It’s a short walk to the chicken coop, where Grandpa Al shows me how to shift the straw in the nest box to locate the eggs, then swap out the old straw for fresh bedding.

I’m all too happy that our conversation is strictly business. Any mention of Logan right now while at the scene of last night’s crime would probably turn me redder than the currants in the muffin I had this morning.

Then out of nowhere, Grandpa Al asks a question I couldn’t have seen coming. “You ever been hunting, Summer?”

Staring at one of the hens pecking at the feed in the corner of the coop, I bite my lower lip with worry. “We’re not going to hunt these poor chickens, are we?”

He wheezes out a laugh. “Oh, heavens no. I’m talking about deer.”

Whew. Thank God. I already have too many feelings tied to this chicken coop. I don’t need to throw devastating sadness into the mix.

“I grew up in the city. There’s not really a lot of opportunities for hunting deer there.”

Grandpa Al runs a hand over his beard. “Well, you’ll have plenty of opportunities if you stick around here.”

My chest tightens. What gave this family the idea that I would be a lasting fixture in Lost Haven?

“I’m not going to be sticking around,” I remind him. “Like I was telling Jillian, I think I’ll go back to—”

“Last year was an especially good deer season,” he says, disregarding what I just said. “But there was this one time, I thought I’d lined up my shot just right.”

He sets down the basket of eggs and mimics holding a rifle, his whole body jerking back as he lets the imaginary bullet fly.

“Boom. Should’ve been a clean shot. But he must’ve been a fast bugger, because I just got him in the leg. Injured the poor guy. I had to put the animal down. End his suffering.”

“I don’t think I need any more details,” I say with a wince. I’m not a vegetarian, but much more of this kind of conversation may turn me into one.

“The point is, I set out to kill a deer that day, and I did. It didn’t happen the way I planned when I first lined up that shot, but I got it done, and I got a good story out of it. Do you understand?” He offers me the slightest smile, but I’m totally lost.

“I can’t say I do.”

“Sometimes, you think you have a plan and everything goes sideways. But you can still do what you set out to do if you stick to your goal. And you might even get a good story or two out of it.”

There’s that flip-flopping feeling in my stomach again.