Chapter 1: The call
The silence in the Virginia farmhouse was a warm, living thing, broken only by the soft scratch of Ellie’s charcoal on paper. She was curled on the old plaid sofa, capturing the way the late afternoon sun gilded the dust motes dancing above the fireplace. Jasper was outside, she knew, checking the fence line. A contented sigh escaped her. This was their peace. Their creation.
The sudden, sharp vibration of his phone on the kitchen counter shattered the quiet. It buzzed against the marble like an angry insect. Ellie looked up, a faint line appearing between her brows. Jasper’s phone didn’t ring often, and never with that particular, insistent urgency.
She heard the back door slam, his heavy work boots on the floorboards. “Got it,” he called out, his voice relaxed. She watched him walk in, a giant of a man who seemed to fill the doorway. He wiped his hands on his jeans, a smile for her already softening his strong features. He picked up the phone, saw the name, and the smile faded. “Dad?”
Ellie saw his posture change instantly. It was like watching a steel rod slide into his spine. His broad shoulders squared, and his free hand came up to pinch the bridge of his nose. “When?” he asked, his voice dropping low. The Southern cadence he usually kept tempered flattened into something hard.
She set her sketchbook aside, the contentment evaporating. She just watched, her heart beginning a slow, heavy drum against her ribs.
“Okay,” Jasper said, a world of hurt packed into the single syllable. He listened for a long time, his eyes fixed on some invisible point on the scuffed floor. “The service is Friday. Yeah. I understand. I’ll… we’ll be there.” A pause. His throat worked. “Tell Mom… tell her I’m sorry I wasn’t there.”
He ended the call and stood perfectly still, the phone hanging limply from his hand.
“Jace?” Ellie’s voice was small in the vast quiet.
“Papa Joe,” Jasper said, the words thick. He didn’t turn to her. “Heart attack. This morning. Out in his garden. He just… sat down on his bench and didn’t get back up.”
A single tear escaped, tracing a clean path through the fine dust on his cheek. He didn’t wipe it away. “He taught me how to skip stones on the Savannah River. Bought me my first real fishing rod. Smoked these awful cigars that made my mom scream.” A choked sound, almost a laugh, caught in his chest. “He called me ‘Jace’ before anyone else did.”
Ellie was on her feet then, crossing the room to him. She didn’t speak, just wrapped her arms around his waist, pressing her face against the solid warmth of his back. He shuddered, and then his hand found hers, clutching it with a desperate strength.
They stood like that for minutes, the grandfather clock in the hall marking the passage of a world that had just shifted.
“I need to go home,” he finally said, his voice rough.
“We’ll go,” she murmured into his shirt.
“It’s not just for the funeral, Ellie.” He turned in her arms, his face ravaged by a grief she’d never seen in him. He was always her rock, her unshakeable foundation. Seeing him cracked open like this frightened her. “It’s… my dad sounded old. Just now. He sounded old and tired. My mom… she’s alone in that big house with her committees and her bitterness.” He cupped her face, his thumb brushing over her freckles. “We’re out here making our own life, and I’m missing theirs.”
Ellie’s compassionate heart ached for him. She thought of her own chaotic, loving, phone-call-every-Sunday family. The distance was a choice for her and Jasper, a beautiful escape. For him, it was starting to feel like an exile. “Then maybe we should think about not being so far away,” she said softly.
He blinked. “What?”
“Maybe… maybe we should think about moving. To Georgia. To be closer to them.”
He stared at her, his deep blue eyes searching hers for any hint of hesitation. “You love it here. You have your studio. The light…”
“The light exists in Georgia, too,” she said, offering a small, watery smile. “I can paint anywhere. You… you can’t get new parents. You can’t get that time back.”
The conflict in him was palpable. The longing for the simplicity of his childhood, the pull of his roots, warring with the knowledge of what those roots were entangled with. He looked at her—her kind eyes, her gentle artist’s hands, the faded paint smudges on her sweater—and thought of the polished marble and cold expectations of the Thornton family home in Savannah. He thought of his mother’s appraising stares.
“You’d do that?” he asked, his voice barely a whisper.
“For you? In a heartbeat.”
A flood of relief and love, tinged with a sharp, secret anxiety, washed over him. He pulled her into a fierce, deep kiss. It was gratitude and passion and a silent plea for strength all at once. His hands slid down her back, over the seductive curve of her hips, pulling her flush against him. She melted into the kiss, into the solid strength of him, offering comfort and taking it in equal measure.
When they broke apart, breathing heavily, a new, determined light shone in Ellie’s green eyes. “Okay,” she said, with a firm nod. She padded over to the sofa, grabbed her laptop, and curled back up. The click of the keys was rapid, purposeful. “Let’s see what’s out there. Something with land. For you. And a room with north light. For me.”
Jasper watched her, a smile touching his lips despite the hollow ache in his chest. She was already building their new life in her head, weaving him into the future with such fearless love. He couldn’t help but smile at the woman he loved.
But as he turned to look out the window at the Virginia land he’d come to cherish, a cold knot formed in his stomach. He saw the lush, manicured lawns of his childhood. He heard the clipped, polite tones of his mother’s voice. He pictured introducing Eleanor Davies, with her long auburn hair loosely braided, her frank speech, and her painter’s clothes, as his future wife. He knew, with a dread that sat heavy beside his grief, exactly what his high-society family would think of her. He worried, more than he could ever tell her, about what his mother would do.