Autumn returned to Ashford Hollow with a gold-and-rust brilliance that Wren had learned, over a full year in the mountains, to recognize as the town's finest season — the same season, she reflected, standing on the porch of the house she and Cruz had built together on a parcel of club land overlooking Coldwater Creek, that had first brought her here as a broken, running woman with nothing but a duffel bag and a determination to disappear.
Six months married now, and the disappearing woman felt like someone from a different lifetime entirely.
"You're thinking too hard for a Tuesday morning," Cruz said, emerging from the house with two mugs of coffee, settling beside her on the porch swing that had become their favorite spot for these quiet moments before the day's work pulled them in sepa
