The Way Back To Us

Elias stood beneath the porch light, one hand braced against the doorframe. He wore a white shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows and a dark vest that looked as if he had put it on in a hurry. His hair was damp, too, though not from the rain. A loose strand fell across his forehead, just as it had when they were seventeen and he had climbed the old apple tree behind her parents’ house.

His gaze moved over her muddy shoes, her soaked dress, and the suitcase beside her.

Then it settled on her face.

“Nora Bennett,” he said.

She tightened her fingers around the handle. “Elias Mercer.”

A smile touched his mouth, but it did not quite become one. “You made it.”

“I was beginning to wonder.”

He stepped down onto the porch. “The garden path is gone. We’ve been trying to keep people from using it.”

“I noticed.”

His hand reached for her suitcase. Nora caught the handle first.

“I can manage.”

“I didn’t say you couldn’t.”

“You didn’t have to.”

The rain struck the porch roof in a hard, steady rush. Somewhere inside, a glass broke, followed by a cheer and then a nervous silence.

Elias glanced toward the house. “The front hall is crowded. If you’re trying not to draw attention - ”

“I’m not.”

“You’re standing in the rain with one shoe full of mud.”

She looked down. Her left heel was indeed dark with wet soil.

“That’s not attention,” she said. “That’s poor planning.”

His eyes warmed, and for one dangerous second the years between them thinned. She remembered him laughing beside the creek, his shoulder pressed to hers, both of them pretending they had not been caught holding hands.

Then he reached for the suitcase again.

This time Nora let go.

His knuckles brushed hers.

The contact was brief. It still moved through her like a match struck in a closed room.

Elias lifted the suitcase and carried it toward the door. Nora followed, gathering her skirt. He did not look back, but he slowed enough for her to keep pace.

Inside, the house was hotter than the porch and smelled of beeswax, wet wool, and roses. Guests filled the entry hall, shaking umbrellas and calling greetings over the music. A woman in a green dress hurried past with a tray of champagne. Someone had hung fairy lights along the staircase, and their reflections trembled in the tall mirror above the table.

Nora kept her eyes on Elias’s shoulders.

That had been easy once. Follow him. Trust him to know the way.

She stopped herself before the thought could settle.

At the base of the staircase, Elias turned. “Your room is upstairs.”

“Good.”

He looked at her wet dress again. “You should change before you go to the reception.”

“I know.”

“The reception may not be in the garden.”

Nora frowned. “What does that mean?”

A deep roll of thunder shook the windows. The lights flickered. Around them, several guests looked up.

Elias lowered his voice. “The river has risen over the lower road. The caterer’s van is stuck near the bridge, and the garden is flooding. Lucy’s trying to decide whether to move everything inside.”

Nora looked past him at the crowded hall. “She’ll manage.”

“She’s crying in the pantry.”

That stopped her.

“Lucy?”

“She says she isn’t crying. She’s cutting onions, apparently.”

Nora’s irritation loosened. Lucy had called her three times that morning, each time sounding cheerful enough to fool a stranger. Nora had promised to arrive early and help. Instead, she had spent forty minutes circling the flooded road, unwilling to admit she needed directions.

“Where is she?”

“Left corridor. But first - ”

A gust pushed through the open door. Rain sprayed across the floor, and a gust of cold air lifted the edge of Nora’s skirt. Elias set down the suitcase and reached past her to pull the door shut.

His arm came close to her shoulder. She felt the warmth of him through the thin fabric at her back.

“Elias.”

He paused.

The word had come out softer than she intended.

His hand remained on the brass latch. “What?”

Nora had no idea. She wanted to tell him not to stand so near. She wanted to ask why he had never written after leaving town. She wanted to ask whether he had thought of her when he passed the creek, the apple tree, the narrow lane where they had once promised to meet every summer.

Instead she said, “You’re getting rain on the floor.”

His gaze dropped to the dark marks beneath his shoes. “I’ll add it to the list.”

A laugh almost escaped her. She pressed it down.

He picked up her suitcase. “Come on.”

The left corridor was quieter, though the storm still rattled the windows. Nora followed him past framed wedding photographs and a table covered in place cards. Elias moved with the brisk confidence of someone who belonged in every room. He knew which door stuck, which floorboard creaked, where the extra linens were kept.

She had once known those things too.

At the pantry, he knocked once and opened the door.

Lucy stood among baskets of bread and jars of jam, holding a knife in one hand and a red onion in the other. Her mascara had run beneath both eyes.

“Nora!” She dropped the onion and rushed forward.

Nora caught her in a hug. Lucy smelled of lavender, rain, and onions.

“You’re here,” Lucy said into her shoulder.

“I said I would be.”

“You also said you’d be here before lunch.”

“I was delayed.”

“By what?”

Nora glanced at Elias.

He leaned against the doorframe, arms folded. “The path.”

Lucy looked between them, then smiled in a way that made Nora instantly wary. “Of course it was.”

“Don’t,” Nora said.

“I haven’t said anything.”

“You were about to.”

“I was about to ask you to save my wedding.”

Nora looked at the scattered boxes, the damp napkins, and the handwritten seating chart spread across the counter. “What happened?”

“The garden is unusable. The band is trapped at the inn. The caterer may arrive with half the food and no tables.” Lucy’s voice wobbled. “I wanted one beautiful day.”

“You can still have one.”

Elias pushed away from the door. “That’s what I’ve been telling her.”

Lucy wiped her cheeks with the back of her wrist. “You two can work on the house plan. Nora knows how to make a room look welcoming, and Elias knows every inch of this place.”

Nora turned to her. “I just got here.”

