Chapter 1

I came home from my father’s funeral to find my husband’s sister asleep in my bed.

Vivienne was wearing my robe, half her face buried in the gray-blue quilt my father had sewn by hand.

Her suitcase stood open at the foot of the bed.

My clothes had been packed into boxes and stacked outside the bedroom door.

“Keep your voice down,” Owen said behind me. “She’s had a hard enough day.”

I stood in the doorway, still holding the white rose I had carried at the cemetery. Its petals were bruised, stained with damp soil from the graveyard.

“Why is she in our bed?”

Owen rubbed his forehead, already looking tired of the question. “Her landlord gave her notice. The divorce has been ugly. She had nowhere to go.”

“There’s a guest room downstairs.”

“The bed’s too narrow, and she hasn’t been sleeping.” He glanced toward Vivienne, his voice softening. “It’s only for a few weeks. Once she’s settled, we’ll figure something out.”

We.

The word landed between us, and I understood that while I had been arranging my father’s funeral, they had made this decision for me.

I walked past the boxes and into the storage room. It had once held winter blankets and old suitcases. Now it held the two walnut nightstands my father had made before my wedding.

He had spent three months building them. He’d told me a bedroom should have room for two people’s things—and two people who could sleep there without feeling like guests.

One drawer had been left slightly open. I pulled it out and ran my fingers over the words carved into the inside panel.

Make room for love. Never disappear for it.

Owen appeared in the doorway behind me.

“Naomi, don’t turn this into a war.”

I looked at him.

He was still wearing the black shirt from the funeral, his tie hanging loose against his chest.

For seventeen years, he had always found a way to make every compromise sound temporary.

First, we had to get through my father’s recovery. Then Vivienne needed somewhere to stay after losing her job. Then his work became overwhelming.

Every time, there had been a first.

Every time, I had been the one asked to wait.

“I’m not starting a war,” I said. “I want to know why, on the day I buried my father, you decided to move me out of my own bedroom.”

His face hardened. “I didn’t move you out. You can sleep in the guest room tonight. Or I can take you somewhere else.”

I looked at the nightstands again. My father had not left them to trap me inside his memory. He had left them with a sentence I had spent too long refusing to understand.

I picked up one of the boxes. A label had been taped to the side in Owen’s handwriting.

Naomi’s things.