Ending up where I started wasn’t exactly what I had in mind when I left Venice. Even without J Town, I could have made it as a freelancer. I never really bothered to look at my bank account until I had to look into shipping my stuff.

I’d been so focused on not fucking up my collection, that I did an obscene amount of busy work when things didn’t work out. Evidently, obscene was an understatement.

But instead of finding a place and doing more of the same, I just really wanted New York. I hadn’t longed for it since I left. Or maybe I just hadn’t allowed myself to.

I strapped all my shit into a small U-Haul and drove home.

I had money, but I wasn’t a rockstar.

Funny that was the first word in my brain. But he was never far from my thoughts. Oh, I tried to push him out, but everything about Ian was stubborn, even a breakup.

I found myself taking pictures on my drive. I even started bonding with Lucy—my other Polaroid camera. I hadn’t been able to find Matilda when I was packing, and honestly, I wasn’t sure I could still use her anyway. She was so tied to Ian.

Instead, I posted to my Instagram. Maybe hoping he’d look if he thought of me too. All the little places I’d never given myself time to travel to.

Places that made me think of him and want to share them with him.

In the end, the destination had lured harder than exploration. I filled three journals with ideas for projects, fed my painting need with watercolors in a Hobonichi to document my time and get things out of my brain.

I didn’t even tell my parents I was coming.

The minute I saw signs for Rochester, New York, it was like all my days of travel had dropped on me at once. June was in full effect with the longer days and heat index fluctuating from cool nights to warm within a fingersnap.

I had maybe an hour of sunlight left when the first rustic billboard for Happy Acres stole my breath. The sky was honey gold and pink and the flat, boring highway gave way to endless rows of trees.

My family’s orchard was vast and had expanded in my lifetime. Some orchards didn’t have the same successes, and we had definitely had some hard years, but this place was the one constant in my life.

One place where I knew how to be.

I was too tired to put on a smile for strangers.

I needed home.

I didn’t even know how much until my ancient tires hit the gravel winding road at the edge of my parents’ property.

My vision wavered at the sprawling ranch with the garden taking up half the side yard. My mom’s raised beds were planted and the vines of her green bean plants had already started climbing the little trellises my dad and I had made for her when I was ten.

At the top of the drive, my brother Beck’s motorcycle was parked behind my mom’s cherry red Silverado. The sun was disappearing behind the Honeycrisp trees in the south quadrant.

I stepped out of the truck, and the familiar crunch of sand and gravel was a comfort I didn’t even know I’d needed.

The screen door slapped and Beck came running down the stairs with his ever present red rag in his hands. Worry was etched on his scruffy, tanned face.

“Z?”

One look at my big brother and I crumbled like a damn fourteen-year-old with her first broken heart.

It had always been that way for me. Beck was the eldest and the sturdiest of all my brothers.

He shoved his rag in his back pocket, lowered himself to me and wrapped his strong arms around me to lift me up. Without a word, he just held me and stroked his big, rough hand down my braid. Sunshine and freshly cut grass filled my lungs.

Once upon a time, he’d smelled only of cigarettes. Evidently, his decision to quit had stuck this time.

I gripped my fingers in the worn Henley-style shirt he’d worn for work every day since he’d taken over for our dad in the orchard.

“Is everything okay?” he finally asked.

“Yeah.” I finally let him go and dropped back onto the ground. I dashed away the tears that had fallen. I hadn’t cried since that day in the shower all those weeks ago.

“Who made you cry? I’ll kill him.”

A laugh bubbled out of my chest. “Who says it’s a him?”

His eyebrow zinged up. “All right, I’ll kill her. I don’t care.”

“He’s not important.”

“He is if he made you cry.”

I hooked my arm through my brother’s and dragged him up toward the house. “It’s a bit more than that, actually. I just didn’t know I needed to come home until I was almost here. Then there you were.” I punched his arm—the immovable one because my brother did nothing but freaking manual labor. “And I just had a little moment.”

“You don’t cry.”

I found my smile and gave it to him. “Surprised me too.”

He gestured to the truck. “That’s not a home visit.”

“No.”

“Fountain of info, Z.”

“It’s the kind I only want to tell once.”

“Oh, family meeting?”

I rolled my eyes. “If you like.”

He unearthed his iPhone—at least four versions ago—and started one-handed texting as he smushed me into his chest and took a picture before sending it off to someone. Probably my other brother, Justin.

He stopped before we hit the porch stairs and crouched down. I must have looked exceptionally bad if he was offering up a piggyback ride. I jumped on his back, and he hefted me higher. “Hold on like you mean it.”

My vision blurred, but I gripped his neck. He gave an exaggerated grunt as he climbed the steps and swung the door open. “I found a little something in the driveway.”

“Hey, Ma.”

“Zoe Jayne, what are you doing here?”

“Nice to see you too.” I hopped down and hugged my mother. I loved her dearly, but she wasn’t the most effusive woman in the world.

She patted my back, then gripped my arms and held me away from her to look me over. “You’re too skinny.”

“California chic.”

She frowned at me. “You get into those art trances and forget to eat. I worried you’d do that if we weren’t around to remind you to eat.”