“And I’m the bride.”

“That is not an answer.”

“It’s the only one I have.”

Lucy seized Nora’s hands. Her fingers were cold. “Please. Just help him move the reception into the drawing room. Then you can disappear upstairs, change, and pretend none of this happened.”

Nora looked at Elias.

He did not smile. He did not plead. He simply waited, giving her the choice.

That was worse than pressure.

“Fine,” she said. “The drawing room first.”

Lucy let out a breath and kissed her cheek. “I knew you’d come through.”

Nora stepped into the corridor. “Don’t make me regret it.”

“I won’t,” Lucy called.

Elias picked up the suitcase again.

“You don’t have to carry that,” Nora said.

“I know.”

They walked back toward the stairs together. The house seemed to narrow around them, crowded with voices and wet coats and the old scent of cedar. Nora could feel his presence without looking at him.

“You left,” she said.

His stride changed.

It was small. Almost nothing. But she noticed.

“Not now.”

“That’s convenient.”

He stopped beside the staircase. “This weekend is about Lucy.”

“It always is.”

His expression tightened. “What does that mean?”

“It means you’ve always been very good at choosing the thing that lets you avoid the harder one.”

The words landed between them.

A guest carrying a stack of plates squeezed past. Elias moved closer to the wall, and Nora had to step nearer to him to make room. His shoulder brushed hers. Neither of them moved away at once.

His voice dropped. “You think I came here to avoid you?”

“I think you came here knowing I’d be here.”

“I didn’t.”

“Then why didn’t you tell me?”

His eyes held hers. “Would you have come?”

Nora’s mouth went dry.

The thunder rolled again, but this time it sounded far away.

Elias looked down at the suitcase. “That’s what I thought.”

She should have been angry. Instead, the answer opened something she had kept shut for too long.

“I would have come for Lucy.”

“I know.”

“But I might have prepared myself.”

“For what?”

“For you.”

The words left her before she could stop them.

His face changed. The guarded look slipped, revealing something tired and unsteady beneath it.

“I wasn’t prepared for you either,” he said.

Nora’s breath caught.

Elias set the suitcase on the stair. “I thought seeing you would be easier after all this time.”

“Was it?”

“No.”

The simple truth quieted her.

He rubbed his thumb over the handle, looking at the place where their hands had touched. “I’m sorry.”

“For leaving?”

“For leaving the way I did.”

Nora waited. The hallway filled with footsteps and voices, but he did not look away.

“I needed you to come after me,” he said. “That was unfair.”

She had expected excuses. A story about family trouble, work, fear, anything that would let her place the blame neatly between them.

Instead, he had given her the one thing she had never admitted wanting: proof that he had known what he was doing.

“You wanted me to chase you,” she said.

“I wanted to believe I mattered enough that you would.”

Her anger faltered.

Elias swallowed. “And when you didn’t, I told myself it meant I hadn’t mattered at all.”

Nora looked toward the rain-streaked windows. Outside, the garden had vanished beneath gray water. The house, with its locked doors and crowded rooms, felt suddenly less like shelter than a place with no easy exits.

“I was seventeen,” she said. “I thought you wanted to go.”

“I was twenty-two.”

“You were old enough to say goodbye.”

“Yes.”

The answer hurt more than denial would have.

A shout rose from the drawing room. Someone called Elias’s name. He glanced toward the sound, then back to her.

“We should move the tables,” he said.

Nora picked up the suitcase. “Yes.”

They worked for the next hour without speaking about the past. Elias dragged folding tables from the storage room while Nora shifted chairs and pinned lengths of white cloth along the walls. Their bodies remembered how to move around each other. When she reached for a stack of plates, he steadied the shelf. When he climbed a ladder to hang lights, she held it firmly beneath him.

“Left,” she said.

“I am left.”

“Your other left.”

He looked down at her. “You’ve always been bossy.”

“You’ve always needed supervision.”

His smile came then, quick and real.

It struck her harder than his apology.

By the time the band arrived, soaked but smiling, the drawing room had become a warm, glowing space. Candles flickered on the mantel. Rain tapped against the windows. Guests began to gather, grateful for any plan that did not involve standing in a flooded garden.

Nora reached for the last place card.

Elias reached for it too.

Their fingers met.

Neither pulled away.

For a moment, the noise of the house faded. His gaze dropped to her mouth, then lifted again, asking without words.

Nora felt the old answer rise in her.

Before either of them could speak, Lucy hurried into the room. “Good news,” she said. “The lower road is closed, so no one can leave until morning. The inn is full, and the east wing has a leak.”

Nora’s hand slipped from Elias’s.

Lucy looked at the two of them, then at the single dry hallway beyond the drawing room. “Nora, your room is in the east wing. Elias, the west wing is flooded.”

Elias went still.

Lucy’s smile faded. “There’s one guest room left in the old house.”

Nora looked toward the staircase, then back at him.

The rain beat harder against the glass.

“Which room?” Elias asked.

Lucy pointed to the door at the end of the hall. “The blue room. It has two beds.”

Nora’s pulse stumbled at the thought of sleeping beneath the same roof as him, listening for his footsteps, knowing every wall between them was thinner than the years they had built.

She had wanted an uncomplicated weekend.

Instead, the storm had closed the roads, flooded the garden, and left her standing beside the boy who had once promised never to leave.

Elias picked up the last place card and held it out to her.

“Still want to disappear upstairs?” he asked.

Nora took the card. Their fingers touched again.

“No,” she said, though she was no longer certain whether she meant the reception or him. “I think I’m staying.”

End of chapter one. 11 more chapters in the full book.