“You have a Four?” Ian and Alan shared a what-the-fuck eyebrow raise.
“Hey, don’t mock.” She started tossing things back into her bag. Notepad. Six pens. Three ChapSticks. Hand sanitizer. So many gum wrappers. “It works great. I also have a regular Crock-Pot, a top-loading washer, and the first-generation Kindle Paperwhite. I like what I like.”
“Sorry,” Alan said with a cough that sounded a lot like he was trying to cover up a laugh. “I only have the lightning chargers. I’ll ask around. Someone might have one in a drawer somewhere, but we’re running on a skeleton crew with the storm and all.”
Mrs. Morgan—still giving him the hey-baby eye—sat down across from him with a cup of coffee, steam rising up from the mug. Her husband took the seat next to her, ignoring the mug in his hands in favor of glaring at Ian and Shelby.
“Well, mine should have enough power soon to show the email,” he said, turning his attention to Alan and not his way-too-intense-for-different-reasons parents. “Lucy sent us the same one for Six Melchers Way.”
“Six?” Mr. Morgan asked.
Shelby nodded. “Yeah.”
“Our family cabin is number nine,” Mrs. Morgan said before taking a sip of her coffee.
“No, I definitely saw the sign at the end of the drive even in the snow.” It had been dark and the wind had picked up, but there had been no missing the weathered sign with the big wooden number hanging from it. “It said six.”
“Albert,” Mrs. Morgan said, her lips flattening into a tight line. “You didn’t really fix it, did you? I have asked and asked and you told me you’d taken care of it.”
A teenage girl in a Buffly Sheriff’s Office volunteer shirt came in then, delivering a plate of doughnuts. Ian snagged one with sprinkles while Shelby got the double chocolate. None of the Morgans took one. They were all too caught up in what sounded like an argument that had been raging for years.
“I hooked it up to the old nail. Bree was with me when I did it,” the older man said, nodding at the volunteer. “Sure, it was wobbly, but it worked.”
“Yeah, right up until a storm started to blow in,” Shelby said, earning a thank-you-very-much nod of agreement from Mrs. Morgan. “So if you’re number nine, then where is number six?”
“That was the old Wilkes place,” Alan said, finally reaching for a doughnut. “I think their kids did put it on the the rental listings. They don’t have a sign, though, and if you came through when it was snowing, their drive is easy to miss. Even locals miss it sometimes.”
Ian glanced over at Shelby, expecting to see her at least shaking her head in amazement at everything that had happened to get them both at the same cabin before the storm. But instead of relaxed and amused, she was drawn up tight, her fingers doing that nervous drumming thing on her thigh as she chewed her bottom lip. He reached for her hand again, like he had in the truck, but this time she slipped free of his grasp.
He was trying to process the change when Mr. Morgan tapped the table in front of Ian.
“That cleared that up,” the older man said. “But if you two weren’t crashing our cabin during the weekends, then who was?”
“Someone was at your place, Gramps?” The girl in the volunteer shirt nearly stuffed a whole doughnut in her mouth but kept talking around it. “That’s just wild. What makes you think someone was there? I mean, it’s not like you two go up in the winter.”
All the Morgans sitting at the table turned and put the teen in their view.
“Bree,” Alan said. “What do you know?”
The girl shrank down in her chair, swallowed the doughnut, and pulled up the round collar of her T-shirt over her mouth. “Nothing.”
“Bree Elizabeth Morgan,” Mrs. Morgan said in the type of voice that no one with any sense would argue with. “You better spill it, young lady.”
“We only went up there a couple of times. I used the hidden key Grandpa showed me when we fixed the sign and then just left it unlocked.” It came out as a wail, a pitiful teenage I’ve-been-caught wail. “It was only a small group of us, but then a bunch of people heard and half of my class was there. It was like one of those movies, but I swear no one threw up on the couch and the bunny statue got knocked over by accident before they found the key to the liquor cabinet.”
“Young lady, we are going to go have a chat with your parents. Let’s go.” Mrs. Morgan’s chair squeaked on the linoleum floor when she pushed it back and stood, pointing her granddaughter to the door. “I’m so sorry about the confusion—and the video.”
“You’ve got to delete it and hand over this copy,” Ian said.
She nodded in agreement and then had the grace to look shame-faced as she and her husband led their wayward granddaughter out of the room, each of them talking over the other with the girl’s plaintive whining ribboning through it. Yeah, Ian had been there. Neither of his parents had put up with shit, but he’d tried his best anyway. It was his mom who usually caught him and set him straight, especially since his dad spent most of Ian’s childhood on the road.
Yeah, having a second family and banging whichever other puck bunnies he came across.
His good mood disappeared and before he’d exhaled, he was feeling just as salty as Shelby was looking sitting next to him. And what was that all about? They’d gone to bed happy, and then everything had gone to shit. It didn’t make a damn bit of sense, but then again, when did anything involving his life ever?
“My
