Frank walked straight back to the kitchen. Gideon was there with a variety of snacks and five of the boys were helping themselves, but Nick wasn’t in the room.
“He said he wasn’t hungry and he was going to his room,” Gideon explained with a shrug.
Frank hesitated for a moment. They tried to keep the boys from brooding off by themselves as much as possible, but at the same time, a certain amount of privacy was needed so they could sort through their feelings. Adam would be there in a minute and he’d leave that decision up to him, but in the meantime, he sent more calm toward the boy, treading very lightly so he wouldn’t upset whatever was going on.
When Adam got there, he paused in the hallway, then placed his hand on the wall and met Frank’s eyes with his. “It’s time,” he said softly.
“You think he’s going to open up?”
Adam nodded. “Listen—I’m going to have Mom come over and just be on hand. Can you get the boys out of here? What were their chores for today?”
“Weeding the north flowerbeds.”
Adam nodded. “If you could get them going on that, I’d appreciate it.”
“You bet.” Frank turned and headed into the kitchen, where he put on an excited face. “Hey, guys! Bring your snacks and let’s eat them while we walk. Those weeds aren’t getting any younger!”
Tyler looked down at what he was wearing. “These are my school clothes,” he said. “Shouldn’t we change first?”
“Nope! Not today!”
“I think he’s trying to get rid of us,” Michael said in a mock whisper.
“Pretty much! Now let’s go,” Frank replied.
As the boys filed past, Jose paused again. “Is Nick okay?” he asked in a low voice.
“He will be,” Frank promised him. If Adam and Lillian couldn’t help the boy through this, no one could. He turned and infused the boy’s room with calm, using more than he ever had before. Then, knowing he’d really done all he could, he followed the group outside. He hated weeding, but it needed to be done.
***
The town of Bagley wasn’t terribly large, but it had all the things a person would most need for their survival, including a drive-through coffee shop. After talking with Tiffani for a few minutes, Lani excused herself to check into her hotel. She’d be back the next day and she promised to eat dinner with the family the next night as well—a huge Friday night barbecue. Who could pass up a barbecue?
Lani dragged her luggage into her room and then plopped on the bed. It was a standard hotel room—nothing unique about it, but it was clean and decorated in pleasant shades of blue and gray, and the mattress was soft enough without being too soft and there were lots of pillows. She rested for a few minutes, then pulled out her laptop.
Where are you? was the subject line of her most recent email. It was from her editor.
What? Oh . . . She pulled out her phone. The volume had somehow gotten turned down after she sent him that text. He’d replied twelve times asking if she was all right and if he needed to send someone out there. Sheepish, she turned up the volume, then let him know that everything was all right and that she was just being melodramatic. Then she began cleaning out her other emails, including a BOGO ad from her favorite online clothes store. She tucked that away in her “important” folder.
A few seconds later, her phone chimed again. Glad to know you’re not dead.
She smiled. She was pretty glad of it too.
After making sure she hadn’t received any extremely important emails that day, she changed her shirt so she wouldn’t be running around with a sauce spot on her front the rest of the day, and then she decided to do a little extra digging about the ranch and the McClains. Her brain was still reeling from everything she’d learned that day already. How was such a thing possible? Where had these gifts come from? What did the people in the community think about the McClains? She’d start there—she wanted to pick up a few snacks for the mini fridge she’d found under the TV, and doing a little exploring sounded like a lot of fun.
She put on some walking shoes and left the hotel, taking just her shoulder bag. The library was about half a block down the street, and that was always a great place to start. Libraries in small towns often had books published by local authors about the history of the place.
“You’re looking for information about the McClain ranch, you say?” the librarian asked, looking at Lani over the tops of her glasses. She was such a stereotypical librarian—hair in a bun, white blouse, gray pencil skirt, thick lenses—that Lani had a hard time believing she was real. She led the way over to the shelf that housed the local collection, and Lani grinned. Yep, that was something she could always count on. She thanked the woman and set to perusing.
There wasn’t anything specifically about the ranch, but she did find it mentioned in several volumes that detailed the history of the area. She didn’t learn anything that she hadn’t already pulled from online, but she did see some pictures of the McClain family from generations past. Hmm. The men of the fifties were just as good-looking as the men from the eighties and so on. Those looks ran in the family—and so did the eyes, apparently.
