1. Mattias

My final paycheck from the restaurant was more than seven grand even after taxes. They'd been paying me really damn well, which wasn't a huge shock—head chef at an exclusive New York City restaurant was a good job, and required me to live in Manhattan, where rent on the smallest apartment available, which was basically a closet, cost more than my first car.

But it was my final check, so no more were coming.

And Grandpa's hospital bills added up to something like sixty thousand after insurance covered what they were willing to. Not that it was easy to get to that number, since they seemed to have sent us a separate bill for every single catheter and Band-Aid and IV.

Something about it seemed unjust.

He'd died, after all. They hadn't saved him. And yet we were supposed to pay them sixty grand. Out of seven thousand dollars.

I'd never wanted to balance my checkbook, let alone become an accountant, but even I could tell there was something about those numbers that didn't fit together quite right.

Thankfully, I'd been renting a room from a friend, and he'd been understanding about my need to exit quickly and cheaply, so I'd mailed most of my clothes to the inn and boarded a Greyhound bus for Cider Landing the day I'd gotten the call about Grandpa going into the hospital.

The restaurant owner had replaced me a week into Grandpa's hospital stay, not out of disloyalty, but because I'd asked him to. He'd argued with me, wanted me to come back when things got better, but I just... couldn't. Even if Grandpa had lived, the doctors were clear: he wasn't going to be able to help run the inn the same way anymore. He was likely to be wheelchair-bound for the rest of his life, so he'd have had to relearn how to do everything, from cooking to taking out the trash. He was going to need more help than Grandma could give.

I'd known, sitting with my grandfather, him looking small and frail in that hospital bed, that my life as I knew it was over.

The only thing that bothered me about it was Grandpa being sick. Grandpa dying. I didn't need flashy clothes or clubs or being head chef at a restaurant that charged hundreds of dollars for a single dinner. That was an ego boost, sure, but I didn't care that much about it. Grandma and Grandpa had saved up to send me to the Culinary Institute of America, and I was good at what I did. They'd been proud of my job in New York, and I'd cared more about that pride than the job itself.

They had raised me.

They were everything.

And now he was dead, and there was no way Grandma could run the Cider Inn without help, so my time in New York was over. I didn't mind that. I loved Cider Landing. I'd been raised there, at the inn, helping run the place. I had always assumed it was where I'd end up eventually, and I loved it.

But it was a little darker, a little quieter, with the only Grandpa I could see beaming out from their wedding portrait on the wall in the dining room. No endless chatter about the great blue heron that had taken up in Raccoon Creek out back, or the family of goldfinches nesting outside his bedroom window or come look, Mattias, there's a chickadee in the old woodpecker nest.

I'd never imagined how much I would miss it, but hell, I'd even missed seeing birds in New York, since it was pigeons all the way down there, and still, every time I'd seen one, I'd imagined Grandpa giving me a random pigeon fact. I'd actually looked them up on Wikipedia so I'd know the things he might have told me about their habitats and mating habits.

"Honey, you don't need to be worried about that," Grandma said, coming out of the kitchen and sitting down at the office desk across from me. "I'll figure it out. I still... I still have some jewelry. And there should be some insurance money, once they listen to me. He had at—at least ten thousand, I think."

Jewelry. She was going to sell her jewelry to pay the hospital. And ten thousand dollars was going to pay for the cremation and wake we'd arranged, but not a lot else. Certainly not sixty thousand dollars in hospital bills.

Still, I smiled at her. "It's okay, Grandma. I'm not"—the lie stuck in my throat for a moment, but at the tears in her eyes, I forced it out—"I'm not worried. We'll figure this out. We can always sell the Trans-Am."

"That car was a gift from your grandfather for your college graduation," she insisted, shaking her head.

"And it's been in storage here for years, because having a car in New York was silly. I'm used to not having a car."

Before she could argue that I was here now, and I should be getting used to having a car again, the bell over the front door jingled, and she automatically pushed herself back up out of the chair, smiling. "No rest for the wicked, I suppose."

She was moving slower than I remembered, but I didn't know why I was surprised. She was seventy-two. She'd just lost the love of her life, a man she'd been married to for over fifty years. I was moving slower. Why the hell wouldn't she?

I followed her out into the lobby, where she slipped behind the desk and greeted the family who'd arrived with a smile.

Family?

