Page 5 of The Forever Formula
She nodded. “I don’t think it’s hit any of us. We all loved him.”
Her words were a comfort to me. “Thanks for coming by.”
“You bet.” She held up a basket. “I brought you some goodies.”
It contained fresh blueberry muffins and an assortment of tea bags. A couple of shiny red apples. It was a small gesture, but it meant so much to me.
“Thank you,” I said, accepting the basket. “Would you like some tea? Surely, I can locate a kettle ...” I glanced toward the kitchen.
She shook her head. “That’s okay. I can’t stay. But I wanted to invite you to come over for a glass of wine tomorrow evening.”
I nodded my acceptance. “I’d love to.”
“Great. Seven o’clock?”
“I’ll be there.”
“Good. We can get all caught up.” Natalie hesitated on the front porch as if there was something else on her mind. “One more thing ... Will there be a service for your grandfather? We were all wondering. We’d like to pay our respects.”
I shook my head. “No, you know Grandpa.”
“Stubborn as an ox,” Natalie said with a glint of amusement in her eyes, like she was remembering one of the many times he did something outlandish that left us all exasperated.
“Exactly.” I smiled for what felt like the first time in weeks. Just to talk to someone familiar, someone who knew Grandpa, was a comfort I didn’t know I needed.
Toward the bitter end of our engagement, Roger wasn’t comforting about anything. Not that I expected much, since we’d been sleeping apart for a few weeks after I told him we needed to slow things down. He hadn’t taken that well. I guess I shouldn’t have expected much more from him. It’s who he was.
He’d never been the type to offer a shoulder to cry on, even when I got the call from the sheriff that my grandpa had crashed his truck—swerved to miss a moose and hit a tree instead. I hadn’t asked if Grandpa was okay. I could hear it in the sheriff’s voice that he was gone. I also knew my grandpa was notorious for not wearing his seat belt.
It had happened suddenly, so he hadn’t suffered, and for that, I was grateful. It wasn’t some long, drawn-out battle with cancer, and he hadn’t withered away.
But it also meant I hadn’t had the chance to say good-bye. The last time I’d spoken to him was two weeks prior. He’d sounded happy—well, his version of happy. I smiled again, remembering how he’d complained about the price of gas in town.
Natalie was still talking, I realized, and the topic had shifted to her sons.
“They’re still here?” I had to blink back my surprise.
“Of course they’re here. Where did you think they’d have gone?”
“To the city, I guess.”
“No, they aren’t the city type. Jameson lives in the suburbs; he’s married now. Austen and Noah have a brewery—Kodiak Creek Ale. Logan’s still in high school. Junior year.”
Jameson being married makes sense. He was the oldest—probably around thirty, if my math was correct. Austen and Noah running a brewery was a nice thought. I could see them doing well for themselves in business. Though knowing them, they’d be just as likely to get into some shenanigans and drink up all their profit.
A smile crossed my lips at the memory of sneaking sips of whiskey in their shed.
“We can catch up on everything. See you tomorrow,” Natalie said before giving me one more comforting look.
“See you then.”
After Natalie’s visit, I felt somehow a little better. I headed back to my old room to lie on the bed. I’d need to wash the blankets, because they smelled a little stale, but for now it would have to do. Whatever sugar rush and adrenaline I was running on after packing my bags and hauling it here was long gone.
My body felt like it had been hit by a ton of bricks, and my eyes were heavy. But that didn’t mean my brain had turned off yet. I couldn’t stop thinking about the Hart boys. I needed to do a tiny bit of internet sleuthing to satisfy my curiosity.
After grabbing my phone, I started with Jameson, and quickly found pictures of him with his beautiful wife. They looked really happy, as most people do on social media. They had a picture at one of Logan’s football games, so I clicked the tag in the description to go to his profile next. He was growing into just as handsome a young man as his brothers had been at his age. Most of the pictures were of him on the football field. He seemed pretty serious about the sport.
When I got to a photo of Logan at a farmers’ market table boasting about his brothers’ new company, I saw a tag for Austen’s profile. Typical Austen. The majority of the photos were of beer, dead deer, guns, and four-wheelers. He was always the rough-and-tumble type. No pictures of a girlfriend, though. He must have still been allergic to relationships.
