“Wait.” Rachel lifted her hand like a crossing guard. “What are you talking about, ‘I stole Holden’s scholarship’?” She made quotes around the question with her fingers.
“They think Holden was unfairly disqualified, which made you the uncontested winner. Zeke brought it up at a Super Bowl party a few years back after he’d had his share of punch, which was no doubt spiked.”
“Why would they do that?”
“People do it all the time,” Stewart said matter-of-factly. “You can hardly taste it.”
“Not spike the punchbowl, Dad. Why would they accuse me of taking his scholarship?”
“Because there could only be one winner and you were it. The Harts are sore losers, Sugar Plum. Always have been. But they better ice up because they’re about to get even more sore when we finally beat them once and for all.”
Paula shuddered and crossed the opening of her jacket over her stomach. “Don’t you think we could fix all of this if we just sat down with one another and talked things through?”
“You can’t fix crazy, Paula,” Stewart said in a maniacal tone that had Rachel questioning who the real crazy one was. Then, as though snapping to attention, he threw the pipes aside and darted back to the house double time, heaving with breaths that forced a cough from his lungs.
“Stewart, slow down!” Paula yelled. “You’re going to hurt yourself.”
“I don’t know why I didn’t think of it!” Her father was in mad-scientist mode.
“Didn’t think of what?”
Ambling back into the house, Paula and Rachel discovered Stewart at the kitchen table with his cell phone in his trembling grasp.
“The cameras.” He swiped over several applications and pulled up the one in question. “Remember? We installed them to catch the raccoon that kept getting into the trash bins. If I rewind far enough, we should be able to get a view of the perpetrators.”
Even though it felt crazy, Rachel couldn’t tamp down the anticipation that had sweat beading on her forehead. She peered over her father’s shoulder, breath caught.
“There they are! There’s one on the deck right here!”
“Lance?” The outline was fuzzy, but Rachel could clearly make out the shock of white hair peeking out from a beanie. Of course, it had helped that she’d seen him just the day before, his appearance fresh in her mind. “Why would Lance care how tall our tree is?”
“It’s not Lance who cares,” Stewart zoomed in on a shadowy figure at the edge of the frame. He tapped the screen. “It’s him.”
“Buddy?” Rachel’s mouth went dry, his name grating on her tongue.
“I don’t know who Buddy is,” her father continued, “but this right here explains everything.” He paused the video and pulled up the image even bigger. “Looks like all the Harts are in on it this time. Even that sneaky, no good son of theirs.”
CHAPTER18
Sarah stretched back from the table and bounced her baby on her lap, eliciting a fitful of giggles from the child. Laney had made an absolute mess of her breakfast, but it really couldn’t be avoided when all food was considered finger food.
“I’m going to grab a few napkins from the counter and clean up this disaster so the poor busboy doesn’t have to. It looks like a breakfast tornado.”
Holden’s sister scooted out her chair, but he stood first.
“Let me. You have your hands full.”
“Isn’t that the truth?” Pressing a kiss to her daughter’s mop of corkscrew blonde curls, Sarah beamed with motherly pride.
Before Sarah and her ex-husband had transferred from Snowdrift to Sacramento for Darrel’s work as a legal assistant, Holden had made a point of weekly brother-sister breakfasts. It was a designated time on the calendar to touch base, even if it had become more of a “Can you believe Mom and Dad?” gab session in recent years. Though the meetings were fewer, Holden was still thankful for his sister and their shared history. No one knew you like family.
He moved through the Cornerstone Café and snagged a stack of folded napkins from the dispenser on the bar, right next to a Santa that bellowed“Ho, ho, ho”each time a patron moved past and triggered its motion sensor.
“How was everything today?” Holly Calloway, the restaurant’s manager, pressed over the counter and seized Holden’s attention with her cheery greeting.
“Pancake perfection, Miss Holly. Like always.”
“Did the little gal enjoy the snowman shaped ones? I made those special, just for her.”
