“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.