Chocolate? Yes. Lettuce? Hell, yes. Ice cream? Bizarrely, yes.
I refilled my cup. At this rate, I’d have to start another pot before Dad and the boys came in for breakfast. Wouldn’t be the first time.
“Emerson called here.”
Just as I’d thought.
“Did that woman get hold of you too?”
“What woman?”
“Didn’t leave her name.”
I lifted my eyebrows. That didn’t usually stop my mother from knowing who any local caller was. And tourists didn’t call my parents’ house.
“Weird,” I murmured.
“She was. Asked why you weren’t at home or at work, demanded where she could find you.”
“What’d you tell her?”
“That I had no idea. People that rude can take their business elsewhere.”
Since I’d never heard from her, she no doubt had.
I leaned against the counter and watched my mother work. She’d done this dance every morning for the past thirty years. The particulars might vary. Sausage instead of bacon. Eggs instead of waffles. Some days brought pancakes, others toast. Ham or hash? Who knew? But that skillet was always sizzling, and the kitchen smelled like heaven.
Which meant it smelled like home.
“Was that Owen in the truck?”
She’d been able to see him in the cab of the truck from a hundred yards away? My mom had always had the eyes of a hawk. When combined with the ears of a bat and a nose that probably detected as good as Reggie’s she’d been a terrific mother. Still was.
I took another sip of coffee, swallowed, then took another while I decided what to tell her. I would have preferred to skip how I’d run into Owen. She didn’t need to hear about the animals and the altar.
Except this was Three Harbors. She probably already had. Which explained how she knew Owen had been in the truck.
Grapevine, not spidey sense.
She let out an impatient huff.
“Yes,” I blurted. “Owen.”
If she peered at me just right I’d spill everything in my head. I wanted to avoid that as much now as I had when I was a kid.
She continued turning the bacon slices one by one. “It’s unfortunate that he’s back in town at the same time something so awful appears in his house.”
Just like I’d thought. She already knew.
I was both glad that I didn’t have to tell her about the awful and annoyed at her use of unfortunate. “He didn’t do it.”
“Of course not.”
“Then why is it unfortunate?”
“Because the poor kid had to walk into the place after so long and find that. Why else?” She shook her head. “You’re as defensive as he is.”
“He was always blamed for everything.”
“Times change,” she said. “So do people.”
I wasn’t sure if she meant Owen had changed, or everyone else had.
“You don’t look like you got any sleep.”
“I didn’t. I met Chief Deb at Owen’s, then got the call to Watley’s, then came here.”
“You don’t have office hours today so you can sleep.”
“Maybe.” There was something I had to do today, but right now I hadn’t had enough coffee to remember what it was.
My mother was suddenly standing before me removing the now empty cup from my hands. “You should lay off the coffee if you plan to go home to bed.” She set the cup in the sink and handed me a plate. “Eat, then I’ll have one of the boys take you home.”
I was knuckle deep in waffles and bacon when the men tromped in, bringing the scent of an autumn morning and cattle. The latter was better with bacon too.
“Ginge!” Jamie stole a bite of waffle from my plate. I gave him an elbow in the gut—not hard, but he got his own rather than stealing more of mine. Unfortunately, I could elbow him all day and most of tomorrow and he’d never stop calling me “Ginger.”
If he’d been an aficionado of Gilligan’s Island, the nickname would have been more appealing. Ginger Grant was a very hot redhead. Except Gilligan’s Island had been popular during our grandparents’ day and I doubted that Jamie had ever bothered watching an episode.
Jamie called me “Ginger” because of South Park, which didn’t make the comment half as nice. Little brothers, even when they were no longer little, were mostly annoying.
Joe, who always let Jamie do the talking, just winked and followed him to the food. At least he didn’t touch any of mine.
Like all the Carstairs, except me, my brothers had light brown hair. When they were three, they’d been blond, just like Mellie. Mellie still was, thanks to a monthly appointment for highlights and root control. All of them also had pretty blue eyes, which made my mud-green shade even more noticeably different.
My flame-red hair was as much a mystery to my parents as to me. I’d asked every relative we had if any Carstairs in memory had ever possessed red hair. None had.