Maple and Mayhem

Kenna Osborne, thirty-nine, does not do rescue missions. She buys a dental practice in Paris, Ontario, rents the house across the street from the mill, and builds a quiet life for herself and her twelve-year-old son, Wesley. Then October hits Elliot Kane all at once.

Elliot, forty-four, is a widowed mill-maintenance supervisor with fourteen-year-old twins, a house held together by routine, and a boss who has just handed him mandatory night shifts for a solid month. Kenna has a spare pair of hands and a porch with a view of his driveway. Covering school runs turns into dinners. Dinners turn into something neither of them scheduled.

The twins have other plans. Jesse and Lydia launch Operation Cold Shoulder, a full sabotage campaign of faked emergencies and weaponized stereo volume, because the last time their world rearranged itself, they lost their mother. And Kenna's ex-husband picks this exact season to lawyer up over custody.

Two houses. Three kids. One fall fair to plan. Kenna and Elliot can keep their careful separate lives, or they can try to build one family out of the pieces, on terms the kids help set.