Every Room Between Us

Winifred Sato mends the fragile things other people throw away. Laid off from her museum conservation job, she is packing a tool roll in a borrowed sublet when a lawyer from Tamarack Harbor, Minnesota calls: Ingrid Halvorsen, the woman Winifred hasn't seen since she was eleven, has died at ninety-one, and Winifred is named in the will.

The inheritance is Halvorsen House, a turreted, crumbling mansion on the shore of Lake Superior, left in equal halves to Winifred and to Ezra Kincaid, a local carpenter who knew Ingrid his whole life and has never heard Winifred's name. The conditions are strict: live in the house together from May to November, restore it room by room from Ingrid's own Book of Rooms, and never be apart for more than seven nights. If either of them fails, that half goes to a developer with big plans for the bluff.

With a contested will, a ninety-thousand-dollar trust released one finished room at a time, and a sealed envelope that stays shut until the last room is done, Winifred and Ezra have six months, one stubborn boiler and a lot of old stitches to read. Every repaired seam asks the same question: can something be mended without hiding where it broke?

Every Room Between Us is a warm, slow-burn contemporary romance about inheritance, forgiveness and finding a place to stay. Perfect for readers of small-town love stories, forced-proximity romance and house-restoration tales.