by Brynn Bonner
“And how is he feeling about it all?” Marydale asked.
“He’s coping better than I could’ve imagined,” Chelsea said. “I think it helped that it came to light at a time when he’s so happy. He says this actually explains a lot of things he’s always wondered about and he believes it might actually be helpful to him as a father. He’s planning to keep the name he’s lived under all these years, at least for now. And he’s talked with Lenora and the senator and made the legal arrangements to have the foundation plans go ahead. Except now it will be named the Alton and Margaret Sawyer Foundation.”
“And there’s another change as I understand it,” I said. “Damon will no longer be heading the foundation. I gather he hasn’t been dealing well with all this. The senator has decided he needs a little more grooming.”
“Who’ll take over?” Marydale asked.
“Phoebe Nelson,” I said. “She’s an attorney and has quite a bit of experience with nonprofits.”
“I’ll bet Damon isn’t taking that well,” Chelsea said.
“Not well at all,” I said. “But the senator says his father is due home in a couple of months and that he’ll take him in hand and straighten him out. In any case, despite all their conflicting feelings, the senator and Lenora did get one thing they wanted out of this—their parents have been vindicated. Sadly way too late, but still.”
“Yes,” Marydale said. “I’ve seen several articles this last week and some of them are odes to the parents for their perseverance and their faith.”
“And one of them was written by Chad Deese, of all people,” I said. “That guy is shameless. He’ll go whichever way the wind blows if he can get a story out of it.”
“Did you ever find out where he was during that hole in his alibi?” Marydale asked.
“His car wouldn’t start—that’s why it was in the parking lot at the hotel. He had a service truck jump it early the next morning. He’d gone to the gym with his friends, but he wasn’t with them the entire time. He slipped out and walked to a convenience store to get some ice for his eye at some point. He was mortified about getting a shiner from a female and didn’t want to tell that part.”
Coco came into the room wearing her trademark gauzy skirt, but this time with a carpenter’s apron fastened around her waist. She reached in and brought out a shiny chrome cone. “Water-saver showerheads,” she said. “Esme tells me you need to get one on the shower at your house, too, immediately. I’ll come by tomorrow.” She disappeared into the bathroom and I could hear the scrape of metal on metal.
“You all have been friends for a long time, haven’t you?” Chelsea asked.
“Some of us,” Marydale said. “I’ve known Sophreena all her life. Her mother and I were the closest of friends. But some of us only became true friends about seven or eight years ago. I don’t think it’s so much the time as the fact that we have deep friendships.”
“I wonder if I’ll ever have that kind of relationship again,” Chelsea mused.
“You will,” Marydale said with certainty.
“Listen to her,” I said. “Marydale always knows what she’s talking about.”
“Out to the kitchen, y’all,” Esme said, putting her hand through the doorway to wave us in.
The kitchen was assembled. Esme had seen to the placement of every pot, pan, whisk, and ladle, and the pantry and fridge were stocked. I had no doubt she could’ve whipped up a meal on a moment’s notice. There were plastic glasses on the table and Esme was pouring sparkling cider. She passed around a glass to each of us and gathered us around her: Denny, Marydale and Winston, River and Coco, Jack and me, Chelsea, and Jennifer Jeffers.
“I’d give you champagne but there’s still work to be done and I don’t want anybody sleeping on the job,” she said. She stretched to her full height. “Now, you all can clearly see I’m Irish, very Irish, and I want to do an Irish blessing on my house. Sophreena, you do not look at me or you’ll make me cry.” She lifted her glass and we all did the same.
May the roof above us never fall in.
And may the friends gathered below it never fall out.
May you have warm words on a cold evening,
A full moon on a dark night,
And the road downhill all the way to your door.
“Or in this case,” she added, “the road downhill all the way to my door.”
Jack put his arm around me and pinched the back of my arm—hard. For which I was profoundly grateful. He’s like one of those companion dogs that alerts you when your body is about to betray you in some way. It mortifies me to cry in front of people, and I was close to blubbering.
I thought of Lincoln and of the life he never got to lead. Of the Sawyers, the Dodds, of Chelsea, and Conrad Nelson and his new wife. I hoped they’d be able to come to terms with everything that had been revealed and find peace with it.
I sipped, swallowing hard to get the cider past the lump in my throat. There were big changes ahead for Esme and for me, and for all of us gathered here. But as I looked around the kitchen I knew we’d be okay if we just stuck together.
There’s family by blood and family by choice, and sometimes neither of those work out the way you might hope. But at that moment I felt like the luckiest person in the world to have been chosen by this family of friends.
BRYNN BONNER grew up in Alabama and is a longtime resident of North Carolina. Both her literary fiction and mysteries reflect the landscapes and the genuine people of her southern heritage. Bonner currently pens the Family History Mystery series for Pocket Books. Writing as Ellen Harris, Bonner wrote six books for the Mysteries of Sparrow Island series, published by Guidepost Books. Her short stories have been featured in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Now and Then, Crossroads, and other publications.
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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First Pocket Books paperback edition September 2016
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Cover illustration by Stephen Gardner
ISBN 978-1-4767-7682-8
ISBN 978-1-4767-7684-2 (ebook)
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