Updated Apr 12, 2026 • ~5 min read
Chapter 26: Ten Years
Cole
Ten years after the cabin, Cole Hartford wakes up on their anniversary and finds Quinn already awake, staring at the ceiling.
“You okay?” he asks.
“Just thinking about how ten years ago today, I was a Seattle lawyer driving into Montana to serve you papers, and you were a construction company owner trying to avoid me, and neither of us had any idea we’d end up here.”
“Here being married with two daughters and a successful business partnership?”
“Here being completely in love and building a life I couldn’t have imagined.”
Cole pulls her close. “Best blizzard of my life.”
“Mine too.”
They’ve made the annual cabin trip a sacred tradition—every year on the anniversary, they spend a weekend at the cabin where it all started, reconnecting and remembering and choosing each other again.
But this year feels different.
More significant.
Ten years is a milestone.
“I have something for you,” Cole says, pulling out a small box.
Quinn’s eyes widen. “We said no gifts this year—”
“This isn’t a gift. It’s a symbol.” He opens the box, revealing a necklace—simple pendant with coordinates engraved on it. “The exact coordinates of the cabin. Where we fell in love. I thought you should have them. So no matter where life takes us, you can always find your way back to where we started.”
Quinn’s crying now—happy tears, overwhelmed tears—and Cole fastens the necklace around her neck.
“Thank you,” she whispers. “This is perfect.”
“You’re perfect. Our life together is perfect. I wanted to mark ten years of terrible decisions that led to everything.”
Hart-Fitz is now a nationally recognized firm with offices in six states, forty-five employees, and a reputation as the gold standard for sustainable development.
They’ve completed over sixty projects—each one proving that economic growth and environmental protection can coexist, each one training more developers in collaborative approaches, each one changing the industry standard for what responsible development looks like.
And their daughters are growing up understanding environmental responsibility as normal.
Emily is nine now, already showing Quinn’s intelligence and Cole’s stubbornness, passionate about science and convinced she’s going to be a marine biologist despite living in landlocked Montana.
Sophia is six, artistic and empathetic, constantly drawing elaborate pictures of the buildings “Daddy and Mama make that help the Earth.”
“They’re good kids,” Margaret says one Sunday dinner. “You two did good.”
“They’re terrorizing children,” Quinn corrects. “Emily just spent twenty minutes explaining wetland hydrology to Sophia in excruciating detail.”
“So they’re smart terrorizing children. Even better.”
Cole watches his family—Margaret and his sister Anna and her kids, Quinn and their daughters, even Biscuit the dog who’s now elderly and mostly just sleeps—and thinks about legacy.
His father built Hartford Construction from nothing.
Cole expanded it and almost lost it to a lawsuit.
Then Quinn helped him transform it into something better—Hart-Fitz Sustainable Solutions, changing how an entire industry operates.
“What are you thinking?” Quinn asks later, both of them cleaning up after dinner.
“About legacy. About what we’re leaving for Emily and Sophia.”
“A successful business?”
“A way of thinking about development that prioritizes long-term sustainability over short-term profit. A model they can build on or completely change, but at least a foundation that shows them business and environmental protection aren’t opposing forces.”
“That’s good legacy.”
“What about you? What legacy do you want?”
Quinn considers this while drying dishes. “I want people to remember that environmental law doesn’t have to be adversarial. That collaboration works better than litigation for actually protecting ecosystems. That you can be fierce about environmental standards while still working WITH people instead of against them.”
“You’re already doing that. People cite your model. Law schools teach your approach. You’ve changed the field.”
“We’ve changed it. Together.”
“Always together.”
Two months later, they’re approached by a publisher who wants them to write a book about their model—the Hart-Fitz approach to sustainable development, from initial opposition to successful partnership.
“It’s a memoir and a business book,” the editor explains. “Your story of going from enemies to partners, plus practical guidance for other developers and environmental advocates who want to implement collaborative models.”
“People would want to read that?” Quinn asks skeptically.
“People are desperate for it. Your model is working. They want to know how to replicate it.”
So they write the book together—Quinn handling the environmental policy sections, Cole covering construction economics, both of them writing their personal story of falling in love while fighting over wetlands.
It’s strange seeing their life in print.
Strange but beautiful.
“We sound insane,” Quinn says, reading a draft chapter about their engagement after one month. “People are going to think we lost our minds.”
“We did lose our minds. That’s what makes it a good story.”
The book publishes the following year—”Snowed In: How Environmental Opposition Became Sustainable Partnership”—and becomes required reading in both environmental law programs and sustainable development courses.
They do a book tour—Quinn comfortable with public speaking from years of presentations, Cole less so but managing—and everywhere they go, people want to know the same thing:
How did you make it work?
“We decided the work mattered more than winning,” Quinn always says. “We decided partnership was more effective than opposition. And we decided to trust each other even when it was terrifying.”
“And we decided we were in love and everything else was logistics,” Cole adds, making Quinn laugh every time.
Ten years of marriage.
Ten years of partnership.
Ten years of building something that matters.
And they’re just getting started.
More projects to complete.
More industry standards to change.
More life to build together.
One terrible decision at a time.
Always together.
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