For a minute, they held a staring contest through the lenses of their reflective sunglasses.
“I lost him, too.” It felt almost childish to say it, but Logan’s grief was too colossal to downplay. This wasn’t like losing their father, where they all held a certain ambivalence about the man who had raised them. Art had been his teacher. He had patiently answered Logan’s questions and helped him understand this world—the one filled with the smell of salt and the creak of wood and the endless rhythm of tides. When he was here, he was never lost.
There was nothing Logan could do about Art being gone, but he needed to be with Sophie, to look after her while she went through this. He needed to go through it with her.
Trystan gave a jerky nod. Then he abruptly clasped his shoulder and pulled him into a brief, hard hug, smacking his back once.
“I’m sorry, man. We all feel this one. I’ll go ask her if she wants me to take Biyen for a while.”
“Thanks.” Logan swayed after Trystan released him.
Reid’s hand on his shoulder steadied him.
“Have you called your mom?” Reid asked.
“Not yet.” So many people would have to be told, not just here in Raven’s Cove. Art was well known up and down the coast. They had just done this for Wilf, yet Logan couldn’t pick apart the steps to figure out what needed to be done first. All he knew was that he had to do it so Sophie wouldn’t be burdened by it.
“I’ll call Glenda. Go see what you can do for Soph.” Reid squeezed his shoulder. “I’m sorry, Logan.”
“Thanks.” With boots made of lead, he started back to the hardware store.
*
The local search and rescue crew arrived shortly after the coroner. They assisted in taking Gramps to the coroner’s boat. Given his many health problems, his death was attributed to age and natural causes. Sophie would have to go across to sign paperwork, then he would be cremated and his ashes scattered on the same beach where he had scattered Sophie’s grandmother’s ashes.
She sat down on the steps of the porch next to his empty lawn chair. She wanted to cry again, but her taps had run dry for the moment. Her eyes were sandpaper, her throat a desert.
Logan sat down beside her. He’d been here the whole time as they waited, neither of them saying much. He’d made coffee and answered a few texts and looked over the copy of the will she had pulled from the freezer.
He had answered the phone a couple of times. Word was getting out. People would start arriving soon. Sophie knew how this went and it was a necessary purge of the collective sadness, but she dreaded it. It made it all the more real.
“We should have given him a last ride in his Gator,” she murmured as her gaze fell on the shed and the rickety old machine he had kept running for so long. “To take him to the boat.”
“Oh Christ, Sophie.” Logan choked out a ragged laugh.
“Gramps would have thought that was funny.”
“He really would.” His chuckle became a near sob. “I feel like I wasted years when I should have seen more of him.”
“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.