CHAPTER TWO
Present day…
Lance pushed open the lightweight aluminum screened door with his shoulder, carrying three bottles of beer by their necks in one hand while holding a paper plate containing his extra-large slice of fresh apple pie in the other. The sweet aroma of sugar and cinnamon had been too much to resist. There was no doubt he would regret this decision later when he finally got around to running off the additional calories.
“Where are you fitting that?” The disbelief was evident in his brother’s tone as Lance handed over two of the bottles in his grip. “Those Delmonico ribeye steaks Dad grilled could have fed a platoon for a week, and that doesn’t even include the baked potatoes that were the size of a grapefruit and the other sides. I shouldn’t have had that damned tossed salad first. I might have had enough room left to fit a slice of that pie after eating a whole side of beef.”
Noah wasn’t exaggerating. Their dad had gone all out with this homecoming dinner, including all the trimmings, but Lance wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. Sitting and digesting a home-cooked meal on Dad’s porch overlooking the old homestead was a tradition worth continuing, providing the beer held out.
He’d been gone for twelve long years serving his country, visiting home only when time between deployments allowed. Even though he was a year younger than Noah, they’d both entered the Marines around the same time.
The only difference between the two was that Lance had graduated high school a full year early and his enlistment had been on the delayed entry program—not that he ever rubbed that in Noah’s face at every turn in the road.
Lance had always taken issue with being the youngest of five siblings, running up behind them on every outing they would let him tag along on. He, his brothers, and his sister shared a healthy competition in everything they’d done—including honoring their family legacy of serving their country. They served because freedom wasn’t free, and they didn’t ride the coattails of better men. No one would ever find a Kendall in Macalister County who would stand for one second being in another man’s debt.
Noah wasn’t going to ruin this apple pie moment for Lance.
“I’ve been living off nothing but the chow hall and fast food for the last couple of months,” Lance reminded Noah wryly before taking a seat in one of the wicker chairs opposite him. The floral cushion reminded him that his mother hadn’t been part of the welcoming committee.
She was missed.
Her absence was profound, but she would want them to carry on as the strong young men and woman they were raised to be.
“Cut me some slack. Besides, didn’t this apple pie come from Annie’s Diner? I wouldn’t want Ms. Osburn to find out I skipped out on her homemade all-American dessert.”
Noah shared a sideways glance with the beautiful woman sitting next to him, though it wasn’t unexpected. This had been an ongoing regular occurrence between the two of them all evening.
Lance wouldn’t deny that he’d been surprised to drive up to the family homestead to find his father and brother in the company of a petite brunette he’d never laid his eyes on before tonight. His interest had been immediately piqued by her beauty and intellect. All his brothers and sister had made a pact to never bring anyone home who they weren’t serious about in the long run. It was another tradition that they had all unofficially endorsed.
That meant Reese Woodward was one very special lady.
Lance took the moment of awkward silence to enjoy his ice-cold beer, his large slice of apple pie, and the warm summer evening he’d been dreaming about for the last three years. It was at his mother’s funeral that the Kendall siblings had all made the decision to finally come home, deciding not to ride their enlistments out for the full twenty and retirement.
His mouth watered the instant the warm cinnamon and sugary apples hit his taste buds.
Damn, it was good to be home after all those deployments.
It was the first of August and rather humid in Ohio, but nothing compared to the dry heat of south central Afghanistan. Hell, he hadn’t seen one lightning bug in that whole damned sandbox, nor had he heard the soothing sounds of crickets and frogs as he fell asleep under stars not so different from his own nights here at home.
No.
He’d had to get accustomed to waking up to the hissing sounds of inbound mortars overhead, feeling that telltale vibration in the ground with their impact and muted detonation. Of course, those were just precursors to their own meaty cracks followed by distant thuds of well-targeted outgoing Howitzer projectiles hitting the ground to lull him back into slumber.
It wasn’t something he’d ever miss.
Lance allowed the welcoming resonances that most people took for granted to wash over him. He inhaled deeply as he leaned back against his mom’s cushions and savored the fragrance of the tea roses planted in the front yard.
These small tea roses called Darlow’s Enigma had been one of his mother’s favorite flowers. The sweet scent alone let him know that she was here with them in spirit. Their thorns reminded him of her wit.
“Ms. Osburn didn’t make that pie, Lance. She rarely does any of the cooking at the diner anymore.”
