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did this feel like a mistake?
Stop me, Lord, if this is wrong
, she prayed silently. Hearing no response from her Maker, she said grudgingly, “You can bring your stuff and stay in the lighthouse cottage.”
    The next Saturday night, Tara again invited Julia over for dinner.
    The two ate at her kitchen table and gabbed about Trevor and Ben and life in Oak Harbor. Julia gushed over the food.
    “I’m serious, Tara. You should write a cookbook. You could even call it
Tara’s Good Food.
It’s quaint! And the recipes … people all across America would kill for your baked beans.”
    Tara waved her off. “Please. I can’t write an entire cookbook.”
    “You run a restaurant! Of course you can. Don’t tell me you don’t have enough recipes.”
    “Oh, I have enough.” She paused and fiddled with her napkin. “I have thought of it once or twice—”
    “Then it’s settled! My dad has some friends in publishing in New York. A few phone calls, and I can get you a chance to pitch yourideas. Send ’em a vat of beans, and you’d win ’em over in seconds flat.”
    “Seconds flat, eh?”
    “Seconds flat.”
    “Well, maybe,” Tara said shyly, still toying with the idea. Apparently, for a woman born and raised in tiny Oak Harbor, the idea of reaching out to the world seemed daunting.
    “Do this for me: Pull together your top hundred recipes.” Julia looked around Tara’s kitchen, which was artfully painted and stenciled, and remembered the restaurant’s exquisite decor. “Did you do all this?”
    “Yes.”
    “I’ve got a great idea! You obviously have an artistic bent. Along with the recipes, include some sketches and homey notes. Publishers love a gimmick.”
    “That might be fun. I’ll think about it.”
    “Just remember who to dedicate it to when it’s published and you’re rich and famous.”
    Tara paused a moment and then shook her head. “Imagine that! Beans making me rich and famous!”
    The two laughed together like old friends.
    Trevor and Julia’s first days together at the mansion seemed to revolve around one trial after another, but it felt good to Julia to have someone else in on the planning. Alone it was overwhelming. But Trevor’s take-charge attitude, while vaguely disturbing and stimulating to Julia, also relieved her burden. He was careful and polite from the start, arrived on time, and often worked late. And it had been Trevor who decided they needed an architect to help them plan theadditional bathrooms, as well as to confirm their plans to take out a couple of walls and move another to expand the kitchen.
    “I found the guy,” he announced on the third morning as she sat sipping some coffee.
    “What guy?”
    “The architect. I called my cousin Bryn in Boston, and she knew just the right one. Just out of school, hungry, but smart, and he has a penchant for old houses. Shouldn’t cost you much, but he’ll know what we need to know.”
    “Wonderful!” She rose. She could at least be polite. “Would you care for a cup of coffee?”
    “Please. Black.”
    She walked to the coffee maker and poured him a cup. As she handed it to him, she asked casually, “Do you have much family here?”
    “Bryn is my cousin, doing her medical residency in Boston. She’s one of the few left. But she’s part of why I wanted to come to the coast. Went for a visit, then started searching the tiny towns along the Eastern seaboard, looking for the next right place for me. And work,” he added with a smile.
    “What about your parents?”
    “Died. When I was little. Bryn’s parents, who separated when I was in high school, raised me. I took off after graduation to travel a bit. Returned for college.”
    “You have a degree?”
    “Five credits short of the degree. Got most of my knowledge on the job.”
    “In Afghanistan, Zaire?”
    “Yes. And elsewhere.” He looked at her curiously. “You don’t think much of my traveling, do you?”
    “No, not at all. I think it’s