Page 10 of Forsaken Hearts
Vander flashed through her mind so fast she didn’t have time to stop it.
His hands on her hips. His mouth—god, the man couldkiss.
The way he’d looked when she told him they had nothing to give each other.
She shoved the thought away and reached for the bananas.
By the time she got home, she was wrung out from the store, the short drive and the careful way she unloaded every bag because one ripped handle would finish her off.
Ben helped carry in the lighter things, chattering about how dentists fixed cavities and whether Granny Helen might have cookies, because apparently sweets were going to haunt the rest of the day no matter what Summer did.
She put the groceries on the counter and started sorting them. She was halfway through putting away the eggs when the doorbell rang.
She stopped and Ben looked up from where he was lining up cans on the pantry shelf. “Who’s that?”
“I don’t know. Stay here.” She wiped her hands on the seat of her jeans, then crossed to the door, already braced for someone selling something she couldn’t buy. If those cute little scouts came by with their pigtails and smiling faces and boxes of cookies, she wasn’t sure she wouldn’t burst into tears.
But when she opened the door, no one stood there. Only bags.
A lot of bags.
Grocery bags covered the porch, packed full and heavy, with more food stacked inside cardboard boxes near the railing. For a second, she just gaped at it all. Then she stepped outside and looked up and down the empty street, but there was no delivery driver, no car pulling away, no neighbor waving from a porch.
“Mom?” Ben called from behind her.
Her throat clamped. “Stay inside, honey.”
She carried the bags in one by one, arms straining under the weight of so many supplies—enough to keep them going for months the way she stretched meals. Cereal, oatmeal, pasta, peanut butter for Ben’s lunches. All the staples needed to bake cupcakes from scratch, along with chicken and ground beef. There were enough canned goods to survive an apocalypse, and juice boxes and snacks she never bought unless it was Ben’s birthday.
Ben gasped out and started digging through one bag. He held up a colorful box against his chest like treasure. “Oh! We never get this cereal! Can I have a bowl for supper?”
She pressed a hand to her mouth because she was so close to crying it scared her.
“Yes.” The word came out rough. “You can have a bowl for supper.”
He whooped, and hugging the cereal, started doing a jig around the kitchen. She had to turn away before he saw her face.
Whoever did this wonderful act of kindness had saved her. It was too much, too kind. Too humiliating.
Too perfect.
It had to be Granny Helen.
“Ben?” she called out. “Why don’t you turn on the TV for a little bit? I’m going to talk to Granny for a minute.”
“I get to watch TVnow? This is a great day!”
A tiny sob bubbled up and she had to swallow it down. She went outside and crossed to the other side of the duplex. She knocked on Granny’s door, already trying to figure out how to say thank you without falling apart.
Granny Helen wasn’t really her relative, but she’d insisted Ben call her that from the minute he could talk.
She was the kind of woman who showed love by keeping watch with a gun and pretending she’d made too much soup and couldn’t possibly eat it all before it went bad.
No answer. She knocked again, and leaned closer to the door. “Granny?”
Still nothing.
She went back through her place and out the back door to their shared yard, where the little garden beds sat waiting for spring under a layer of old mulch. Granny was out there in a heavy sweater and boots, poking around one of the beds likeWyoming wasn’t still trying to freeze every sprout out before spring had a chance.
