“And now?” Reese asked softly.
“And now I wish that I’d tried a little harder to be social,” I confessed. “Maybe I have blamed too much of my lack of male company on my physical appearance instead of my geekiness.” I held up a hand. “And please don’t tell me that I’m not a geek.Even in college, I wasn’t interested in the same things other women were at my age.”
“Being unique doesn’t make you a geek,” Reese said. “You like to do a lot of fun things. Now that you’re back in Crystal Fork and relatively settled into your life here, I’m sure you’ll be participating in a lot of the community events that you didn’t have in Boston. You know the people here. I know the matchmaking dates were bad, but from what I understand, they rarely work for single people here anyway. The matchmakers aren’t really that good at making matches. You’ll meet the right guy, Lauren. Give it time. I’m glad you’re coming to our little get-together at The Mug And Jug.”
Unfortunately, I had spent most of my time since I’d moved to Crystal Fork settling into my new home and establishing my business.
I’d been pretty busy dealing with my new life in Montana.
I hadn’t really had much time for socializing until recently.
“I invited Cole,” I shared with Reese.
“He won’t come,” she said unhappily.
“He is coming,” I told her. “We’re going to grab some dinner at Charlie’s first and then meet everyone at The Mug And Jug.”
Reese swallowed a sip of her wine and gaped at me for a moment before she spoke. “No way! I just asked him to join us last week, and he flatly refused the invitation I tossed out for him and Asher. He was adamant. How in the world did you get him to agree? And to have dinner at Charlie’s, too?”
“He suggested Charlie’s,” I told her. “I think he wanted to do something nice for me because I took care of him when he was sick.”
Reese shook her head firmly. “Cole Remington wanted no such thing,” she informed me. “He doesn’t do anything unless he wants to do it. He definitely likes you, Lauren.”
“I hope that’s true,” I said. “I really do want to be his friend.”
“No,” Reese answered. “I think hereallylikes you. The only thing that would drag him out for possible public scrutiny is if he’s attracted to you.”
I rolled my eyes. “He thinks he owes me.”
“We’ll see,” she replied. “I’m just happy that he’s coming. I don’t suppose that he’ll convince Asher to come, too. That man is a phantom. Nobody sees him, and the only person he’s allowed on his land to talk to him is Ralph Norton.”
“The chief of police?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Reese confirmed. “I suppose that makes sense if one of Asher and Cole’s goals in moving back here is to find out who really murdered their father.”
Honestly, their father had been so evil that I wasn’t sure why they cared who killed him, but they probably wanted to clear their names once and for all.
“It’s been decades now,” I told Reese. “And there was never any significant evidence. No murder weapon. Nothing left behind. The man was shot outside his house with a shotgun. The only things the police ever discovered was the gauge of the shotgun and the approximate distance the shooter was from the victim. If they have any hope of solving that cold case, I hope Chief Norton has new information added to the case since the original investigation.”
“You know a lot more about the original case than I do,” Reese observed.
“You know I’m a true crime junkie,” I reminded her. “I think forensics is fascinating, and I love the way more and more cold cases are being solved with genetic genealogy.Unfortunately, they don’t have any DNA evidence to solve the murder of Cole’s father. Not unless something has popped up in the last twenty-one years.”
“I’d really like to see Asher and Cole completely exonerated,” Reese said wistfully. “I think it would go a long way in mending the divide in the Remington family. Maybe it would make Asher and Cole less defensive and antisocial. I think all of Millie’s immediate family would like to get to know their cousins better. That was never really possible when they were younger.”
I nodded, but I wasn’t completely convinced that their exoneration would help Asher and Cole lose their defensiveness and their inability to trust other people.
I didn’t think years of conditioning and abuse were going to be resolved quite that easily.
Cole
“Are you sure you don’t want to come to The Mug And Jug for a drink tonight?” I asked Asher as we talked at his place on Saturday.
He was finally back in Montana, and he didn’t have any plans to travel for business in the near future.
It was still morning, so we’d settled into a pair of recliners in his living room to drink a mug of coffee.
His coffee wasn’t quite as good as mine, but it was drinkable.
