Retreat to Woodhaven (The Hills of Burlington Book 2)

by Jacie Middlemann

  "That's fine." She moved forward to embrace him again, holding tight, her gratitude expressed without words. After seeing them out the door she turned back to her cousin. She didn't have to look deep to see the exhaustion and just plain weariness that literally generated off of him in waves.

  "Did you drive straight through?" She looped her arm through his and casually led him through to the kitchen. The coffee pot was set up ready to go. She knew his preferences and had filled the cabinet with strong ground coffee and Earl Grey Tea.

  Jake took in what he could as they made their way to the kitchen. He noticed the light hued walls and contrasting vivid dark colors in the rooms as they passed through. He saw a chair he'd give his right arm to relax back into this very moment. Instead he settled for the cushioned chair at the table in the kitchen that reminded him of the set his mother had when he was ten. While his mother's had been a vivid red with scalloped metal bands curving around the sides of both table and chairs, these were a gray marbled pattern that he could just as easily picture in an old time ice cream shop. Even as he had the thought to ask for a cup of anything with caffeine he caught the scent of the brewing coffee. He graced his cousin with a heart felt smile of gratitude. "I did and right around the middle of Illinois I could smell the coffee I didn't have and simply didn't want to stop just for that."

  Mary shifted the pot to the side and held one of the big mugs she'd brought over under the spout of brewing coffee as it dripped through. She settled down across from him and slid the mug across the table to his waiting hands. "I wasn't certain when you were coming in." She studied his eyes, exhausted as she knew he must be yet they were alert, always watching everything going on around him. That much hadn't changed. She wondered if after spending some time here where time moved slower and the people behind you were watching your back not aiming at it, would ease some of his ever present wariness. "I stocked in enough food for a couple of days, coffee for longer."

  "I'll be fine, Mary." He saw all the questions she didn't want to ask, just didn't know if he had it in him at the moment to give her the answers she deserved. He took a long sip of the hot coffee. At that moment it felt as good as a strong fine brandy sliding down his throat. "You've done a good job here." He remembered the house vaguely but there were memories here. Good ones. He looked into her waiting eyes. "We're going to have to talk soon."

  Mary sighed. If it were almost anyone else she'd take advantage of his fatigue and get the answers she knew wouldn't be forthcoming under any other circumstances. "We will. Later." She saw his surprise at her easy acceptance. "It wouldn't be a fair conversation at this point, Jake. You're exhausted and I'm not." She took the keys to the house out of her purse and set them on the table between them. "The same key works for the front, back, and side doors. The other is for the garage." His surprise wasn't unexpected. "It's in the back," she explained. "You have to go through the alley to park in it." She watched his eyebrows lift, knew before she reached her front door he'd have his car in what barely passed for a garage. She'd let him see that for himself. "Do you think you'll be up to dinner with us tonight?"

  Jake fingered the keys. Thought about what he'd left behind. What might be in front of him. "I think it would be better if we talked first." He looked up at her. Saw the concern and hoped he could ease a good piece of it. "You, Casey, and Carrie." He finished down the coffee, rose to refill his cup. "I wrote an article that will have reporters and only the Good Lord knows who else coming out of the woodwork looking for me," he shrugged. "It'll blow over. It always does once the next scandal breaks."

  "Don't they all," was all Mary said. It seemed like only yesterday instead of months ago that Casey had shown up in the middle of the night running from what haunted her that had been tied to yet another scandal. But she knew that was only part of it. She could see in his eyes that was only part of it. And not the part that had him worried.

  "And there's something else I need to talk with you about." He confirmed for her. "I just don't know that I want to get into it with Aunt Charlie yet."

  Mary gave him a quick hug. "Call when the fog lifts."

  Jake watched her as she walked down the street to the house near the end of it. There were more memories to face there as well. Closing the door he turned around and took in the room in a way he hadn't had a chance to when he'd first walked in. He wondered how it felt for Carrie. He may have had free rein here but she'd grown up in the house. Good memories and bad, it had to be an odd feeling coming back.

