“Don’t do that to yourself.”

“I can’t help it. I’ve done a lot of stupid, selfish things.”

“Have you? Gosh,” she said with mock horror. “Are you human like the rest of us? How sad for you to find out like this.”

“Oh shut up.” There was no heat in his words. He slid closer and looped his arm around her back, tilting her into him. His hand touched the side of her head, urging her to rest it against him so he could set his chin on her hair. “As much as I told myself I hated this place, I always expected it to stay the same. Everything would be here exactly as I left it if I ever came back.”

Her included? Was that what he meant?

She didn’t ask, just closed her eyes, allowing herself to lean into his warmth and strength, absorbing the comfort and closeness as they sat in this moment of quiet grief.

“I’m going to move back in here, if that’s okay. I can’t sleep in that shitty little bed at the house, wondering what you’re dealing with over here.”

“You’d rather the shitty bed upstairs?” She straightened. “You know Glenda will show up as soon as she hears? I should call her,” she realized.

“Reid already did. Between me and Randy, we’ll cover everything at work for the next week or so, but…” His brow furrowed. “I need to be here as much as I can, making sure you and Biyen have everything you need.”

This was what she needed, she secretly acknowledged to herself. This feeling that he cared about her. About them.

A movement on the hill caught her attention.

“Here comes Emma.” She was glad, but also immediately tired. And so it starts. “Will you text Trystan? Let him know he can bring Biyen home?”

“Sure.” He patted for his phone.

Biyen had been devastated when she told him. They had talked briefly about whether he should see Gramps a final time and Biyen had decided he preferred to remember his grandfather alive and joking over jelly beans, asking him to fetch his glasses, and admiring a near-perfect score on a spelling quiz.

Biyen would want to be home now, though. And she needed him. He had got her through the loss of her mother, not that she wanted to put emotional labor on him, but she knew his spirit would bounce back quicker than her own. He would help her do the same just by being himself.

She glanced at Logan’s haggard profile. Maybe Biyen would help him, too.

“Yes,” she said. “Move back in.”

*

The days passed in a blur. Sophie didn’t leave the house, but she was kept busy and rarely alone. Logan moved in. Glenda arrived and took Biyen’s bed while Biyen came into Sophie’s bed with her. Aside from doing Gramps’s laundry and making his bed, Sophie left his room alone. He had always kept it tidy and free of clutter anyway.

Emma spent a lot of time with them, sometimes bringing Storm, often taking home casseroles and other food to store in their freezer since Sophie’s was overflowing after the first day.

People came and went in intermittent bursts. They were kind and sorrowful and they all asked her, “What are you going to do now?”

“I haven’t thought about it. I just want to get through this week,” she kept saying.

It was a lie. She thought constantly about what she would do next. There was no pressing reason to leave, but she didn’t have to stay. That was the stunning reality she kept crashing into, each time she walked out of her bedroom and looked through the open door into Gramps’s empty room. Each time she reached into the cupboard to check his meds. Each time she saw someone else sitting in his chair instead of him.

Biyen liked it here, but he was a resilient kid who easily made friends. He would fit in anywhere. She was very employable and didn’t even have to sell this house. She could rent it out and have a nice little income to supplement whatever life she chose beyond Raven’s Cove.

There was no hurry to make a big decision, but she had spent years feeling trapped here. Left here. Suddenly, the dam had broken open and she had options. Her thoughts couldn’t help but flow outward, exploring all of them.

Why stay when she could go?

“Dude.” Logan’s deeply ironic voice broke into her weighty contemplations. “I cannot express strongly enough how much that isn’t going to happen.”

Sophie had come onto the porch with a casserole dish she had just washed.

It was drizzling and Biyen was on a playdate, taking a much-needed respite from people who wanted to hug him and tell him he had to be strong for his mom. He needed to be what he was—snuggly and kind and entertained by the silliest things so she could be, too.

“My son lost his grandpa,” Nolan said. “I’m here to see if he’s okay.”

Sophie set the borrowed dish with the rest of them in the box on the lawn chair and moved to the end of the porch where she saw the two men standing in the spitting rain, Nolan with his backpack on his shoulder and an overstuffed duffel at his feet.

“Biyen is out right now. I’ll text you when he’s back. Meanwhile, your shit is not coming into that house. It stays on the lawn.”

“Is this your house now? You live here?” Nolan scoffed.

“I’m renting a room. And pro tip? If you want to ask Sophie if you can move in, you fucking ask. You don’t show up expecting it. Especially not before her grandfather is put to rest. Give your head a shake.”

“Nolan,” Sophie called. “You can pitch your tent by the shed until after the service.” That was tomorrow so it would only be two nights. “If you want to take Biyen camping after that, he’d probably like that.”

“I’m staying here,” Nolan told her. “Like, I’m going to find a place here so I can be here and see Biyen more.”

“You and Karma broke up?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, you do you, but don’t make any big changes on our account. I don’t know what I’m doing. We might not stay. I haven’t decided.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Logan snapped his head around. His face was sprinkled with rain, his hair beginning to flatten.

“Exactly what I said. I don’t know what I’m doing. I won’t leave you in the lurch at work, but…” She heard the phone ring inside and thought, Gramps will get it.

God, grief was so horrible, constantly hitting you out of the blue.

Glenda picked it up, but Sophie moved inside, expecting it was for her anyway.

Chapter Sixteen

“I’ll expect you at Christmas unless you call to say you have a better offer,” Glenda said when Sophie hugged her on the wharf Monday morning.

Glenda was sailing south with friends; otherwise she would have to spend another three days here, waiting for the ferry.

“Thanks so much for coming. I couldn’t have got through this without you.” Sophie meant it. In every way possible, Glenda had always tried to fill the void that had been left after Sophie had lost her mom. She loved her endlessly for it.

“Anytime. I mean that.” Glenda gave her hair a smooth, exactly as Sophie did to Biyen. “Give Biyen my love.”

“I will.”

The whole Fraser crew had turned up so Glenda went down the line, hugging Logan and Trystan, then Reid and finally Emma, ending with a kiss on Storm’s cheek.