Twelve when I had to grow up all at once.
After Mom died, I expected my father and I would cling to each other like two broken halves of the same whole. But instead, he left.
Not physically at first. At first, it was just his eyes going distant. His words fewer and fewer. His presence there but not there.
Until one day, he left outright. Packed a bag and told me he couldn’t breathe here anymore. Told me the house felt like a grave.
He didn’t ask me to go with him.
Didn’t hug me goodbye.
Just left me with a grandmother who tried her best to fill the hole my parents left behind.
Grandma Mabel was different from my mother. Sharper. Tougher. Built from the same iron that held this valley together. She carried secrets in her chest like bees carry nectar.
But she loved me.
In her own way.
Enough to teach me everything she knew. Enough to make sure I could survive on my own.
When she died, she left me the house, the hives, and a lifetime of questions.
I blink, realizing my throat is tight.
“I miss you,” I whisper to the frame. “All of you. Sometimes, even now, I don’t know what to do without you all. Completely alone in the world…”
CHAPTER FOUR
Wyatt
Sunday
If there’s one thing Colter Creek never fails at, it’s showing up for a potluck.
I’m convinced this town would hold a potluck during an alien invasion: people running around screaming while Betty Lou from the diner sets out her green bean casserole, yelling, “Well, someone’s gotta feed the extraterrestrials.”
At least today’s mayhem is the normal kind. Kids shrieking across the church lawn, folding tables sagging under enough carbs to kill a grown man, old-timers defending their favorite potato salad recipe.
I’m leaning under the shade of a cedar tree, sipping chamomile tea out of a paper cup because I lost my favorite mug. Again.
“Wyatt Tucker, the only man at a barbecue drinking flower water,” Emmett Holt says with a grin as he walks up, hands shoved into his back pockets, hair damp.
He’s wearing his Dusty Spur Ranch shirt, the one with the faded bronc rider logo, and somehow he still looks as happy as a puppy.
I take another sip. “It’s tea, Emmett. Chamomile tea.”
“Uh-huh,” he says, leaning in. “Flower water.”
I shove him lightly with my elbow. “Didn’t your mama teach you to be respectful toward medicinal beverages?”
“She taught me to drink coffee like a man.”
“Your heart is going to give out at forty.”
“Worth it.”
I snort and take another sip, purely out of spite. The tea’s lukewarm and a little bitter, and I miss my mug. The blasted thing will turn up somewhere ridiculous later, tucked inside my vet bag or sitting on a fence post where I absolutely did not leave it.
