“Well, there is that,” she conceded. “Come in. Are you tired?”
“No, I’m good.” I followed her into the kitchen. “Where’s Dad?”
“I’m here,” he said, pushing up from his recliner and joining us.
I hugged him, noticing he was looking tired. “You okay?”
“Yeah, son. Just dealing with shit at work.”
My dad owned a lumber mill and I know he’d been dealing with some bad management. He’d been cleaning up the line of command below him, but it was grueling.
“You gonna join me for a beer?” I asked.
He grinned. “Or twelve.”
“One,” Mom piped in.
He rolled his eyes making sure she didn’t see him, and grabbed us both a beer from the fridge.
The rest of the night was spent in relative ease, mostly because my mother turned in less than an hour after I’d arrived. At almost eleven, I pushed off the sofa and smiled at my dad. “I’m gonna turn in.”
“Okay, son. Sleep in tomorrow.”
I nodded. “I’m gonna try.”
I hugged him and headed up to my childhood room, dropping my bag on the bed. Shit, nothing had changed. My old student-model Squier Stratocaster still hung on the wall and I smiled. I’d long since graduated to collecting vintage Fenders, and my current fixation was a ’72 Tele Custom, but I’d never give up my first guitar.
My brothers had all traveled the sports road, mostly football, but I’d always been obsessed with music, and focused all my energy on playing it every second I could. It drove my mom crazy, but Dad would always remind her that I was good at math because of music, so she should be happy.
Our family mill was at the edge of our property, and when we were young, my parents’ ran a small dairy farm. I often wondered if it was why they had so many kids...free labor. They sold the cows and some of the land a year or two before Aidan had graduated high school, but kept the mill. Although, Dad had hired a general manager so he could cut back a bit.
It appeared that plan was no longer working.
I pulled my phone out of my pocket and realized it was dead, so I grabbed my charger plugged it in. After powering up my phone again, I saw I’d missed a couple of texts from Harmony and my heart raced a little. Jesus, if she was having a hard time and I wasn’t there for her...
Hey, Jax. Thanks for everything. Sleep well.
Then a second text came through.
Sweet dreams.
Then a third.
Sorry, that was weird.
I bit back a chuckle and was about to respond, when another text came through.
Please ignore any strange texts coming from this number. An alien has taken over Harmony’s body and is acting the fool.
I pressed the call button and she answered immediately. “Hi, sorry. I thought you’d be asleep.”
I smiled. “I don’t sleep.”
“Neither do I,” she admitted.
“You feeling okay?”
“In relation to...?”