Huh. Two men and a kid. That was... well, Cider Landing wasn't a backward town, but a gay couple with a kid vacationing there was still a bit of a surprise. They were adorable, like something out of a fashion magazine. One angelic kid with curly white-gold hair and huge blue eyes. One dad in fashionably ripped acid-wash jeans (and fuck me but why had that crap come back into fashion?), black leather half-boots, and a shiny smooth silk button-down. And one dad looking like a business casual stereotype, in crisp khakis and a black polo shirt with a bright blue "Darling" stitched above the pocket. Was that a new style, or a company name?

"Mr. and Mr. Darling," Grandma said, smiling at them. Huh. The Darling family. The dude had his name embroidered on his shirt? Weird. "And... Jessie, was it?"

"That's me!" the cherubic child announced. "I'm Jessie."

"It's very nice to meet you, Jessie," Grandma said, her eyes sparkling like they hadn't since Grandpa's death. Maybe... maybe this was what she needed. Maybe working would be good for her.

Gods knew we needed the money.

She turned to me. "It looks like they're in the heron room, honey, if you'll help them with their bags."

I inclined my head to her and headed over. The fashionable dad in the silk shirt waved to a pile of suitcases without looking up from his phone. Business dad winced and gave me an apologetic look. "Let me help you. That's... a lot of bags."

He hefted a duffel over his shoulder, then took a suitcase in each hand. That left three more, two regular suitcases and one bright green shiny one. Jessie leapt forward and grabbed its handle. "This one's mine! It's Froggo. Daddy got it for me." As though to explain, they held up a floppy green stuffed creature they'd had tucked under their arm. "See? Froggo."

"That's pretty cool your friend has his own suitcase," I said, nodding and trying to look appropriately impressed. "Do you have one too?"

The kid giggled. "No, silly, this is my suitcase. Froggo doesn't need clothes." Their eyes widened and they leaned toward me and whisper-shouted, "Froggo is naked!"

I had never, not once in my twenty-five years, thought about having kids, but Jessie was gonna change my mind. The kid was like the definition of the word adorable, dipped in sugar and cuter than a freaking cat with those huge blue eyes. And Froggo was naked.

I looked the frog over, then turned back to Jessie and nodded. "Froggo is naked. Is that okay?"

They considered, looking at the stuffed animal for a moment, then back to me. "I think so. Frogs don't wear pants, do they?"

"Nope. I've never seen a single frog in pants, and we've got lots of frogs around here." I hefted the two remaining bags and headed for the stairs, motioning for Jessie and the Darlings to precede me. "So is Froggo a boy frog or a girl frog?"

"They're not. They're a they frog, like me."

I paused and stared at Jessie, blinking, where they were shifting uncomfortably all of a sudden, looking at me and waiting for a response. I leaned down and loudly whispered. "You're a frog?"

That inspired a peal of laughter and a head shake. "No, I'm a they person. Froggo's a they frog."

"Ooooh," I agreed. "That makes more sense."

Maybe this was why I'd avoided coming back to Cider Landing in favor of that big city job. Because it was this perfect homey microcosm of all the things I'd grown up with and still wanted for myself.

And didn't have.

"So why is this called the heron room?" business dad asked when I unlocked the door for them and led them in. "I mean, other than the painting."

"My granddad did that painting," I informed him, then set the bags down and went over to open the window. "But it's called the heron room because of the subject of the painting. Him." I motioned down to the great blue heron wading in Raccoon Creek out back. "Grandpa called him Houdini."

Jessie and business dad went to the window, and they were sickeningly adorable. Business dad was a seriously hot guy. Sure, he had that generic five-hundred-dollar haircut and the generic business-dad clothes, but his dark brown hair and blue eyes almost as bright as little Jessie's were something else. And more than that, there was the sheer excitement on his face. "That's a great blue heron, Jess," he told the kiddo, holding them up and pointing. "It's one of the biggest kinds of herons in the world."

"It does seem pretty big," Jessie answered, sounding like they were trying to be interested for Dad's sake, but birds really weren't their jam. Tears pricked my eyes, and I had to turn away.

This was not my own childhood I was looking at. Jessie wasn't going to be crying about having lost that font of pointless bird facts in twenty years.

But fuck I wished I had paid more attention to Grandpa's bird rambles back when I'd had him.

Fashion dad hadn't even looked up from his phone to acknowledge the conversation.

I took a deep breath, then another. "I'll just leave you to settle in, then," I managed to get out without fucking sobbing, and sped out of the room.

As I closed the door, fashion dad finally deigned to notice the world around him. "Was the bellhop crying? Weird."