“Not for several weeks.”

“Piper is under the impression he plans to surprise her for Christmas. You’ve heard her talk about that, right? That’s what she’s asking Santa Claus for. She’s mentioned it to me several times.”

Briefly closing her eyes, Harper imagined the disappointment her daughters would suffer and wished there was some way to avoid it—or at least help them understand. “I’ll have a talk with her and Everly and…and try to let them down easy.”

“Okay, but wait until we get back. Let’s not ruin the trip.”

Harper folded her arms as if that might hold her together. “Thank you, Karol. Thanks for everything.”

“That’s what sisters are for,” Karoline said. But even as Harper followed her out to breakfast, she wondered if one week alone would make much of a difference. It’d been eight months since Axel had first told her he wanted out of their marriage, and it hadn’t gotten any easier.

Tobias was afraid he was in for a long weekend. The weather wasn’t good enough that he felt like hiking again or biking, either, so he’d spent the morning cleaning his house, and had gotten caught up on laundry and other chores. But now he couldn’t decide what to do next. He would’ve liked to spend the afternoon working on the Buick with Uriah. They were almost ready to put it up for sale. They’d be splitting the profits, and he was excited about that. But he didn’t want to stick around if Carl was going to be there. The brown Impala was still parked in the drive, over far enough that Tobias could get past it. He decided to take the opportunity to leave so Uriah could focus on his son—and so he didn’t have to run into Carl himself.

As he climbed into his truck, he considered going to Maddox’s house. He really enjoyed spending time with Maya, his niece. She was always trying to come up with a new type of cookie to sell at Sugar Mama, the cookie shop Jada’s mother owned in town, and used him as one of her taste testers. But he worried he spent too much time at his brother’s place as it was and didn’t want Jada to think of him as a pain in the ass. Didn’t want to do anything to harm the close relationship he and Maddox finally had the chance to rebuild.

Besides, he never knew whether her brother, Atticus, would be there. Atticus treated him well enough. Since he also worked at New Horizons, they saw each other occasionally on campus and were thrown together whenever Jada and Maddox hosted some kind of event, like the party they threw when they announced the sex of the baby they were having in May.