Page 156 of The Best Shot

I’d lived in that house my whole life. Knew every creak in the floorboards, every rattle in the pipes when the temperature dropped, the way the wind hit the east side harder than the west. Knew the settling noises it made at night.

None of it had ever bothered me.

Now every sound seemed to point out the one that was missing.

The first week hadn’t been bad. I kept busy, got to the shop early, stayed late, came home tired enough to fall straight into bed. I ate standing at the counter because sitting at the table alone felt pathetic.

Dolores was furious with me, which helped. Gave me something to manage. I fed her, cleaned the coop, stood in the yard and listened to her complaints.

She’d gotten used to Yasmine talking to her like she was a person. Now she was stuck with me, and I mostly told her to hush.

“She’ll be back soon,” I told her once.

Dolores looked at me like I was slow.

Fair enough.

The second week, I started finding things.

A hair tie on the edge of the bathroom sink. One of those stretchy ones Yasmine wore when she edited, scraping her hair up off her face. Her gray sweater over the back of the study chair, still soft, still holding a little of her if I got close enough.

Which I did once.

I felt like a fool about it for the rest of the night, but I didn’t move any of it. Told myself moving it took more effort than leaving it.

Somewhere around the fourth or fifth week, everybody had decided I shouldn’t be left alone too long.

Nico kept finding furniture deliveries that needed another set of hands. When he ran out of those, one of his cousins was always having a birthday, graduation, engagement, baby shower, or cookout I apparently couldn’t miss.

Tabby dropped by with books and gossip and no convincing reason to stay an hour. Ava sent leftovers home with me in containers big enough to feed a family.

Annie took a different approach. She showed up at the farmhouse one Saturday morning and announced the Chevelle looked neglected.

It did not.

She spent four hours washing it by hand, cleaning wheels that were already clean, and informing me that my technique was shoddy and unworthy of such a high-performing instrument. When she finished, she announced that cars weren’t meant to sit pretty and disappeared in the Chevelle for forty minutes.

She never once asked how I was doing.

I appreciated that.

Even Carter had started handling me differently.

Normally, he hunted me down for invoices like late paperwork was a personal betrayal. Then one bad morning, after no sleep, Harry the day before, and too many hours in that empty house, I walked into the office and found the stack beside my printer gone, everything entered and filed. Three forms clipped together with tabs where I needed to sign, and a to-go coffee cup from Divine Grounds beside them.

I looked at him. “Something you want to tell me?”

“Nope.”

“You buy me coffee?”

“Nope.”

The next week, he cleared another stack without saying a word. I told him if he kept being nice to me, I was going to put a rattle in his car he’d never find.

He said, “All right,” and brought me a breakfast sandwich the next day.

They all had their methods, but I liked Grant’s the most.