn’t get many visitors and she was glad of the chance to visit.

Zoe told her about James, and she had lots of questions. She asked me what I was building in Jasper Creek. I told her. She asked three follow-up questions that told me she'd understood it exactly.

Janice came to the table when her coffee went cold, sat down, and said nothing for four minutes. Then she looked at Zoe.

"You brought him up here."

"I did," Zoe said.

Janice looked at me again. Then she picked up her coffee.

"Good," she said.

That was all she said. It took me a moment to realize it was a verdict. I had passed.

We spent another hour at the table. I carried out the rugs and textiles Zoe had come for, loading them carefully into the back of the Jeep while Judy supervised and offered commentary on each piece. Janice stood on the porch and watched.

When Zoe hugged her goodbye, Janice held on a beat longer than I expected.

"Come back before winter," she said quietly. "Both of you."

Zoe stopped at the outlook like she had promised. "Here," she said.

We got out. The air was cool enough that I could feel it through my jacket. The ridgelines opened up in front of us, three of them, stepping back in diminishing blues until the farthest one was barely a suggestion against the sky. Beautiful.

I put my arm around her. She leaned into it, just slightly.

She was quiet for a moment. Then she turned to look at me, and there was something in her expression I hadn't seen before. Not the humor, not the prickliness, not the warmth. Something underneath all of it.

"I need to say something and I need you to hear it."

"I'm listening."

"You told me you love me." She looked back at the ridgelines. "And I'm honored. Adam, genuinely, it means everything. But you don't know me. Not all of me. And the parts you don't know yet," she paused, "I'm not sure they're worth what you think they are."