Ethan shot his daughter a glance.
“How much is Tomato Face worth?” Hannah asked.
“A lot.”
Hannah considered this, and Ethan could practically see the thoughts churning in her head. Had she guessed the real reason Ethan had taken the teaching position at the school? He could, of course, go back to Warner Brothers, but the thought made him ill. They’d have to leave Oak Hollow. He’d need to hire a new nanny—one who could cover the long hours the studio would demand.
Or he could go back to Rose Arbor and live near his parents. Find a job teaching at a public school. Churn out hotel room art in the evenings and on the weekends. His knuckles turned white as he gripped the wheel.
He didn’t want to leave Hannah with a babysitter for sixty hours a week, nor did he relish the thought of living in dreary Washington. “You want to stay here in Oak Hollow, right?” Ethan asked. “With Mrs. Hancock and all your friends?”
“Hmmhmm,” Hannah murmured. “That’s why I’m going to say a prayer that you’ll get enough money to buy the gallery!” Last week, she’d heard a sermon about answered prayers, and since then she’d started praying over nearly everything.
“That’s sweet, button, and noble, but not very useful.”
“What do you mean? Pastor Lynn said we should pray over everything, including our flocks and pastures. Your paintings are like flocks, but they smell better, and a gallery is like a pasture without ticks.”
Despite his worry, a small chuckle escaped.
“It’s not funny. It’s true. Pastor Lynn would want you to pray.” She jutted out her chin. “I bet God wants to find the bad guys who stole Harold. And if He wants to punish them, we should let Him.”
“Sweetie, let’s not bug God. I bet he has a lot of really important things to do.”
“What could be more important than bringing Tomato Face home?” She gasped and her eyes went wide. “I bet he’s scared!”
Ethan thought about pointing out that Harold was a one-foot-high sculpture incapable of having feelings.
Hannah folded her hands in her lap and refused to look at him. After closing her eyes, she began a simple yet sincere prayer that Desmond would sell the gallery to Ethan and that the police would find Harold and bring him safely home.
CHAPTER 2
Zoe stood in frontof the classroom. A dozen little girls dressed in tartan uniforms stared back at her expectantly. They looked sweet, but Zoe knew better. At this age, she had attended Canterbury herself, so she knew sweetness might only be on the surface, like ganache on an eclair. Something ugly could lurk behind the pigtails and shiny lip gloss. But still, because she loved Laurel, she held out one of her prized possessions for the girls to see.
“This small wooden box holds something very precious to me,” Zoe told the girls. She unlatched the leather strap to open the lid and extract the small gold coins. “These were collected by my ancestors. When John Lewis first came to this country in 1849, he was a poor man. He’d been a miner in Wales, but somehow, he’d managed to put together enough funds to travel to the United States and take the train as far west as it would take him, which in those days was Iowa City. From there, he hitched up with a wagon train that would take him to California, where he hoped to strike it rich in the Gold Rush.”
“Are those coins from the Gold Rush?” a little girl in the front row asked.