She used the library’s copier to run off her own set of those same pictures. She wanted to ask Frank about those relatives and get a little personal back story to the ranch. As she paid the librarian for her copies, she said, “Is there anyone around here, like a neighborhood historian or something, who can share oral histories about your town?”
The woman pursed her lips. “Your best bet would be Grandpa Haney. He can usually be found sitting on the front porch of the general store down the road.”
The front porch of a general store? Lani smiled again. This town was so perfect, she wouldn’t be at all surprised to find out that she was in a Truman Show sort of situation. These people had to be actors, hired to fill in the classic small-town character roles. Her mind was changed when she was nearly run over by a sports car while crossing the street. Okay, there were inconsiderate drivers everywhere, even in idyllic little towns.
She found Grandpa Haney easily enough, and he informed her that for the price of a cold lemonade, he’d tell her all the stories he knew. That seemed like an excellent bargain. She went inside, bought two lemonades, and sat down next to him, ready to hear it all.
He was a storyteller, that was for sure. After listening to him talk about this and that for a few minutes, she managed to steer the topic around to the McClains. He let out a low whistle.
“I tell you what, that family is the strangest thing I’ve ever seen. First off, you’ve never met kinder, more Christian people. They’ll go out of their way to help you no matter what you need. Polite, every one of them. Never heard ’em cuss or seen ’em get thrown out of the saloon or anything. But things are a little different with them.”
“What do you mean?” Lani asked, curious to hear what the locals thought of this unusual family. How were they perceived by those they lived near, but who didn’t know their story?
“Well, things just happen when they’re around. Over to the warehouse store, a big shelf got a little wobbly and came crashing down to the floor. One of them brothers, I think it was Caleb, pushed Marcy Jones out of the way three seconds before she would have been crushed. It was like he knew or something. And that Adam—sometimes it’s like he’s reading my mind. Stuff like that’s for the television, though. Not for real life. Sure we’re just imagining things, but I’m not the only one who’s noticed strange occurrences. People accuse me of hitting the hard stuff, but no—just lemonade.”
“What about Frank McClain?” Lani asked. “Any stories about him?”
“Well now, he can make any baby stop crying. We’ll be in church and some little tot will start to kick up a fuss—and let me tell you, I know how they feel because some of those long sermons about make me want to cry too. Anyway, he’ll reach out and give that baby a finger to grasp or some other such thing, and that child will calm right down. Never seen anything like it.”
“Some people just have a knack with children,” Lani said, hoping she sounded casual. Truth was, her heart had melted with that little story. She’d always wanted to have a family, and knowing that Frank liked children so much . . . Wait. Just wait. Why was she even thinking along those lines? She and Frank weren’t going to have children together! It was just goofy to think that way. She’d be going back to Houston, and that would be the end of it.
She thanked Grandpa again and wandered around town just a bit more, collecting stories. Everyone she spoke with had nothing but the best things to say about the McClains—they were hard-working, they were good people, they went out of their way to help others—and they all said there was something just little bit weird about them. But they all hastened to add that it was weird in the best sense of the word.
Lani chuckled as she put her few cold items into the mini fridge back in her hotel room. If she didn’t know the truth about the family already and was just now hearing these stories, she’d probably be a little freaked out. Yeah, just like she was freaked out before Frank explained everything.
She carried an orange juice and a cheese stick back over to the table in the corner and opened her laptop, ready to start drafting out the article. She had a new email since she left, and she clicked it open before she began typing out her notes—that was one of her quirks. If she had a new email, she had to check it before she did any other thing. Unopened emails were like sandpaper on her skin.
It was from her editor.
Just had a meeting with marketing. Our readers are saying they want a little more excitement in our stories. I want you to dig up some dirt on these McClains. Maybe Daddy McC has affairs or Mama nips at the brandy or the brothers are womanizers—whatever you can find. Yes, write your feel-good piece and we’ll save some orphans, but write a separate piece that we’ll label ‘also in the news’ or ‘in the meantime’ or something like that. There will be a big bonus for you if you can bring me something good.
Her boss wanted dirt, and she had some information that would make his head spin.