Sugar Pine Trail

Though she might not ever have proof, Julia sensed that while their mother had been missing for less than a week, the older boy had been watching out for his brother far longer than that.

“Here’s the thing,” she went on. “You’re only eight years old. It shouldn’t be your job to make sandwiches and tuck him in and help him get ready for school. Right now your job is to go to school and play with your friends and have fun being eight years old.”

He opened his mouth to answer but apparently couldn’t think of anything to say, because he clamped his jaws closed again and looked down at the ground.

“If you and Davy want to stick together, you need to give Julia a chance,” Wynona said.

“I want to go home,” Clint muttered.

“That’s not an option right now,” Wyn said gently. “You understand that, don’t you?”

Clinton crossed his arms across his chest and stuck out his chin, plainly not happy with that answer.

Wyn’s phone rang, and she glanced down at the caller ID with a harried expression. “This day just won’t stop. I have to take this. I’m sorry.”

“No problem,” Julia said. “You can go in the kitchen if you need quiet.”

When Wyn hurried away, she turned to the boys with a bright smile. “Do you want to see the room where you’ll be staying?”

Davy nodded, but Clint just looked stone-faced. She decided to ignore him for now and led the way to the biggest bedroom, the one her parents had used.

It had been empty since her mother had went into the nursing home. In the few hours since she spoke with Wyn, Julia had scrambled to figure out bedding for them. She had put out a call to the Haven Point Helping Hands, and Megan Hamilton had offered a bunk bed she had bought for one of the rooms at the Haven Point Inn but ended up not using. Her maintenance guy had dropped it off but had been on his way to visit family out of state and hadn’t had time to set it up for her.

“Tonight, you guys might be sleeping on mattresses on the floor, until we can put together the beds for you.”

“Like camping!” Davy said.

“Exactly,” she said with a smile. “But warm and without the bugs, I promise. You can leave your things in here. There are two dressers. You can decide which one each of you would like. I have two guest rooms down here, but I thought you would like to be together. If you’d each rather have your own room, we can do that, too. Whatever you’d like.”

“We’d like to go home,” Clint said. “We want our own beds and our own dressers and stuff.”

“For the next few weeks, I hope you can consider this your home.”

“We won’t,” Clinton snapped.

“Nope,” Davy echoed.

She decided to ignore their objections for now. “I’m afraid I don’t have any boy comforters since no boys have lived here in many years, since my father was little, but I tried to find a few quilts that might work for now. Maybe this weekend we can have the time to go to the store and pick up something you both like.”

“We won’t like anything you pick,” Clint said, stubbornly determined to oppose anything she said.

“Nope,” Davy said, crossing his arms just like his brother.

She sighed. It was going to be a long few weeks if she couldn’t break through this antagonism.

“We’ll all have to make the best of the situation,” she said calmly, leading the way back to the living room as Wyn wrapped up her phone call and joined them, expression grave.

“I don’t want to just drop them off and run, but I have to, uh, drop them off and run,” Wynona said. “I’ve got another emergency. It’s that time of year.”

“Don’t worry. We’ll be fine.”

If she said that enough times, Julia just might begin to believe it.

“I’ll call you later to see if you need anything,” Wyn said.

“Thanks.”

“Thank you. It’s a good thing you’re doing here, Jules.”

She had to hope she wasn’t making a terrible mistake.

“Davy, Clinton, it’s been a pleasure getting to know you the last few days,” Wyn said. “I’m so happy you will have the chance to stay together, as you wanted. Julia’s one of my favorite people, and I’m sure the three of you will get along just great.”

Neither of the boys said anything, just continued scowling.

Wyn didn’t appear to let it bother her. She simply smiled at them both and headed for the door. “I’ll definitely call you Friday, but don’t hesitate to contact me before that if you need anything. Happy Thanksgiving!”

Thanksgiving. Oh, fiddle. Julia closed her eyes. That had totally slipped her mind in the last few hours. She hadn’t planned on cooking a Thanksgiving dinner. And she had promised Muriel Randall she would pick her up to go together and help out at the nursing home in Shelter Springs. She would just have to figure something out.

Something told her she would be saying that a great deal while the boys were here.

“Happy Thanksgiving,” she said, giving Wyn a hug.

“Call me if you run into any problems.”

As Wyn walked out into the lightly falling snow, Julia couldn’t shake the feeling it wasn’t so much a matter of “if” they would run into problems but “how many.”

CHAPTER SEVEN (#u87ed92cc-3926-5cf6-af7f-a8b2ba8b44a8)

WHAT THE HELL was going on downstairs?

Jamie looked down at the floorboards as another round of wails worked its way up.

Someone down there was not happy—which was a bit of an understatement. The wailing had been nonstop for the half hour he had been home, echoing through the house as if two or three of Julia Winston’s cats were in labor.

Whatever was happening on the floor below, he couldn’t hear any words, only the occasional high-pitched shouting, slamming doors and those piercing cries, with the occasional cat yowl thrown in for fun.

So much for renting a quiet apartment with a reserved, well-behaved librarian for a landlady.

Should he go down and see if she needed help with something?

The night before, she hadn’t seemed all that grateful for his help with the water heater. Julia Winston struck him as someone used to solving her own problems, mechanical problems notwithstanding.

He supposed he could put on some noise-canceling headphones. A little head-banging rock would probably drown out the commotion. On the other hand, he couldn’t shake the suspicion that something might be seriously wrong, that Julia Winston possibly could need his help.

It was none of his business, Jamie tried to remind himself. She could carry on with all kinds of caterwauling creatures if that was her thing. It was her house, after all.

What if she was hurt?