Page 41 of Grumpy Ex-Military Brewmaster’s Secret

"I look the same as I did an hour ago."

"You don't. An hour ago you were humming. Now you look like you're bracing for a number you already know you won't like." He doesn't come in any further, doesn't push, just watches me with the same steady attention he's given every piece of broken equipment in this building since the day I hired him. "Everything squared away?"

"It's fine."

"Sure." He says it softer this time, none of the teasing edge from this morning, and something about the gentleness of it is almost worse than if he'd pushed. "You know where I am if that changes."

"I know."

He leaves it there, picks the delivery slip back up like it was the actual reason he came in, and heads back toward the taproom, and I sit with the particular kind of quiet that follows a person choosing not to ask the one question that actually matters.

The compressor part sits unopened on the desk, my coffee going cold beside it. I've spent six years keeping this particular door shut, careful and consistent, the same amount every month, the same silence around it, the same reason for both that I've never said out loud to another living person in this town.

I've gotten good at storms. I can read one coming before anyone else notices the sky changing. This isn't weather, but it feels the same, something building just past the horizon, and for once in my life I don't have a single useful preparation for what's headed my way.

Jenna let it go today. She won't let it go forever, not when she read that locked door as accurately as she did. Some part of me already knows exactly which direction this is coming from.

It just hasn't arrived yet.

19

JENNA

The Friendsgiving potluck happens in the school gym every year, folding tables end to end down the length of the basketball court, a hand-lettered banner over the stage that's been reused so many times the letters have started to fade unevenly, and by the time we arrive half the town's already there, balancing paper plates and arguing about whose stuffing recipe is the original.

"Smells like Dot's turkey again," Maggie says, appearing at my elbow with a casserole dish she guards like state secrets. "Which means somebody should probably call the fire department preemptively this year instead of waiting for the alarm."

"What happened last year?"

"Convection oven. She got a new one over the summer and decided this was the occasion to learn how it works." Maggie shakes her head, fond and exasperated in the exact proportion this town seems to reserve for Dot specifically. "There's a scorch mark on the gym ceiling from the year before that the school still hasn't painted over. It's become something of a landmark."

Sure enough, Dot's at the far table, hovering over a turkey that's gone a deeply concerning shade of mahogany on one side and something closer to raw on the other, waving away offers of help with the confidence of a woman who's convinced this year is different.

"It's resting," she announces to no one in particular. "It just needs to rest."

"That bird's not resting, Dot, it's recovering," Gunny calls from two tables down, where he's setting out a pumpkin pie that's visibly, alarmingly liquid in the middle, sloshing gently every time he adjusts the pan. "Though I'm one to talk."

"What happened to yours?"

"I trusted a recipe that said 'bake until set.' It never set. I've made my peace with it." He says this with the total serenity of a man presenting a science fair project he already knows failed, and sets it down next to a lineup of considerably more successful dishes without an ounce of visible shame.

Rafe's beside me through all of it, a dish of his own balanced in both hands, something involving roasted vegetables that actually looks edible, and if he notices the way half the gym keeps glancing our direction and then pretending not to, he doesn't let it slow him down.

"You didn't warn me about the turkey situation," he says, low, just for me.

"It's a tradition at this point. Dot's turkey and Gunny's pie are basically the opening ceremony."

"I brought roasted vegetables to a gathering with an opening ceremony built around failure. I may have miscalculated the assignment."

"You'll fit right in. Half this table is somebody's well-intentioned disaster."

We find a spot near the twins, who abandoned us the second we walked through the door in favor of the dessert table and a cluster of other kids running some complicated game involving folding chairs as home base, and I lose track of Eli for a solid twenty minutes before I spot him again, deep in conversation with Sheriff Cole over by the drink station, both of them gesturing at a turkey leg with the seriousness of surgeons.

Josie finds me first, plate piled dangerously high with three different desserts and nothing resembling an actual dinner. "I'm doing dessert now and vegetables later. It's a system."

"That's not really how a plate works."

"It's how mine works." She surveys the gym with the same critical eye she once turned on Rafe's shirt, taking stock of who's talking to whom, and lands on something that makes her grin. "Eli's going to ask him. I can tell."