Damn it.
Couldn’t his brother have waited until he’d finished this slice of way-past-due delicious dessert before crushing his dreams?
Lance let his fork drop to the plate with a disappointed look on his brow.
Noah laid an arm over the back of the cushion as he got down to business. Couldn’t his brother see that Lance wasn’t the only one who could have used a little more time to enjoy the evening? Reese had become somewhat antsy at where this discussion was headed, and though Lance realized they’d put it off too long, another five minutes of peace wouldn’t have hurt anyone.
Noah always did have to play the killjoy. It appeared it was finally time to deal with what had thrown every resident in Blyth Lake for a loop.
“Can we at least start at the beginning?” Lance asked in defeat, wishing their father would come outside to join them. It was like being in direct line of fire without someone at least having his six. “Reese, you came to Blyth Lake hoping to find out about the time your cousin attended camp here, is that right?”
“Yes.” Reese shot Noah a sad smile that spoke volumes of how her journey had ended. “I found a photograph of Sophia and Emma Irwin together that summer. It was taken a few months before Emma went missing. I’d recalled hearing about her disappearance when I was younger, but I never made any connection to Sophia until I’d found the picture when I was visiting home last Christmas.”
The connection Reese had made was the fact that Emma Irwin and Sophia Morton had disappeared exactly one year apart. Their hometowns were approximately thirty miles away. Unfortunately, no one else had tied the cases together because Sophia had been listed in the papers as a probable runaway.
“I’m sorry about your cousin, Reese.” Lance extended his condolences, though he could only imagine the grief her family must have endured. Even he easily recalled the girl’s radiant smile and infectious laugh from the small amount of time he’d spent with her twelve years ago. “She was a nice girl from what I remember.”
Lance leaned forward and set his half-eaten slice of pie onto the glass top of the matching wicker table. Everyone had the same type reaction anytime the name Emma Irwin was brought up in conversation. Her disappearance had rocked the town, eventually causing her family to move away from the speculation of what might have happened during that fated October.
Now it seemed that Emma and Sophia did have a connection…in death.
“Emma was in the same grade as I was back in high school. Hell, we’d grown up together. I can still remember waking up to Chad Schaeffer banging on the front door of the house to tell us we needed to join the search party for Emma.”
“I remember that morning,” Noah said, almost as if he’d forgotten. That was impossible, though. Every resident in Blyth Lake had combed every square inch of the town that day. Unfortunately, Emma had never been found. “Mitch and Gwen had already left home to enlist in their respective services. Mom called each of them at their duty stations that same day so they wouldn’t hear the news from anyone else. As for Jace, he was sick that summer with mono and couldn’t join in the search. They had all been close to Emma’s older sister, Shae.”
Lance truly wished he had the answers Reese was seeking, but he’d been seventeen years old that summer.
“I know you want to ask me questions about the two weeks I spent at the camp with Emma and Sophia, but can we cover the events of the last two months first?” Lance had received a call from a state police detective about a body being discovered in a wall of Noah’s new residence. To say he was surprised was an understatement. “Noah, you bought the old Yoder place? And in the process of remodeling, you discovered a body?”
Lance was beginning to think he should have stayed away from home for another month or two. This type of homecoming wasn’t exactly welcoming.
Noah lowered his leg from where his ankle had been resting on his other knee. It was easy to see that he was uncomfortable with Lance’s question. Hell, he would be too if he’d taken a sledge hammer to a wall, only to uncover a partially mummified corpse who he thought was Emma Irwin.
Unfortunately, the body had turned out to be none other than Sophia Morton. That discovery had turned them all on their heads.
“Something like that,” Noah hedged, glancing toward the front door where their father had yet to make an appearance. “You know that Phil Yoder died years ago, prompting his family to leave the area and Pete Anderson to buy the land at auction. Well, the Andersons added a small office between the living room and the open kitchen. Reese was helping me take down the wall when we discovered Sophia’s body. Granted, we thought it was Emma—like everyone else did—all along until the DNA results came in.”
Lance didn’t miss the way Reese winced at the summation of events. It hadn’t been his intention to upset her with his need to know the timeline of the last few months, but it would certainly come in handy when he spoke to Detective Kendrick in person tomorrow morning at the diner.
Lance was being drawn into Sophia’s homicide investigation all because he’d attended summer camp with her twelve years before.