  He glanced up the stairway and decided that would have to wait. He needed something to eat and wanted to move his rental car around to the garage before finding a bed. Any bed. He passed through the kitchen and unlocked the back door. Car. Unload the bare essentials from the car. Food. If he could just get through that short list he could tackle those stairs and find that bed.

  

  Balancing a plate loaded with a microwaved hamburger, mounds of deli potato salad, and a can of soda carefully situated in the middle of the plate in one hand and the one bag he needed from the pile he'd stacked just inside the back door in his other hand Jake wandered through the dining room towards the front stairway. He almost veered off to head up the back stairs as he passed them but as tired as he was he wasn't certain his balancing act would make it up the narrow steps and opted for the front staircase instead.

  He had to hand it to his cousin. Beyond stashing every microwavable sandwich known to man in the freezer he couldn't help but wonder if she'd furnished the dining room with him in mind. The room was as big as he remembered but in his childhood it had been home to Aunt Charlie's massive dining table. One that had been big enough for the heads of NATO to gather round. There was no table consuming the room now. He paused and looked around. There was a huge antique desk in one corner of the room. On the other side was an entertainment center that could be viewed from the desk or either of the two overstuffed chairs positioned just for that purpose. Making his way to the front of the house with his can of soda slipping slightly in its precarious position he walked through the front room. He couldn't remember the last time he'd sat down and watched anything on TV other than the news.

  He was so intent on getting upstairs and settling down to eat he almost didn't notice it. Almost but not quite. And how long had it been since he'd sat down in front of a piano, he wondered. Long. A really long time. He probably couldn't play the scales anymore let alone any single tune. But it was tempting. Shaking his head at the wonder of it he took the stairs slowly, the smell of the food stronger than any other temptation at that moment. When he finally laid back on the huge bed, the empty plate sitting on the nightstand next to him, he wondered if Mary could know just how great the temptation that piano would be.

  

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Mary sat down at the small table, nudging herself in between her Aunt Charlie and Grace, the owner of the store on the corner and new business partner and friend. Not for the first time she wondered if she shouldn't get a new table to better accommodate those even now sitting around it. Each time they gathered it seemed to always be here and always at this table. And while she had a fondness for this table she was finding more and more she also had a fondness for the tight bond that came with crowding around it as they so often had to. It brought back to her a sense of what had filled this house so long ago. Traditions. Gathering around a table already so crowded it was difficult to find a place to wedge yourself into. But a place was always made and room was always found. Better to be crowded than to be alone. She hadn't always thought that. Wondered now how she could have ever thought different.

  She sipped her coffee while she half listened to the conversation between her Aunt Charlie and her cousins. Carrie, Aunt Charlie's only daughter, was telling them about a new shop she'd found just a few miles outside of town. While Casey was the business end of their new online venture, Carrie had found her own niche in locating unique items at out of the way stores off the beaten path that they purchased and the
n sold on their website. Three Sisters Inc. was gaining momentum both online and off. Just in the last month she had completed the collection of family recipes that would be published and carried exclusively on their website. Mallie and Aunt Charlie were already working with Casey on the Three Sisters Cooking with Aunt Charlie videos. She'd seen the first one and knew that no matter what else happened her Aunt Charlie was having the time of her life. And deserved every single minute of it.

  She turned towards Grace and listened as she addressed the PR end of the fledgling business. They had decided early on they wanted to keep any advertising and public relations efforts regional until they had a better grasp on what they were doing. Each had their strengths but all were very much on new ground with this venture. But the challenge was what drove them and the success they were experiencing was the result.

  Her attention shifted when the conversations going on around her included the mention of Jake. As she looked up she caught Grace's worried expression at the mention of her cousin and wondered what it meant. Even as she answered her Aunt Charlie she continued to look at Grace who now looked down at her hands folded tightly on the table before her.

