He smiles against my lips. “I’ll show you one I’ve been working on soon.”
“Take it somewhere else, you two!” Jo shouts from her spot next to Nash.
“Is Julian eating her face?” Nash asks. “Julian, when you’re done with loving on Auntie Wyn, can you come show me that airplane trick again?”
“Love on me one more time and go show my nephew your paper folding skills.”
I squeal out laughing as he lifts me off the ground and kisses up my neck. My hands move into his hair as he kisses me.
“Disgusting,” Nash yells out and it has both of my sisters laughing.
He puts me down just after he gives me one more peck on the lips, and he walks backward. “Alright, Nash, let's do this, buddy,” he says, clapping his hands together and joining my nephew on the grass. Nash pulls out a stack of colorful paper from his backpack, and Julian starts showing him step-by-step how to fold the first one.
“I swore that he had something to do with it,” a deep voice says from the other side of the patio. I turn and find Jameson finishing off the Lego set that he had built with Nash earlier. At the picnic table by himself, he takes a sip of his drink and adds, “Your disappearance,” he adds.
I clear my throat. “Please tell me you’re not referring to Julian?”
Jameson laughs quietly, shaking his head. “Not Julian. Reed,” he says instead.
Playing off information I already know, I deflect, and he probably knows it, too. “I knew you worked my case, but I didn’t think about the people you would have questioned.”
He crosses his arms over his chest, planting his feet wide as he stands. “Wyn, you’re Nash’s aunt, you’re family. Not to mention, that my job is to work homicides. And homicide was a real possibility when you had been missing beyond the seventy-two-hour mark. I’ve worked with the local FBI and their Behavioral Analysis Unit. Serial cases usually need bodies, and we didn’t have one for you. The evidence that had been left in your wake didn’t point to you being killed. But the night you disappeared...” He shakes his head. “Reed was one of the lastpeople to see you, and I had a gut feeling about that asshole. There hadn’t been anything tangible for me to move on it, though,” he says, looking toward his grandson.
“If that’s true, your gut instinct, then I hope whatever has happened to him was deserving,” I say with a shrug before moving toward the kitchen, pointing at the house. “I’m going to see if my mother is causing irreparable damage.”
I want to see if Tommy needs rescuing from her, but mostly, I need to cut this conversation off. Jameson is smart, and I wouldn’t doubt that if he wants, he could figure all of this out—what happened to Reed, who made that happen, hell, even whatever sorry shitheads came before.
Just before my foot hits the step, Jameson calls out behind me. “Sheriff Fury is doing a fine job of effectively not closing cases, as your sister keeps pointing out.”
“Is that a gut instinct I’m hearing about your boss?” I ask with a quirked eyebrow.
He takes a big breath before he says, “Yeah, maybe. We’ll save that story for another day.”
Nash starts laughing, pulling both of our attention his way.
“It’s convenient...” Jameson adds a beat later. “Reed disappearing like that. Officer Billings, too. Don’t you think?”
I give him my best casual smile when I say, “Convenient? Maybe just good old-fashioned karma.”
He pauses, his cup halfway to his mouth before he smiles into it, making me take note of the things left unsaid. “I don’t know much about karma, Wyn, but I do know patterns. A few of them seem to point in places that I’d rather not be looking.” He looks out at Stevie and Nash belly laughing about something. Swallowing, he looks back at me. “I like being at this family table and on your side.”
I raise my chin and reach for the handle on the double doors. “It’s a smart place to be, Detective,” I say with an appreciative smile, and then move inside.
I’m not going to overthink any of it. If Jameson wants to, he’ll ask questions and dig a little deeper, but I really hope he doesn’t.
Passing through the solarium, I see Birdie on the chaise lounge. With a joint in one hand and her corded phone in another, she says, “You’re an Aries rising, Luna, so that makes sense that you want Mickey to step aside a bit.” She glances up at me and smiles, but continues talking. “That reminds me, have you heard about the billionaire who’s apparently buying up a bunch of real estate here? Heard he was one of those old money men.”
I shake my head, knowing that the source of rumors aren’t just a single person, but rather a handful of women, a garden club perhaps, who look out for each other in ways that are bigger than most could ever understand.
As I turn the corner, the smell of sage burning hits me. Not as hard, however, as that sage burning on a dish next to the sink, where my mother’s hands are submerged in water, and pressed up behind her is my Uncle Tommy. I watch for a few seconds at the way they sway back and forth together—no music—just the sound of each other and whatever they’re quietly exchanging. In another life, I would have never paid attention to it, the way they regarded the other. The years they’ve spent arguing, but always being around. I wonder if it’s an entire love story that I was just too closed off to seeing until now. I’ve experienced enough to know that it’s none of my business unless they want it to be, so I take a few steps back the way I had come and call out, “Mom? You need any help?”
When I turn the corner again, Tommy is leaning against the counter with a beer in hand as my mother says, “I wouldn’t mindit. Thomas thinks opening a beer and watching me wash dishes is a masterclass in helping in the kitchen.”
He sniffs out a laugh, shaking his head. “Lu, a goddamn pleasure, as always.” He moves past me and gives me a wink. “Wyn, I almost forgot. The latest batch needs something—can’t quite put my finger on it, but it’s close. Mind an old man lurking around to spend some time on it?”
I give him a nod. “Always.”
The smile he gives me is one that I won’t ever tire of seeing—a proud fatherlike figure who was over the moon when we told him about our plans for the distillery.