I wandered over to the sink where vegetables were chopped up on the thick butcher block right beside it. I filched a red pepper. My mother never really understood my artwork. She understood dirt and growing things—she could literally bring any plant back to life. She was also an encyclopedia of plants. She never went to school for it, she’d simply been working in either a planter bed or in the orchard all her life.

Me and my weird art made her uncomfortable.

“Things have been a little crazy in California. I decided to come home for awhile.”

She blinked at me, worrying the towel she wore tucked in her front pocket. Sarah Manning didn’t like her schedule in disarray.

The pepper caught in my throat. I went to the fridge and found a bottle of sweet tea at the back. I pulled it out and found my cup in the same spot it had been since I was a girl. The sameness that had driven me away now comforted in a way I didn’t want to dissect.

I just wanted some tea, some annoyingly loud brother chatter, and my bed for twenty-four hours. Didn’t seem like much to ask for. I took a long belt of my mom’s sweet tea. I never could quite make it right.

I leaned back on the counter. “I know it’s a little bit of a surprise.”

“Little?” My mother shook off her owl impersonation and moved back to her pile of veggies. She picked up her knife and resumed her precise cuts. “Beck, call your father and have him pick up an extra pack of chicken for dinner.”

“I’m sure I can just eat—”

“Beck.”

“Right.” Beck gave me a tight smile. My mother had spoken, there wasn’t much use arguing.

“What’s Dad doing today?”

“He’s out with Fred today checking on the seedlings.”

My dad was semi-retired, but as with my Uncle Fred, the men in this family didn’t truly ever know how to put their gloves down.

“Can I help with anything?”

“No. I’m just making fajitas.”

“Sounds like I picked the right day to drop in.” I snatched another pepper before she could slap my hand. I wasn’t used to to being this unsure in my own house. “It’s all right that I came home for a while, right?”

“Of course. We’ll just have to do some rearranging.”

I frowned. “Rearranging?”

“Your room isn’t exactly a bedroom anymore.” She didn’t look up from her pile of onions.

“Oh.” It was my turn to play owl. I didn’t even think of that. My bedroom had simply been mine—always. The last one at the edge of the house. My window was big enough that it felt more like a door, especially since I’d escaped through it many a night to walk the orchard at sunrise.

It bothered me enough that I left the kitchen and went down the long hallway through the back of the house to my room. My brothers had moved out long ago, which had brought on a big renovation when I was a teen. I’d actually convinced my dad to knock one of the walls down to get a larger bedroom.

I opened my door and simply stared. My room wasn’t a room at all. It was a greenhouse.

Orchids in every different color of the rainbow and shape.

“Wow.”

Beck came up behind me. “So, there’s been some changes.”

“Ya think?” I glanced up at him. “Why didn’t she just make a greenhouse as a separate structure?”

“Permits were taking forever and her precious babies needed a home. She ordered them online before Dad even picked up a hammer.”

“Wow.”

“I know. I didn’t even know she loved them this much. I mean, she always had a little orchid thing at the edge of the porch, but this…” Beck shrugged. “Yeah, surprised the hell out of me.”

We lived in a ranch house and we had extra bedrooms, but now I was afraid to go look in the other rooms.

Beck rubbed the back of his neck. “Willa lives here now too.”

My eyebrows shot up. “Willa Russo? From the store?”

“Yeah. She and Ma got really close after you left. She had a shitshow of a boyfriend and needed somewhere to stay.”

“Well, crap.”

“She and Mom have been doing the orchid thing together. Even entered a hybrid they created into the American Orchid Society.”

Rearranging? My mother had come up with a whole new career while I was gone. It hadn’t even been that long either. “Did she even wait a week after I left?”

“Two?”

“I was kidding.” Kinda. “Well, shit. Want to bring me over to Aunt Laverne’s? I’ll see if I can bum a place to stay over there.”

“Sure. We’ll go after dinner.”

“Thanks, Beck.”

“What are big brothers for?” He hooked his arm around my neck and dragged me down the hall.

“I will end you!”

“Promises, promises.” He twisted the hold into a hug and slung his arm around my shoulders as we got back into the kitchen.

“Holy shit, I didn’t think he was telling the truth.” Another one of my brothers handed off a grocery bag to our mom, then Justin swooped in and lifted me into a swinging hug.

“Justin Matthew.”

“Sorry, Ma.”

Swearing was strictly forbidden in the kitchen. The house really, but she only enforced it in her domain. Too many men and a deep and abiding love for sports couldn’t keep all the curse words out of the Manning house.

Justin grinned down at me. “You look good, kid.”

“Liar.”

He shrugged and gave me his big sweet smile. “Sometimes you need a little white lie to make you feel better. I hear there’s an ass we need to kick.”

I sighed and shook my head. “I’ll tell you about it over dinner. Where’s Hayes?”

“Buried at the store. Inventory time.”

I winced. I certainly didn’t miss that part about working at the orchard. “Guess I’ll be eating his helping.”

“Where’s my baby girl?”

