Devoid of any life or warmth, it felt like a completely different place. It looked exactly the same as the day I left, but it couldn’t have felt more different.

  I stood in the entryway for a long time—like if I took a step through the door, it would all be real. But, of course, I knew it was real. Grandpa was really gone, and so I finally made myself go on inside and closed the door behind me.

  It was so quiet. Too quiet.

  The woodburning stove rested squarely in the corner of the front room. The hallway that led to the bedrooms and bathroom was dark, and suddenly I wondered if my bedroom was still the same way I’d left it. After passing by the kitchen, which was clean and tidy, I ventured down the hall to find out.

  The sight of my grandfather’s room—with his bed neatly made in the same old green-and-blue quilt he’d used for decades—sent a pang of longing through me. There was a framed photo of him and me on his dresser. I was probably about ten years old at the time and was holding a fishing pole with a big catfish on the hook. Grandpa looked as proud as could be.

  Squeezing my eyes closed for a second, I drew in a slow breath.

  My bedroom looked much the same. Same twin-size bed under the window. Same tall chest of drawers against the far wall, with a desk next to it. The familiarity of it was both haunting and comforting.

  And while it was kind of eerie being here, there was no place else for me—at least not at the moment. I had no job to go to, no place to call home, and no fiancé anymore.

  Leaving Roger was for the best, though. He was overbearing, and it took me way too long to see it. I hadn’t even realized the implication of moving into his house with him. Now, after two years of paying rent to him, I had to leave with nothing to show for it while he’d actually made a profit.

  Even if I was being assaulted by memories everywhere I looked, being here felt better than being in Texas at the moment. I stopped at the dining room window and gazed outside, remembering sledding down the hill in the back and hiking over the far ridge.

  Even the creaky floorboard in the hallway reminded me of sneaking out and trying to be quiet. My destination, of course, had been the neighboring land that belonged to the Hart family. It was hard not to feel a pang of emotion as I thought about the family next door. Maybe it was because some hidden part of me had always longed for a big family.

  There was always something going on at that house. It was constantly loud. Happy. Four boys running around, with a dozen friends in and out. Their fridge was always stocked full of snacks, and Natalie, the ever-doting matriarch of the brood, loved playing host, even if she complained about it from time to time. To me, they had the ideal household, like a TV family. The perfect childhood.

  Not that my childhood wasn’t a happy one. It was. Very much so. I loved my grandfather, and he had done an incredible job raising me. But I’d always longed for more, for at least a memory or two of my parents.

  Maybe if I’d had a sibling, I wouldn’t feel so alone right now. A sister, maybe, who would fly into town and stay here with me. We would mourn together, and she would help me figure out how things should go.

  Grandpa hadn’t wanted a fuss, as he called it, so there was nothing to plan. He hadn’t wanted a funeral. Waste of money, he’d once said.

  He’d been cremated two days after his passing, and at some point, I knew that Mr. Davis from the funeral home would drop off the urn for me. It was something I was dreading, especially with no one here to share it with. I must have gotten used to having Roger around, because at least he paid some attention, however minimal, to my needs.

  “Knock, knock!” a female voice called out from the front porch.

  Confusion raced through me as I made my way toward the door. “Yes?”

  A face I hadn’t seen in years appeared at the doorway. Natalie Hart.

  Her hair was completely gray now and cut into an efficient but stylish shoulder-length bob. Her eyes had a few more wrinkles around them than I remembered, but her smile was every bit as kind. Just seeing her here soothed my ragged nerves.

  “Look at you,” she said, smiling. “Even prettier than I remember.”

  I smiled right along with her and let her pull me in for a hug when I opened the screen door. When was the last time I’d hugged someone? I savored the closeness of the only person I’d ever remotely seen as a mother figure.

  “Are you okay?” she asked, releasing me and giving me a serious look.

  I nodded and swallowed a lump of emotion in my throat. “I’m not sure it’s really hit me yet.”

  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.

  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.

  “I forgot how lovely your view is,” I said, admiring the big picture window. The sun was just about to dip behind the distant mountain, and it cast a pinkish glow over the entire horizon.

  “It never gets old. Then again, maybe it does. Mom, don’t you want to watch it with us?” Natalie turned to her mother.

  “These old bones are too cold to leave the fire, sweetie,” Dottie told us. “Besides, you’re just trying to trick me out of this chair.”

  “Well, it is my favorite spot,” Natalie said with a laugh.

  Natalie insisted I tell her all about nursing. I’d forgotten what it was like to have someone fawn over me, like Grandpa used to do. To hear Natalie tell it, I was a superstar.

  Once I’d made it halfway through the giant glass, I braved the question I’d been wanting to ask all night. “I think I passed Noah on my way into town. How has he been doing?”

  There we go. That was sly, right?

  Natalie exchanged a quick glance with Dottie, almost a warning look, before she answered me. “Noah is great. He’s out in the shed working right now.”

  “You should go down and say hi,” Dottie said with a wink.

  “Oh, he wouldn’t want to be bothered, I’m sure,” I told them.

  I mean, I wanted intel, but I wasn’t sure I was ready to see him. Wouldn’t it be weird? Maybe not. A lot of years had passed. Maybe he had forgiven me.

  “Nonsense. Of course he wants to see you,” Dottie said quickly and with such enthusiasm that she sloshed a bit of wine over the rim of her glass.

  Natalie took a deep breath and gave me a knowing look, in silent conversation about her mother, no doubt. “Go on down, dear. We’ll catch up more later.”

  Surely, it would be rude to turn her down, I figured.

  “I should say hi,” I said more to myself, and Natalie nodded.

  It was dark out by then, and I walked the lighted stone stairs that led down the hill toward the shed. Although, it wasn’t so much a shed as it was a small barn. Inside was a big workbench, and outside was a gazebo with a picnic table.

  I had so many memories playing in that shed, as they called it. When I was five, it was our fake storefront where we sold groceries to imaginary customers. When I was fifteen, it was where we snuck puffs of cigarettes. And at eighteen . . . no, I shouldn’t think about what Noah and I had gotten up to in there when I was eighteen.

  “That tastes like perfume,” I heard Austen complain as I neared the shed.

  “Oh, and yours tasted so much better? Peanut butter beer. Disgusting,” Noah said, his voice a deep rumble.

  A zip of electricity buzzed through me. It had been a long time since I’d heard that voice.

  When I finally rounded the corner, silence fell over them. Noah’s eyes met mine instantly.

  Just seeing him face-to-face, it felt like a tidal wave had crashed right into me. Every memory of our last day together flashed all at once in my mind. I wondered if he was thinking the same thing.

  “Finally. Where you been hiding, stranger?” Austen chastised me, standing to come over for a hug.

  Being the same age as me meant that he was eighteen when I left town, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t grown considerably since I last saw him. Hell, he probably gained four more inches, and towered well over six feet. Instead of the patchy mustache I remembered, he now had a neatly trimmed beard.

  His hug lifted me right off the ground. Strong men, flannel shirts, beards, and homemade beer . . . what could describe Kodiak Canyon better than that?

  “Look at you,” I said brightly, ruffling his hair after he set me down. Thankfully, I sounded a lot calmer than I felt.

  When Austen sat down again, Noah still stared at me, blinking. He sure had changed too.

  Noah still had a remarkably handsome face. Like, movie-star handsome. His sandy-blond hair was shorter than it had been when we were young, and now he had an even dusting of stubble all over his face. That was definitely new.

  “We’re sorry for your loss,” Austen said, his voice somber.

  My gaze swung over to Noah. Noah, who I’d once loved with every part of my teenage heart. Noah with his deep blue eyes and playful smile.