  "I don't expect to see him at least until sometime tomorrow. He was exhausted."

  "It's a drive," Carrie agreed. She'd made the trip herself months ago, driving straight through the night, stopping only when she needed gas. "I didn't feel rested for a couple of days after I got here."

  "That's part of it." Mary paused, wondering how much to say and how much to keep to herself. She looked around the table, this was family. Grace might not be family but she and her grandfather before her had had a connection to their family for generations. "I think it's more than that. He mentioned an article that will be coming out soon. He didn't give me any details but I got the sense that whatever it is it’s going to cause a big pop."

  "More like a big sonic boom." Grace spoke softly. Barely loud enough for anyone to hear. Yet all eyes turned to her. "I caught the tail end of a report on it as I was getting ready to head over here." She determinedly loosened her hands that had been clenched tightly together, a sure sign to everyone else at the table this wasn't going to be good. "I wasn't certain that I’d heard right, but I heard his name." She looked up, her eyes worried, her gaze touching Mary's, then Casey's where they stayed steady as she continued. "I checked the internet to be sure. It's all over the place." Her voice was low. Steady but low. "Big time exposé on reporters at every level...print, television, radio. I just glanced through parts of it but it's already having huge repercussions. People have been fired left and right. Some of the publications aren't even waiting for proof. Your brother's reputation is solid gold so they're taking action based on his report alone and getting rid of the problem pretty quick."

  Casey sat up straighter. She didn't have to hear a lot more to know this wasn't good. "What kind of exposé?" She couldn't for the life of her think of what could cause such quick action where slow and easy was often the catch-phrase of how to deal with personnel issues. "What about at WNO?" She asked next about her old network where she'd worked for the entirety of her broadcasting career before walking out on it the year before. Literally and figuratively walking out, minutes before her show was to go on air. Driving straight here without any clear thought as to what she was going to do next. Her only thought had been to get away from a job that was turning her into someone she didn't like and didn't want to be.

  "They've fired a couple of people but I didn't catch the names." She looked around the table. Saw the varying expressions of concern. "And locating Jake Kyle seems to be uppermost in a lot of people's minds. As far as the media is concerned he's dropped off the face of the earth."

  "Funny you should phrase it that way. That's almost how my old boss described our beloved town when he visited." Casey was pulling out her cell phone as she spoke. "The video segments that I agreed to do for WNO were supposed to start airing in the next week or so. That will point right to here as a starting point to anyone looking for him." She fumbled with the phone as she saw the message of a missed call and a text message from the very man she had thought to call. Pushing the necessary buttons with trembling fingers she read the short message.

  "What is it?" Mallie spoke for the first time. The youngest of the group around the table, she had found her place among them despite of it.

  Casey looked over to her young cousin, or whatever the exact relationship was, and smiled broadly. "Apparently Mark feels there's a need for some editing." She looked up with a dry smile pasted on her face. "He knows how I feel about editing. Anyway," she waved that away, "he suggests we hold off on airing the videos for a few more weeks so we can talk about the changes he'd like me to make."

  The sigh of relief came from all of them almost in sync.

  "Okay," Casey continued to mess with her phone. "It looks like he left me a separate voice message when he called." She pushed in the code to access it. Listened to the brief dictate. "And if I need any further explanations regarding his suggestions he'll be home tonight and I'm welcome to call him then and there."

  Grace looked straight at Casey. "He wants to talk to you but not when he’s at work."

  "Yeah." Casey closed her phone. Leaned back and thought about what had been said and all that hadn't been in that short little message. She turned to Mary. "Did my brother happen to mention anything about any of this?"

  "Just that he was going to talk to us about it." She thought back to the conversation. There had been more. Something more that wore heavy on him. More than this. And if it was more than this Mary wondered, just how bad could it be? But with her Aunt Charlie and Mallie sitting across from her she simply couldn't go into that part of it. "He looked more than exhausted, Casey." She looked at her cousin, turned slightly to include Carrie and her aunt as well, trying to express her concern without going against his wishes. "I haven't seen Jake like this since..." she paused, she didn't want to go there, knew inherently no one else wanted to go there either.

