Chapter 21

For all she'd been in and out of the Hamilton household all her life, Autumn wasn't sure she'd ever truly known how many of them there were. It was one thing to objectively know how many cousins Judd had. It was entirely another to see them all in one place. Owen was one of Pop and Nanna's three children. Each of them had also had three children. And that didn't even begin to cover the extended family brought in by Pop's brother and sister and their progeny.

Picnic tables and camp chairs covered the lawn outside the back of Pop and Nanna's house, and there were people at all of them. Pop and his brother were manning the grill, arguing over the right ratio of charcoal. Nanna was inside with several of the other Hamilton women, finishing up enough cobbler to feed the army. The counters in her kitchen were covered with more casseroles than Autumn had ever seen in one place outside a church potluck. She sat at a corner of the back deck and absorbed the sounds and scents of life.