“Indestructible?” Kerry suggested. “He certainly thought so. Maybe now he’ll finally give up smoking.”
“Just as long as he don’t give up drinking,” Danny interjected.
Kerry kept gazing around the room. “This place seems so familiar to me. Has it always been here?”
“Since 1962,” Claudia said. “I’m the third generation to run Lombardi’s.”
“That explains it,” Kerry said. “I have this vague memory of sitting right here, but on a stack of phone books, eating a big bowl of spaghetti. There was a white-haired lady who showed me how to twirl the noodles around my fork.”
“That would be my grandma, Anna,” Claudia said. “So you used to come to the city too?”
“Yeah. Me and Murphy and my parents. But I stopped coming after the divorce.”
“Four of you, including two little kids? Living in that thing?” Claudia laughed. “That’s taking togetherness to an extreme, if you ask me.”
“Can you see the two of us living together in a camper?” Danny asked, poking Claudia’s arm.
“Bad enough we have to work together,” she said.
“You two are family?”
“First cousins, technically,” Danny said.
Kerry scraped the bottom of her bowl to scoop up the last bit of soup. She dabbed her lips with her napkin and reached in the pocket of her jacket to retrieve her billfold.
“No charge,” Claudia said quickly. “On the house.”
“But…”
“We got a deal with your family,” Danny explained. “We get the biggest, best Tolliver Christmas tree every year, and you guys get the Lombardi meal plan.”
“At least let me pay for the wine,” Kerry said.
“No way,” Claudia said firmly. “And listen, in the morning, if you need coffee and a bathroom, come over to Anna’s, that’s our bakery next door. Danny’s daughter Lidia will take care of you.”
“Really? That would be great,” Kerry said, suppressing a yawn.
Claudia walked to the café’s front door, unlocked it, and held it open. “I’m not actually kicking you out, but I kinda am. We know how early your brother gets going in the morning.”
“Thanks again,” Kerry told her. “I have a feeling tomorrow is going to be a long day.”
chapter 4
Kerry tiptoed into the trailer. To her shock, while she was gone, Murphy had made up her bunk. The mattress was thin, the blankets smelled like mildew, and the pillow was rock hard. Still, she was dead asleep within minutes.
In her dream, Murphy hefted his chain saw from his shoulder, yanked the pull-cord, and an ear-splitting buzz filled the morning air. He held the saw against the base of a massive tree’s trunk, and the roar grew louder.
Kerry could feel the earth shaking beneath her feet, smell the sharp tang of fresh-cut pine.
She wanted to scream, to stop her brother from felling the tree. She opened her mouth, but no sound emerged.
The saw roared and the ground shook. She sat straight up in bed, gasping, her eyes wide. It was pitch black and her heart was beating a mile a minute. She was awake now, but the rumble did not abate, and in fact, the tiny trailer actually was vibrating.
Kerry reached beneath her pillow, pulled out her phone, andthumbed it to life, passing the flashlight beam around the trailer, pausing when it reached the bunk only a few feet away.
Murphy was asleep on his back, mouth agape, snoring so loudly it surely would have drowned out the sound of any self-respecting chain saw.
According to her phone, it was two o’clock in the morning. She sank back down onto the bunk, pulling the sleeping bag over her head, but nothing could mute her brother’s snores. Finally, she tiptoed over to his bunk and with effort, managed to roll him over on his side.
