Of course, she knew. Just like with Conrad, she had avoided hurt. Her father’s arrest and ensuing incarceration had brought mistrust and discord to their family. The one time she’d come to the cabin after the feud began with her father, she’d felt like the cabin had taunted her with the good memories. Memories that were all a lie. So Olivia had taken the jumbled boxes packed with pain, shame, and weighty things sitting in the middle of her soul and pulled a blanket over them. Pretty dumb for someone in her profession, but at the time she’d needed to move, to survive, to direct her energy to her burgeoning business. Eventually it got easier to step around the blanketed emotions and not see them. Coming to this place had pulled the edges of that blanket back.

Chicks always come home to roost. Or so they say.

Olivia shook off her thoughts, remembering that both she and Chase needed to get settled so they could truly start making progress.

Upstairs there were three rooms. One her grandparents had used, the other, her parents or her father’s siblings had stayed in. The last room held bunk beds and air mattresses for the children of the family. She needed to choose one to use as her own while she and Chase completed the adulting boot camp and the sneaky therapy she would slip in while Chase learned to use a lawn mower and bake a cake.

She chose her grandparents’ room, which was smaller than the one used by the rest of the family. Olivia had always liked the coziness, the rocking chair in the corner, and the wedding ring quilt her grandmother had made the first year she’d been married to Papa Joe, the year after he’d brought her from Maine to California for a new start.

She’d just flung open the old drapes to let sunlight in when she heard a knock at the door. Had to be the electrician. Thank goodness. She needed a shower, too.

Olivia set her cleaning products on the bedside table and jogged down the stairs, pausing when she saw who stood on the threshold.

Not the electrician.

Neve.

Her older sister stood framed in the open door. Chase stood, hand still on the doorknob, a guarded look on her face.

Olivia blinked a few times. “What are you doing here?”

Neve looked older than her forty years. Life had done that to her. She’d once been trim, with gold-streaked chestnut hair, clear brown eyes, and glowing skin. She’d taught herself to play the guitar, had a passable voice, and planned to be a music teacher. That was before Scott.