“When my little sister has been someone’s babysitter, I feel like it’s an automatic no-go.”
He gave an exaggerated shiver. “Let’s make that one a rule.”
“Adding it to the book.” I picked up the menu and set it at the edge of the table. I’d memorized its contents decades ago, and it barely changed. Even the specials on the chalkboard were predictable. Thursdays would always be chicken-fried steak, and Saturdays some sort of pasta. “Everything quiet at the fire station?”
Calder nodded to his radio on the table. “So far. We had to grab Tommy Bixley off his parents’ roof yesterday. He’d made himself Batman wings that he wanted to try out.”
“Sounds like something we would’ve done.”
His mouth pressed into a thin line. “Maybe, but he could’ve been hurt.”
My friend of thirty years had lost his desire for mischief when his ex-wife, Jackie, had almost cost him his girls. Now, he saw the world through a much more serious lens, and as much as I tried to get him to let loose, I understood. He had sole custody of the girls now, and that came with a weight I hoped I never had to shoulder. “How are Birdie and Sage?”
“Giving me a head of gray hair.”
“Wouldn’t be doing their job if they weren’t. Why don’t you bring them over for dinner on Sunday?”
“Sounds good to me. Ask your mom if I can bring anything.”
I grunted. “You know what she’ll say.”
“Just bring you and those two angels.” Calder grinned. “She doesn’t live with them when they’re about to tear each other’s hair out.”
“Maybe not, but Hadley and Shiloh could get into it pretty good growing up.” My two sisters had fought like cats and dogs, and they could still dip into it now and again.
Calder adjusted the silverware at the side of his paper placemat. “That’s true enough.”
“What?”
His nervous fidgets were a dead giveaway that Calder was holding something back. His gaze lifted to meet mine. “I heard someone was moving into the old Kemper place up on the mountain.”
I stilled, my hand tightening around my water glass. “I hope whoever was insane enough to buy it levels the place.” I’d like to be the one to go after it with a sledgehammer. Maybe burn up the pieces.
It was crazy how a single piece of property could hold so much pain. Five days that had changed my family forever. There was no way it could be any different. I knew from all the cases I’d worked that mere seconds could change everything. But for us, it had been five days.
We’d gone to the fair as a family, and five days later, we were unrecognizable. For months, my mother had cried every time she had to let one of us out of her sight. My dad had spent his days trying to console her and give us some sense of normalcy. And my siblings had coped—however they could.
But every time I saw Shiloh take off into the wilderness by herself or leave mid-conversation because something triggered her, that anger in me built. I knew Howard Kemper was sick, but that knowledge didn’t help soften my rage.
“Hayes. You okay?”
I cleared my throat and focused on my friend. “Fine.”
“Don’t bullshit me. You’ve been with me at my worst.”
“And you’ve been with me at mine.”
Calder had kept my head above water when guilt was eating me alive. When all I could see was Shiloh’s hand. The one I was supposed to hold on to but had let go of to play a stupid fair game.
He jabbed his finger into the table. “Then don’t give me some dumb party-line. Give me the truth.”
That was the kind of friendship we had—one full of ugly truths instead of pretty deceptions. And I wouldn’t spit on that by lying now. “I hate what having someone there will bring up for my family.”
“I get that. But they’re strong. So much stronger than they were fifteen years ago.”
“We’re functioning. There’s a difference. But Shiloh still runs off into the woods. Hadley and Mom can barely talk without one of them storming off. And I’ve lost track of where Beckett even is.”
“No family is perfect. Everyone has their baggage.”
Calder was right. The Eastons just had more than our fair share. “I’ll take a drive up there after lunch and see what’s what.”
He eyed me carefully. “Let me see if I can get someone to cover my afternoon shift, and I’ll come with you.”
The corners of my mouth tipped up. “I’m not going to start brawling just because someone bought the old place. I’ve got a little more self-restraint these days.”
“It wouldn’t be the first time I had to pull you out of something.”
“I’m not fourteen anymore.”
Calder held up both hands. “I just want you to know that someone always has your back.”
“Appreciate it, man. But I can handle this one.” At least, I thought I could. It had been fourteen years since I’d set foot on that property. I’d gone once when I was sixteen.
I’d needed to see it. The place that had stolen so much from my family. Calder had driven me up there, and he was the one who’d stopped me from doing something stupid like burning the whole place to the ground. Most of our community completely ignored it. As if by doing so, they could erase what Howard Kemper had done. Erase the knowledge that we were all more vulnerable than maybe we thought.
But I didn’t have that luxury. I knew all too well that you were always just one breath away from having your life ripped out from under you. Mere seconds from your whole world changing. Five days out from becoming an entirely different person. And I didn’t need a shed on a mountain to remind me.
3
Everly
I muttered a curse when a cloud of dust engulfed me as I opened a closet door. The bones of the cabin might have been in good shape, but that didn’t mean it was pristine. Far from it.
I’d spent last night on an air mattress in one of the two bedrooms in the cabin, trying to adjust to the deafening quiet, interrupted by sounds that had once been familiar. The old owl. Crickets. Wind rattling the screen door.
I had a couple of days before my furniture arrived. The contents of my small apartment wouldn’t fill the space, but it would be good enough for now. Creating a sanctuary wouldn’t come cheap, and even though I’d been saving, I needed to pinch pennies wherever I could.
But that was one of the things my mother had taught me that I’d held onto. How to repurpose broken things or stuff others had thrown away. How to make the old new again. She’d also taught me how to live from the land. What things grew heartily here, and what needed the protection of a greenhouse.
I peeked through the large front window at the glass building that had lost many of its panes to winter storms. Those would be a challenge to replace. I added it to my mental list as my gaze shifted past the greenhouse to a green metal roof.