The Cottage on Juniper Ridge. Sheila Roberts

to furnish the place. The fun had lasted until she saw the credit card bill.

      If it’s been a while, then chances are you’re due for a change.

      Well, there was an understatement. Jen read on, learning about the author’s big life change, how she’d lost her second husband and had to start over. Left to figure out her finances and the rest of her life, Muriel Sterling had sold her big house that she owed a fortune on and rented a friend’s cottage.

      It wasn’t easy letting go of that house. It represented so much—the new life I’d begun with my second husband, security, happiness. But I quickly learned that two stories of wood and stone don’t make a life. And owing money on that place certainly didn’t make me secure. What I needed was freedom, not merely from debt but from the past and from my unrealistic expectations. I needed to be free to start again.

      Free to start again, huh? Jen read on.

      And so I ask you now, do you need to start over? The only way to do that is to get free.

      Get free? She’d just bought this place. But did she own it or did it own her?

      She shut the book and looked around her living room. Her couch was white leather and had a matching beaded chair. Her Beckworth coffee table, handcrafted from exotic demolition hardwoods, was her pride and joy. It hadn’t been cheap but she loved it. Her decorations were from Crate and Barrel. They hadn’t been cheap, either, and she had the high credit card balance to prove it. She really liked this living room. She especially liked the fireplace. Her parents’ house didn’t have one and she’d always been taken with the romantic image of reading by a cozy fire on a cold day. And even though the fire going right now was electric, it was still pretty, and it gave her living room the perfect finishing touch. Except she rarely had a chance to enjoy it.

      She really liked her bedroom, too, which she’d dolled up with a vintage brass bed, a pink comforter and a spectacular multicolored gypsy chandelier. It should have been a retreat, a place for sweet dreams, but often she tossed and turned on that vintage bed, thinking about everything she had to do.

      The kitchen was another work of art and she enjoyed looking at its sleek granite countertops. But she hardly ever cooked in there.

      She gazed out the window at the Seattle skyline. Buildings everywhere and gray skies.

      “What am I doing here?” she asked herself.

      * * *

      Toni was up to her eyebrows in gift bags and wrapping paper when her sister called. “Hey, I was beginning to think you’d run away,” Toni said. “I haven’t heard from you since we had lunch.”

      “I’ve been busy.”

      “What a surprise.”

      “What are you doing this weekend?” Jen asked, ignoring her sarcasm.

      “With ten days to go until Christmas? Shopping.” Most of her shopping had been done by November, but she still had a few last-minute things to purchase.

      “Want to go shopping in Icicle Falls?”

      “What?”

      “I want to check out Icicle Falls. We can go up Friday and spend the night. Come back late Saturday.”

      Toni wasn’t spontaneous. She was a planner, and she had her weekend all planned. She was going to the gym on Friday, then out to dinner that night with her husband. Wayne was a programmer and sometimes it seemed he was married to his computer instead of her. But come Friday, they were going to have a romantic night out whether he wanted to or not. She’d already told him to program that into his computer. Then Saturday she’d finish up her shopping.

      “I can’t go until after Christmas.”

      “Come on. Please? My treat.”

      “You can’t afford to treat.”

      “Okay, we can go halfsies, then we can both afford it.”

      Toni propped the phone between her shoulder and her ear and set to work, using a pair of scissors to curl the ribbon on the package she’d finished wrapping. “Why are you suddenly in such a tear to go to Icicle Falls?”

      “Because I think I might want to move there.”

      Toni dropped the scissors. “What? What are you talking about? You just bought a condo!”

      “I know. And now it’s on the market. My Realtor is holding an open house this weekend.”

      All right. Spontaneous was one thing, but this was crazy. “You can’t put your place up for sale just like that,” Toni protested.

      “Yes, I can,” Jen said, her tone of voice deceptively sane.

      “No. You can’t. You don’t have any equity built up. You won’t make a cent.”

      “I don’t need to make anything. I need to get free of my debt. Never mind the cheese, let me out of the trap.”

      Toni frowned. That didn’t sound like something her sister would say. “What’s this all about, anyway?” And then she remembered. The book. She groaned. “Oh, no. Don’t tell me.”

      “Don’t tell you what?”

      “You read the book I gave you.”

      “Isn’t that why you gave it to me? And yes, I did, and it made perfect sense.”

      “That was to help you prioritize your life, learn how to be less busy.”

      “That’s exactly what I’m doing,” Jen said. “I’m shedding all the things that have been complicating my life and holding me down.”

      “I didn’t give you that book so you could go off half-cocked, sell your place and move to the mountains.” She’d only wanted her little sister to learn to say no, to manage her time better. She should’ve known this would happen. This was such a Jen thing to do.

      “I don’t know if I’m going to move to the mountains yet. I’m taking this slowly, checking it out.”

      “Slowly? You read a book and two weeks later your place is up for sale!”

      “Okay, fine. If you don’t want to go...”

      “Oh, no. You’re not going up there without me,” Toni said firmly. Who knew what her sister would do if left to her own devices? “I’ll pick you up Friday at eleven, after I’m done at the gym.” The romantic Friday night dinner with her husband would have to wait. Right now she had to keep her sister from simplifying her life with a new complication.

      And so that Friday afternoon the sisters were on their way to the quaint Washington town of Icicle Falls. Nestled in the Cascades, it was the ideal place...to visit.

      “Why up here in the mountains? Why Icicle Falls?” Toni demanded.

      “That’s where Muriel Sterling lives.”

      “Muriel Sterling?”

      “You know, the woman who wrote Simplicity. I read it in her bio on the back of the book.” Jen frowned. “Sometimes I wonder if you even read that book.”

      Of course she’d read it. That was why she’d given it to her sister. Now Toni wished she’d never heard of it.

      “So, on a whim you decided you want to live there?”

      “I’ve been looking it up on the internet,” Jen said. “Did you know the town sponsors a yearly chocolate festival?”

      “Well, there’s a reason to move.”

      Jen matched her sarcasm with a grin. “I thought so.”

      “This is nuts,” Toni said, frowning at her sister.

      “Hey, watch the road.”

      “Don’t