Honestly, Lance could only imagine the shock Reese had experienced upon finding out that her cousin hadn’t run away from home at all, but instead had been murdered and stuffed into a wall to be forgotten for all time.
And for her to be one of the two to find her body?
It was incomprehensible.
What Lance really wanted to ask was how Noah could live in a house after such a discovery, but he kept that opinion to himself. Noah always did see the glass as half full, and no doubt truly believed his acquisition of the Yoder property had been in the cards in order for Sophia’s family to gain some semblance of closure after all these years.
Noah had an odd way of looking at things.
“Lance, could I see you for a moment?”
Gus Kendall stepped onto the lighted porch, holding the screened door open for his youngest son to follow his directive. Dusk had fallen without Lance realizing how much time they’d spent talking about this past summer. He, Noah, and Reese still had a lot of ground to cover, especially before he met with Detective Kendrick.
Family came first, though.
Noah was already nodding his approval, his not-so-innocent gesture telling Lance that his brother was already in the know about what their father wanted to discuss in private. Being summoned by their dad for a private chat wasn’t usually a good thing. At least, in his experience.
“Of course,” Lance responded, shooting Noah an expression of gratitude for the heads up. It most likely had to do with his future. Out of all the siblings in the Kendall clan, he’d been the only one who’d shown an interest in their father’s work. “I’ll see you two tomorrow?”
“Hopefully before you meet with Detective Kendrick,” Noah answered, taking Reese’s hand as the two of them stood to make their way back to the Yoder farm. Only it wasn’t the Yoder’s or the Anderson’s property anymore. It was Noah’s place. “We haven’t covered even half of what transpired in the last few weeks alone.”
Lance didn’t bother to tell Noah that their father had filled in all the details, down to the fact that Reese had almost been run out of town for reasons that had nothing to do with Sophia’s murder or Emma’s disappearance.
“Seven sharp at the diner?”
“Make it eight,” Noah replied, once again causing Lance’s curiosity to rise regarding the knowing looks that had passed between his brother, Reese, and his father. “Good luck.”
Good luck?
What the hell did that crap mean?
Reese’s dimple gave away that the two of them were still withholding vital information, but whatever it was must be on the good side of things. It didn’t take a genius to figure out it had to do with his upcoming talk with Dad. Lance gathered his empty beer bottle and the plate still containing his half-eaten pie. Noah could pick up his own damn trash.
“Come on inside, son.”
“Noah,” Lance called out, gathering the courage to hold up a finger to stall their dad. That had never gone over well when they were younger. He lowered his voice so that Gus couldn’t overhear their exchange. “Is he retiring? Tell me now so that I don’t look like a fish that’s been taken out of water. I’m not quite ready to take on the entire family business by myself.”
“You’re on your own there, buddy.”
Noah’s laughter could be heard all the way until he’d reached his F150, opening the passenger side door for Reese. It was then that Lance realized his brother had left him to pick up their empty bottles.
Son of a bitch.
When had he become their maid?
“Do you remember your Grandpa Earl?” Gus asked, allowing the screen door to close behind Lance as he juggled all the garbage from the porch. The central air was working overtime, but it was a nice change from the humidity outside. “He used to give each of you kids a silver dollar when he came to Sunday dinner.”
“No,” Lance argued, walking through the dining room and down the small hall that led to the kitchen. Again, the absence of his mother hit him right in the gut. The walls were lined with family photographs. His father had a fresh-cut bouquet of small white roses with bright golden centers in a vase on the dining room table. His mother would usually use lilacs as a centerpiece in the spring and would switch to the tea roses later in the summer. Nothing in the house had been changed, and her memory lived on. “Mom always let it slide, but us boys weren’t too happy to find out that Gwen always got two silver coins from Grandpa. No wonder she became a financial planner. She received her inheritance early. Her portfolio alone could probably allow her to retire by now.”
Lance entered the kitchen, recycling what he could before rinsing his fork in the sink and dropping it into a glass half full of water that still needed to be put into the dishwasher. There were some things that were just ingrained from childhood. He would pitch in around the house as best he could while staying here. He’d find a piece of property just like Noah had, though Lance had yet to make a call to the town’s realtor.
He was allowing himself a little downtime before deciding what to do with his life, but hopefully the upcoming conversation could shed a little light on his future. He’d love to work with his father making furniture by hand, the old-fashioned way. The kitchen table was the perfect example of the type of craftsmanship that wasn’t seen in today’s furniture.