I managed to swallow back another bout of tears when I heard my dad’s voice at the front of the house. I went out to meet him in the living room. Rangy and tall, with his dusty Red Sox hat on backwards, Christopher Manning didn’t look his age until he smiled. Then all the sunkissed lines at the corners of his eyes made his caramel eyes shine. My eyes.

I was the spitting image of my mother except for the eyes.

He gathered me into his side and we both collapsed onto the couch together. I buried my face in his dusty shirt. He smelled of earth and peppermint. I dug into his shirt pocket and sure enough, there was a wrapped candy.

“Hey.”

I grinned at him cheekily, then bit through the twist of the wrapper and the sharp candy burned my tongue. “Hey, Dad.”

“Hey, Zoe.” He brushed a kiss along my forehead. “We really missed you around here.”

“Like an orchid?”

He winced. “I tried to convince her to wait on that.”

I waved him away. “It’s fine.”

“I thought you were happy in California. We assumed you’d come home for Christmas and we could tell you all about the new add-on.”

“Or maybe during one of my phone calls?”

“Yeah, well, if you called more than once a month maybe we would have remembered to cram it into the conversation.”

I heard the censure and regret bounced around in my chest. I’d been so immersed in my own life, in Ian, in the work I was doing, I’d neglected my family.

“Ah, don’t worry about it, girl. We understood. Life moves really quick when you are actually doing stuff you love. You were, right? More than you could find here?”

“I was, Dad. I did. I just needed someplace to think. I loved J Town and Venice Beach. My studio was so perfect.”

“But…”

I sighed. “I got lost along the way. I was lost even before I went out there.” Funny how being with Ian had actually made everything so clear. That I’d been hiding from my art by leaving my home. By trying to conform to my idea of being a professional artist, I’d just ended up more tangled.

“And a guy?”

I leaned into his warmth. Even as night was falling over the house, and the heat was still sticking inside the living room, there was something soothing about cuddling into my dad. “So much more than just a guy.”

I didn’t even know what I should tell them.

Things had been kept quiet thanks to Donovan’s legion of people and money. Everyone involved in Margo’s kidnapping had been dealt with in one way or another. And the fallout had been massive.

“Should make for some interesting dinner conversation.”

I gave a strangled laugh. “You have no idea.”

“Wash up, you two.” My mother’s voice carried into the living room.

My dad squeezed my knee lightly. “You heard the boss.”

I popped up off the couch and tugged him after me. “We better get in there before Justin eats everything.”

“That is a true statement.”

We crammed around the kitchen table, passing around platters of food, tortillas, and my mom’s to die for guacamole. They asked me about California, about the beach. My brothers battered me with questions about famous people I didn’t know or care about.

As close as I was to Santa Monica, Venice was more about the art culture than the film industry. Sure, we had sightings here and there, but I was usually too wrapped up in my own thing to care much about it.

Until Ian.

Then fame had been an education in itself.

And what the hell was I supposed to say about everything? Margo’s story wasn’t mine to tell, and at the same time I didn’t even know what I should say. “I sort of dated Ian Kagan. Ish. Could I have the guac?”

“Wait, wait. You can’t just drop that bomb as you’re asking for a condiment.”

“Which part? That I actually dated someone?” I narrowed my gaze at Justin. “Since when did you know musicians?”

“I don’t, but the way you said it means he was more than some schlub. And Kagan? Hasn’t that guy been here before?”

I swallowed. “You mean Simon. Yes, he’s been here plenty since he’s in Nick’s band.”

Justin snapped his fingers. “Right. Holy shit—um, sorry Ma.” He corrected himself when our mother opened her mouth.

She just gave him a sideways look and nodded.

“Holy crap. He’s that singer dude that came out of nowhere and told the world he was related to Simon.”

I leaned back in my chair, my guac forgotten. “Since when do you watch British talent shows?”

“I may have been seeing a girl into the shows.” Justin tore his napkin into strips.

Which was code for Justin had crushed on a chick then did his due diligence to get her to talk to him. I knew very well how my brother operated. Especially since the orchard had many seasonal workers—especially of the female persuasion.

I picked at a pepper on my plate. “Yeah, well, I sort of dated Simon’s brother.”

“Is this the piece of…crap we need to kill?” Beck stuffed another tortilla full of fajita fixings.

“No.”

“He made you cry, he needs to die. No discussion.” Then my oldest brother shoved half the fajita in his mouth.

Justin sat up straight. “Wait, he messed with you?”

“All right, guys. Bring it down a level or eleven. We broke up and it wasn’t exactly a good break up, but he didn’t do anything bad.” Mostly. He only lied to me since the first day we met. No big.

“So, you came back home because of a man?” My mother set her fork down very deliberately.

“No, I didn’t come home because of Ian. I came home because I failed. Like that one better?”

“Now Zoe.” My dad’s gentle voice tightened my throat.

“It was a mix of both. I screwed up in a lot of ways and figured out a lot more. I just needed a place to put myself back together. Home is supposed to do that, right?”

Beck leaned over and covered my hand. “Home is always where you go, Z. We’re just glad to have you back.” Beck went back to his food. “Still gonna kill that kid when I see him.”

“No murder talk at my table.”

I covered my mouth with my napkin to hide the smile. It was good to be home.