Free Wild Ride: A Changing Gears Novel by Nancy Warren

safe.
    He headed for the back of the main floor and discovered a TV room, a big old kitchen that looked like a set for a fifties family sitcom, and a den/library/gentleman’s study that smelled of pipe tobacco.
    Duncan’s knee twitched. Here was where the old guy had spent most of his time. The room felt warmer, more lived in and less rigidly tidy.
    He stepped inside and wished he dared turn on a light but knew he couldn’t risk it. This wasn’t a big city where nobody knew his neighbor’s name, much less cared if there was an unauthorized stranger in the house; this was Hicksville.
    After a quick inspection of the walls and more decent art, but not the kind that would fetch millions – he headed for the big oak desk and slid open the top drawer. He heard a car crunch over the gravel drive and flicked off the penlight, muttering a curse.
    Maybe it was someone turning around or something, but as he waited, backing stealthily to the wall, he heard a car door slam. By the time he heard a key scrape in the front door lock, he’d run out of time to leave. He dove behind an ancient leather couch, curious to discover who else was spending time in Franklin Forrest’s house.
     
    Alex shut the door to her grandfather’s house and sadness joined her like
a pensive ghost. She didn’t shudder. She felt no fear. Her grandfather had died here in the house he’d loved exactly as he would have wanted.
    She wished she could see her grandpa’s ghost. She’d love to see him one more time, to indulge in one of their rambling discussions, and she’d love his advice on what to do—about this house, her future, the mess of Gillian’s marriage. Though she couldn’t do that, of course, even if he were here. She, Gill, and Eric had all agreed to keep the marriage disaster from him. Eric was the son Franklin Forrest never had and he’d been so proud of him, it would have broken his heart to know Eric and his troubled granddaughter were no longer together. He would have worried about Gillian.
    Now that was another legacy that had fallen to Alex—worrying about her wayward cousin. Although she wasn’t as soft as her grandfather. She was firmly in the pull-yourself-together camp of human psychology.
    Even as she drew in a breath of stale air, she imagined the presence of a living, breathing man and, flipping on the hall light, went straight to her grandfather’s study, where she felt close to him and could work on his legacy.
    She opened the desk drawer where the tapes were neatly stacked in chronological order. Franklin Forrest had dictated his memoirs onto tape and it was her job to transcribe the notes to computer. He’d only made it to the late 2000s in the story of his life, but by then, most of the significant events had already happened.
    In the last month, in the sporadic hours she’d spent transcribing, she’d managed to get two tapes done—his account of his childhood and early years in Oregon. She reached automatically for the third, the next in line chronologically, and realized she didn’t have to be quite so rigid. She almost blinked at her own audacity, but she could rearrange computer files to her heart’s content. She decided to skip to the tape after the war years, knowing it contained his account of meeting and marrying her grandmother.
    She slipped the cassette into the player and pushed “Play.” The creaky old man’s voice filled the room and a wave of grief hit her so suddenly she had to grab a tissue. It was silly. He’d lived a good long time and he hadn’t endured a lingering illness. He was probably enjoying an afternoon rest when he’d suffered a heart attack right here in this room. She should be so lucky.
    But then she wasn’t crying for him, she realized with a sniffle. She was crying for herself. Because she missed him.
    Tossing the tissue in the trash, she got to work and let her grandfather’s voice lull her as he talked of seeing the woman he would marry. “She was my heart,” he said