Lance wanted to be a part of that hands-on creation.
“Gwen had Earl wrapped around her little finger,” Gus agreed with a fond laugh, sitting at the kitchen table Lance would like to replicate for his own house one day. “Take a seat, son.”
Lance didn’t have the best of memories when it came to that saying, and they usually involved his brothers. He still didn’t regret daring Noah to steal one of their father’s beers out of the refrigerator. The recollection brought a smile to his face, regardless that they’d both been grounded for a whole week during one of their summer breaks.
“This isn’t about your health, is it?” Lance was relatively sure this upcoming discussion had nothing to do with his father’s heart condition based on Noah’s behavior this evening, but then again, he could have misread the signs. “Have you been doing what your heart specialist told you to do?”
“My ticker is working just fine, thank you,” Gus said dryly with a shake of his head. “What is it with you and Noah thinking I’m ready to keel over at any moment?”
Lance wasn’t sure what to say to that, so he did the smart thing and remained quiet. He pulled out one of the chairs at the table and took a seat with relief. Maybe this did have to do with going into business with his dad.
“We just worry about you, is all,” Lance assured him, thinking he should have poured himself a cup of coffee from the pot his father had brewed after dinner. “You brought up Grandpa Earl. Does this have to do with Uncle Jimmy and all that crap?”
“Let’s not discuss your mother’s brother just now.” Gus crossed his arms over his chest and got right down to business. “When your grandfather died, he left your mother quite a healthy inheritance at that time.”
This was news to Lance. A healthy inheritance? They’d all had a decent upbringing, but material wealth hadn’t been handed to any of them. Gus Kendall was a very proud man, in many ways. He’d always prided himself on providing for his wife and children. At times, this had caused a little dissention between their father and grandfather.
“Now, Earl and I didn’t always see eye to eye on things, especially when it came to your mother.”
Lance rubbed his upper lip to hide the fact that he was smiling at such a declaration. Gus was certainly putting that sentiment mildly.
“What mattered was that the two of you put away your differences for Mom’s sake.” Lance could still picture Mary Kendall bustling around the kitchen singing one of her favorite Elvis songs as she cooked Sunday dinner. It was her favorite day of the week. “You made her very happy. Of that, I’m sure Grandpa was well aware.”
“It was the other way around, Lance. She made me the happiest man alive.” Gus stared into the depth of his coffee cup as if he were watching a movie of his life play out before him. It tore Lance’s heart in two to see his father grieve over the love of his life. He cleared his throat before continuing. “Anyway, your mother and I never touched a dime of that inheritance, though it was hers to do with as she wished when she wanted.”
Gus set his coffee down on one of the yellow placemats his mother had chosen years ago, leaning forward for a set of keys on a silver ring. He took his time removing a smaller set from the larger array, allowing Lance time to try and figure out the direction this conversation was taking.
He was absolutely clueless thus far.
“It was her final wish to have all you kids home, living close to one another so your children experienced a childhood like yours. She passed before we could choose all the properties together, so I took it upon myself to follow through with her request.”
“Dad, you’re not saying—”
“I’m saying that Noah was given the Yoder’s farm. You’re being gifted with the old Fetter property for your part, and the others will be given theirs upon their homecoming. I want this kept quiet from them, you understand? They’re going to find out the same way you did.”
“Yes, sir,” Lance muttered, utterly speechless to say anything after those two words.
Gus quietly set a small ring of identical keys in front of Lance before replacing the larger one with the remaining set back on the Lazy Susan in the center of the table. He then settled back into his chair and gave Lance time to absorb the news of this amazing gift.
Lance was being honored with his mother’s last wish—a home to call his own.
He would have given anything to have Mary Kendall standing here in this kitchen with her husband to present him with such an offering.
“Noah was given the Yoder’s property.”
That would explain some things, especially his brother’s need to stay in the house chosen for him. Lance would have done the exact same thing given the circumstances.
“This key is to your new home. Now, don’t get too excited. Arthur Fetter let the house become rather rundown over the years, so there’s a lot of repairs and outright reconstruction projects in your future, but the bones of the place are all solid. We can swing by your home first thing in the morning and check for hidden bodies and such.” Gus’ small smile disappeared as he pushed back his chair and stood, taking his coffee with him. He gently rested his weathered hand on Lance’s shoulder. “Welcome home, son.”