  "Since he came back from that God awful time overseas and wouldn't talk to anyone for months." Her Aunt Charlie wasn't asking her anything. She was making the statement they all didn't want to think about let alone say out loud.

  Mary nodded.

  Carrie looked solemnly at her mother. "Have you heard anything about this Mom...from anyone that we don't know about?"

  "No, honey." Charlie sipped on her tea, her expression thoughtful. "But I can't think of any time in Jacob's life that he hasn't gone with the flow except then."

  Casey turned back to Grace. "What is this all about? What in the world did Jake write in that exposé that would cause this kind of knee jerk reaction?"

  All eyes turned again to Grace. "Your brother," she addressed Casey then looked around to include everyone, "apparently received a tip that led him to follow a fairly complex path that I think is still in the process of being unraveled." She sighed deeply, this kind of situation was exactly why she’d left that world and never looked back. "Anyway, it appears after quite a bit of digging through layers of what can only be called cover-up, he uncovered a pretty organized group that included politicians, corporate leaders, and a large number of reporters from various media companies all over the country and even internationally." She turned to Casey at her soft gasp as she began to put together where this was going. She paused, took another deep breath. Just from the little she read she couldn't blame the man for wanting to lay low. Heads were rolling and people always wanted someone to blame other than themselves. Self-accountability wasn't a widely practiced endeavor in the world she and Casey had come from. "It's not completely clear yet, at least not publically. But the gist of it seems that they injected false facts into some news stories that were legitimate otherwise and in some cases totally made up other stories as if they were in fact real." She looked at the faces around the table. They were surprised but not shocked. And if that wasn't a sad commentary on the state of their society she didn't know what was. "It looks on the
surface that it's all about politics but I don't think so."

  "No." Casey spoke. "Money. That many people...it's about money."

  "Okay." Mary was thinking, and thinking quickly. "Just how badly are these people going to want to find Jake?" She addressed the table at large but was specifically looking at the three women sitting with them who would know best. Carrie had been married for decades to a popular and powerful Senator. Casey had reported on the politics of the nation for almost as long, and Grace had been a senior speech writer and PR spokeswoman for numerous political figures before coming to Burlington.

  Casey was the first to speak. "Badly." The woman who had determinedly strove to regain her calm and laid back personality over the last several months sounded dead serious. She turned to Carrie. The woman knew politics as well as anyone she knew. "What do you think?"

  Carrie had been quiet, staring off into space thinking of all the ramifications this could have on any and all of them. More importantly she was thinking of what they could do to prevent as much of those possibilities from actually taking place. At her cousin's question she turned worried eyes on her, and spoke the truth. "I think you're absolutely right." She looked at everyone around the table, saw the worry on every face including her mother's. But she also saw strength and resolution. "There's a tendency in politics and everything that touches it to look for the truth as it works for them. I think it's fair to say this isn't going to work for them at all. If this affects any single politician just by association others will be suspect. They're going to want to do the one thing they can to invalidate it all...prove Jake wrong."

  "And they'll want him to defend himself so they can find holes to poke in any little thing he says." Grace spoke up softly. She too was thinking ahead. In her mind there was no reason to sit around waiting for disaster to strike. "It's a lot easier if they can deal with him personally and to do that they have to find him." She looked at the three women, three cousins who had become like sisters to her. "Each of you could be used to find him and then be used as weapons to do damage to him." She sighed, she hated politics. "Especially you, Casey. You're his sister. You left the network you worked for suddenly. They could play that all kinds of ways. None of it has to be true, once it's spoken out loud it's in people's heads. That's all they have to do." She knew from Casey's expression she wasn't telling her anything she hadn't already considered.