Thirteen
Viking
I’d paid for expedited shipping, so the rug, Adirondack chairs and tables I bought for the pier arrived quickly.
The deck furniture was from a more exclusive store. They said six to ten weeks.
I made a call to someone who made a call, and it would be there in two weeks.
One of the ways I was lucky to be me.
It was cold. Fall wasn’t putting up much of a battle with winter.
But I also had a scrunchy new outdoor throw that was wrapped around me.
And I was out on the pier, you see, because I couldn’t see the Bohannan compound, but it was reflected in the lake.
Therefore, when the Yukon showed, I was out of my chair and trotting up the wooden path that was part path and part stairs to the house.
I went in the back door.
My team in all their incarnations was right, David Ashbrook was solid.
And I was right, that big, wicker-domed light was phenomenal over the dining room table.
It transformed the space.
David took my closet design and said, “You don’t need to order this. I can do it custom.”
He was starting on the closet Monday.
I was beside myself with glee (about that).
But now?
Now, I put on some oven mitts and got the casserole out of the oven.
I walked it to the car.
The rest of the stuff was already in it.
So I got in myself, pulled out, drove down and parked beside the Yukon.
I grabbed the hot casserole first.
Celeste was sliding open the door before I got there.
She was still wearing a nice black sweater over a slim-fitting, black wool skirt and high boots.
“Set the oven to two hundred, lovely,” I murmured as I squeezed by her. “We’ll keep this warm.”
She dashed to the Viking stove.
I followed her and saw her father enter the room from somewhere else (I had yet to get a tour of the house, though that was not my second time there).
Dark gray turtleneck, black trousers, hair not pulled back in a tail, but he had some product in it that kept it away from his face.
His son came in behind him.
Black sweater, blue button down under it, midnight blue trousers.
Jace.
“You gonna feed us ’til all’s well in the world?” he teased.
“Maybe,” I replied.
“Good, ’cause you cook the bomb.”
Needless to say, I’d discovered my in.
For the past five days, I’d been feeding the Bohannans.
“More in the car?” Bohannan grunted.
I placed the casserole in the oven and straightened, turning to him and nodding.
Celeste made a move.
“Not you. You,” he ordered Jace.
He didn’t need to say that. Jason was already on his way to empty my car.
“On a scale of one to one thousand, how awful was it?” I asked Bohannan.
He leaned his ass against his marble countertop and crossed his arms on his chest.
“Ten thousand.”
Considering we were talking about Alice’s funeral, from which they’d just returned, that was better than I expected.
His gray gaze slid to his daughter. “You got homework to do?”
“Dad,” she complained.
Important to note, Celeste liked to be involved.
In everything.
It was about the fact she clearly worshipped her brothers and had practically deified her father (when he wasn’t punishing her for telling off a teacher or asking her to skedaddle because the adults needed to talk).
But fallout from a mother leaving when you’re eleven and your house being filled with men— you became the woman of it.
She’d become the woman of it.
I supposed that wasn’t a terrible thing. She’d need to take care of her own place one day, with roommates, and by herself, and eventually sharing that task with a partner.
It still filled me with rage.
But suffice it to say, she didn’t like being left out.
And she hated to be treated like a kid.
“Fifteen minutes,” he said.
She gave him a look. Shot me a look. Then she stomped off in that way only teenage girls could do, which was loud, but feminine, and annoying, but cute.
Bohannan took several beats while he listened with Dad Ears.
The door opened and Jace came in with the rest of the stuff.
I knew Celeste was out of ear shot, and Jason (as ever) was not out of the loop, when Bohannan asked, “You offer a reward for info on Alice?”
I stood silent and still.
I then stomped off, as only middle-aged women could do, not loud, not feminine, not cute, but determined.
I stood on their back deck.
I stared at the lake.
I clenched my teeth very hard.
When I understood I wouldn’t scream in frustrated fury, I turned back and re-entered the house and kitchen.
“Feel better?” Jace asked.
“No,” I answered.
“Yeah, Dern has a lasting effect on everyone,” he muttered, lifting up a container I’d bought online yesterday, had overnighted, and filled not two hours before. “What are these?”
“What do they look like?”
“They look like cupcakes.”
“Well deduced, Sherlock.”
“Will you marry me?”
“I’m way too old for you.”
“You have daughters.”
“One’s a lesbian and one’s flying sorties in Korea and falling in love with a fighter pilot named James.”
“First you give a guy cupcakes, then you destroy him.”
“I’m sorry, that’s the way life goes.”
“Are you two done?” Bohannan broke in.
Another important note, Jason and I were bonding.
He was hysterically funny, and I liked people who were hysterically funny.
It was a win-win.
I turned back to his father.
“You seem to have a very diverse and accomplished skillset. Do you know how to commit the perfect murder?” I asked him.
“Yes,” he answered.
That was it.
Further important note, in our late evening conversation five days ago, Cade Bohannan had used up his share of words for the next, I wasn’t sure, but I was guessing probably two to three months.
As you could see, he had a reserve. But he was conserving them.
Jason grinned at me as he walked toward the doors to the deck.
With the cupcakes.
And now an aside, Jason and Jesse were roommates. They lived together in the house up the hill. A house Bohannan had built for them when they were twenty-two and both had shared that they intended to be his apprentices (my take, they didn’t want to be far from their dad and sister after their mom flew the coop, but also, they wanted to follow in their father’s footsteps), and therefore they weren’t leaving home.
Bohannan felt kids needed to get out of the house.
Building one for them next door became the compromise.
David Ashbrook, incidentally, helped them build that house.
“That’s all the cupcakes,” I said to his back.
“I know, thanks,” he returned, and disappeared out the door.
I turned again to his father.
“I half wish Fenn wasn’t falling in love. Jason deserves her particular art of being a pain in the ass. And she deserves his.”