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.
Finally, I found an old post with Noah’s profile linked. My heart beat a little faster at the thought that I was about to get a better look at the man he’d become.
But to my disappointment, there wasn’t a single photo of him on the page. Instead, it was all nature shots. Fields of grain, streams, a ladybug on the tip of his finger. Noah was always into nature like that, though.
Not that I wasn’t a little let down. I mean, who doesn’t have one single selfie online?
Noah Hart, that’s who.
4
* * *
A DOSE OF NOSTALGIA
Rachel
I slept later than I meant to, and then showered. Then I spent the day washing bedding and going through old photos. I swung by the grocery store in town to stock up on some things I’d need while I was here, and before I knew it, it was time to prepare for my visit with Natalie.
Knowing that it was possible I might run into my old fling, well, let’s just say it meant I spent extra time applying my makeup, and I made sure to dress in a cute tunic and leggings. Satisfied that I looked good—but without seeming like I was trying too hard—I set off.
Walking up to the Hart house felt strange. I wasn’t sure how much more nostalgia my body could take. It almost felt like I was living in my memories more than in the moment.
The large house was always impressive to me. While my house was a modest log cabin that Grandpa bought when he was in his twenties, the Hart house always seemed like a mansion to me. Now through my grown-up eyes, I recognized it was more average-sized, maybe two thousand square feet or so.
It was still beautifully kept, though, with flowering garden beds and birds fluttering around an almost insane number of feeders. The sun was already starting to drop in the sky, and it cast a pink-and-orange glow across the view out over the valley.
“Is that our beautiful Rachel?” a shaky voice said, startling me.
I whipped around and spotted Dottie.
She looked mostly the same as I remembered. Wrinkled skin and a big smile, short salt-and-pepper curls, and her trademark golf visor from a long-ago Christmas when the boys thought it would be funny to give her an embroidered hat that read Old Balls. Little did they know she’d wear it for the next twenty years.
“Dottie,” I said as we embraced.
She rocked us from side to side. The woman might have been eighty-five, but her energy level was clearly still as high as ever.
“Tell me you’re moving back.” She pushed me away and kept hold of my shoulders in the process.
“Leave the poor girl alone, Mom.” Natalie laughed as she walked down the front steps. The gravel crunched under her feet as she walked to us. “Just ignore her, Rachel. She thinks because she’s over eighty that she no longer needs to use her filter.”
“I don’t.” Dottie winked at me. “Why get old if you can’t tell it like it is?”
I laughed softly. “Do you, Dottie.”
“See?” Dottie turned to her daughter. “Rachel loves it.”
“Rachel has been here for three minutes. She’s being polite,” Natalie said to her mother before she turned to me. “She’s going to get worse the more wine we drink. I apologize in advance.”
“I can take it,” I told her. “I’m Paul’s granddaughter, after all. That makes me a tough nut.”
“Good girl,” Natalie said as we walked inside the house.
Much like everything else in my memory, not much had changed in their house. Stacks of books on the shelves, mismatched plaid pillows, scattered throw rugs on the pine floor. It was the coziest country house in the world as far as I was concerned. The kitchen was well kept, even if it was a bit nineties in its styling.
We settled in the familiar great room with the vaulted ceiling that impressed me so much as a kid, especially when they had their twenty-foot-tall Christmas trees they had to use a ladder to decorate.
The only big difference was the photos on the walls. A lot of life had happened on these walls since I’d moved away.
“Red or white?” Dottie asked me.
“Mom, we’re a family of brewers now. It’s time to call them by their name.” She turned to me. “Cabernet sauvignon or pinot grigio?”
“Cab, please.” On a hot summer day, I might pick a white, but I was longing for the cozy feeling of a full-bodied red.
Natalie poured three way-too-big glasses and managed to balance all three in her hands. She passed them around as I settled back in the corner spot of the big sectional couch. Dottie sat in the rocker across from me.