Five years since she’d been here.
“You can’t turn back now,” a voice said behind her and she turned to see Patrick wearing a thick coat and big hat making his way up the road toward her.
Smile. Keep smiling.
“I wasn’t going to,” Josie said with a big smile as the man who’d been the best grandfather she could imagine came to a stop in front of her.
“I’d like to hug you,” he said, his eyes twinkling.
“I’d like to hug you too,” she said, and the words weren’t even out of her mouth before he had his arms around her. He smelled like snow and Old Spice.
Okay. New coping mechanism. Don’t cry. Just don’t cry.
“We missed you, girl.”
“I doubt that,” she said.
That made Patrick lurch back and frown at her. His eyebrows were exceptionally white and bushy. And capable of a lot of disapproval. “No,” she said, trying to backtrack to avoid a lecture about her spot in the Mitchell family. “I’m just saying there are so many cousins and kids now—”
“None of them are you, kid,” he said and gave her a little shake.
“Hardly a kid anymore,” Josie said with a smile. Turning twenty-four this year had been strange. She’d felt it more than she’d felt any other birthday. Probably because she’d been alone. By choice, mind you. Mom and Dad usually came down for her birthday, took her shopping and out to dinner. Max always looked surprisingly comfortable in the city. The mountain man persona he cultivated up here just fell away and he was the city cop once again. Pretty handsome in a suit and tie, ordering oysters at restaurants like he’d always done it.
Mom always looked at Max a little differently when they were in the city. Like he was a stranger she’d just met. Josie did not want to think about what they got up to in the hotel room they always rented.
But this year her birthday had fallen right in the middle of release week for the show and there’d been just too much going on to celebrate.
Or, at least, it had been convenient to say that.
“Dad?” Max yelled from the front step, the door open behind him revealing the long dining room table set for dinner, the fireplace, and about seven hundred of Josie’s cousins. The beautiful mayhem of Mitchell life at the Riverview Inn. Her heart gushed a fresh, painful longing.
“What are you doing out here?” Max yelled.
“Look who I found,” Patrick shouted back, and like he wasn’t a gazillion years old, he picked up her bag, swung it over his shoulder and pretty much pulled her into motion.
“Oh my god,” Max said. “Josie?”
He glanced behind him and she knew what he was thinking. Tell Delia.
It was one of the reasons she loved Max, because his first thought was always about Mom. It was pure, that kind of love. But then Max jumped down the steps in his socks and grabbed Josie in his big arms. Crushed the breath right out of her.
“My god, girl,” he said.
Josie held herself stiff in his arms, because if she wasn’t stiff, if she wasn’t strong and careful, it would be nothing but tears. This homecoming needed to be happy. For Mom’s sake. For Helen’s sake.
For hers.
Smile.
“Hi Dad,” she whispered against the soft flannel of his shirt. Red, because Mom always said he looked handsome in red.
“What…why didn’t you tell us you were coming tonight? We could have met you at the train. I could have come and—”
So predictable, this guy. “Because work was a question mark until the very last minute and I didn’t want to inconvenience anyone.”
They’d known she was coming; she’d called with that news the second she’d accepted Helen’s demands. But she’d been sketchy on the details, hoping if she caught them all slightly unaware there wouldn’t be any production.
She saw all the old gears turning behind Max’s eyes, but in typical Max fashion he just nodded, took the bag from his own father and pulled Josie up into the inn.
If she paused at the door, scared and a little haunted, he just held on tighter. Harder. I got you, kid, his arm around her shoulder said. I got you.
“Hey,” he said, and every Mitchell there turned to face them. “Look who I found.”
Josie lifted her hand, smiling as hard and as brightly as she could. “Hi!”
There was one second of open-mouthed astonishment. And then it was pandemonium.
Garth and Stella, who was in high school now. Little Iris, who’d been born just before everything fell apart. Her half-brother, Dom, who’d hit puberty hard and had grown five inches in all directions since she saw him last summer in the city. Gabe and Alice and Jonah and Daphne. Hugs and kisses and oh-my-god-look-at-yous. Stella asked if she could borrow Josie’s boots—heeled Pradas that had no business out in this snow.
“Sure,” she said with a big smile.
Helen appeared in front of her, looking beautiful in leggings and a bright red sweater pulled taut over her tiny belly. Her cousin was showing off and Josie loved it.
“You came,” Helen said, squeezing Josie’s cheeks
“You told me I had to,” Josie answered awkwardly. “You really are pregnant.”
Helen, her cousin and her oldest and dearest friend, smiled, tears in her eyes. “I really am.”
And then it was Mom’s turn, cutting through all of them, pushing aside everyone to get to Josie. And Josie slipped right out of the numbness she’d been trying to keep around herself and grabbed onto her mother just as hard as Delia grabbed onto Josie.
The sound that came out of Josie was a sob, but as quick as she could, she turned it into a laugh.
Mom squeezed Josie tighter like she knew.
“Welcome home,” Mom whispered. “We missed you.”
“I missed you, too.”
But her mom, who really was rarely wrong, was wrong about one thing.
This wasn’t her home anymore. And it hadn’t been since the night of her high school graduation.
3
“So,” Jonah said, leaning back from the table, his hand on Daphne’s shoulder. Alice’s dinner, a feast of pasta carbonara and salad with blood oranges and pistachios, was absolutely decimated. The dishes in the middle of the table were empty. The plates in front of everyone practically licked clean. Josie had missed the food at the inn with an acute ache. Because of Alice, and in turn Cameron, she’d never learned a thing about cooking; the best she could do for herself was takeout. She even screwed up hard-boiled eggs.
“How is work, Josie?” Jonah asked. And of course Jonah asked; the guy had enough work ethic for, like, twenty people. He’d been a big-deal developer in the city before he met Daphne and gave it all up to grow vegetables on her organic farm and start Haven House—his dream project for single moms and their kids. Growing up with a single Mom Jonah had dreamt of a place where his mother could not just relax but get instruction on things that she never had time to learn. And that dream had turned into a reality with women and kids getting educations, counseling and therapy, second chances. It was all really beautiful, but the guy was nonstop, no matter what he did. His idea of a vacation was a 10K run.
“Fine,” she said. “Good. Busy.” Jonah had helped her get the job when she was still at NYU by putting her in touch with an executive at the NOW network. Her résumé and his recommendation had circled around the network until she’d landed an internship at the reality show I Do/I Don’t.