boy looked relieved, hopeful. “You sure? I wouldn’t bother nothing.”
“Drink up, and let’s get you upstairs.”
Brody took a long swig and drained the cup, handed it off to Carrie. “Thank you. You make delicious cocoa.”
Carrie touched his wet hair. She was, Hayden noticed, a toucher. “You’re welcome.”
“Ready?”
The boy nodded, and Hayden led the way up the stairs, whispering, “Watch the third step. It creaks.”
With a solemn nod, Brody imitated Hayden’s path and nothing squeaked.
Inside the bright and pretty Mulberry Room, Brody stood awkward and silent while Hayden dug out a pair of drawstring sweats and a T-shirt. The air was thick and humid from the damp night and a wet boy who smelled of river and woods.
“They’ll be too big, but they’re dry.” He motioned toward the bathroom. “In there. You can grab a hot shower if you want to.”
“I’m pretty tired.”
“I bet you are. Change, then, while I gather my work gear.”
Hayden needed less than a minute to organize his laptop, charger and notebook. For good measure, he added the extra blanket from the closet and pocketed his wallet. Sometimes a kid did things out of desperation.
Brody reappeared, a waif in oversize clothes, the gray sweats rolled up at the ankle and the shirt hanging below his hips. He’d scrubbed at his hair with a towel and it stuck out like porcupine quills. He held the wet clothes in his hands. “Where should I put these?”
“I’ll take them. They’ll have a dryer.” Carrie would know, and he hoped she hadn’t gone to bed. She was apparently a friend of the innkeeper and knew her way around the inn.
Hayden added the jeans and shirt to the items he’d take downstairs, then flipped back the mulberry-print comforter and gestured. The boy climbed in, his cold feet brushing Hayden’s hand. Tucking in a kid brought an odd sensation, and he had a sudden gray-edged memory of his father, the scent and soot of the mines imprinted in his pores, snugging a blanket beneath Hayden’s chin.
Brody’s pale fingers gripped the edge of the cover. His eyes drooped and he sighed, a pitiful sound of relief and exhaustion.
Hayden stepped back to leave.
“Mister?”
“Yes?”
“Thanks.” Brody’s lips barely moved as his eyelids fluttered shut.
Full of a pity he didn’t want to feel, Hayden waited less than a minute before the skinny chest rose and fell in rhythmic sleep. Softly he murmured, “Good night, Brody.” What was left of it.
He clicked the switch and sent the room into darkness lit only by the flicker of leftover lightning. So much for writing during the storm. The best part was nearly gone.
Skirting the third step, he made his way back to the kitchen, where Carrie cleaned up the evidence of the night’s activities.
When he entered the room, she paused, closed Oreo package in hand, to nod at Brody’s wet garments. “Let me have those.”
Hayden handed over the soggy clothes and followed Carrie down a short hall behind the kitchen to a laundry room.
“That was nice of you,” she said.
“What else was I going to do? Toss the kid back out in the storm?”
“I could have woke up Julia and gotten the key to a vacant room.”
He shrugged. “No need. I’m up anyway.”
“Right.” She tossed the clothes into the dryer, added a softener sheet, clicked the door shut and hit a button that set the tumbler into humming motion and the warm humid smell of peaches swirling about the space. “So you can kill people.”
“Uh-huh.” Starting with the parents of a certain half-drowned boy, he thought with grim satisfaction.
Carrie headed back to the kitchen to finish the cleanup. A neat freak with the neurotic need to be cleaner than his boyhood, Hayden joined in.
“I know that boy,” Carrie said as she sponged down the countertop. “He comes in the library nearly every day after school for our tutoring program.”
“Why didn’t you say something?”
She shrugged. “He probably doesn’t know who I am. Kids don’t notice librarians.”
He did. “What do you know about him?”
“He hangs out and plays on the computers, reads some but rarely checks out a book. He likes mysteries and adventure.” She flashed the charming dimple. “Librarians always notice reading preference. He doesn’t say much or bother anyone, but he generally stays awhile, as if he has no place else to be. We get our share of those at the library.”
“Do you know his parents?”
“He lives with his father. No mother in the picture. Brody’s one of the street kids around Honey Ridge. I don’t believe for one minute that he was lost.”
Hayden filled a coffee carafe and started another pot. “That was my take, as well. His father isn’t out of town, either.”
“Why would he lie about a thing like that? If his dad is at home, why didn’t he let us call him?”
There were plenty of reasons, and Hayden, unfortunately, knew too many of them.
* * *
Long after Carrie trudged up the stairs in hopes of a few hours’ sleep, Hayden contemplated the night’s events and stared at a blank word processor. Fueled by the cookies and strong coffee, his mind whirled, though not in the direction he’d hoped. Carrie, Brody and Dora Lee wouldn’t leave him alone.
He stretched, rolled his neck and roamed the parlor.
Finally, frustrated by the lack of progress, he grabbed the blanket and a throw pillow and flopped down on a curved, skinny Victorian sofa clearly not intended for napping. Especially by a man with long legs.
After fifteen minutes of misery, he rolled off onto the area rug, taking the pillow and cover with him. Much better.
The pillow smelled of peaches and the floor of wood polish, though a dark stain spread from the rug to the fireplace. The wood was old, likely original to the house, but he wondered why this section hadn’t been replaced.
He sifted through the memories of the day, tossed out the conversation with his mother, which was guaranteed to keep him awake and suffering from dyspepsia, and focused on the fascinating old house.
His fingers grazed the stain, interestingly cool to the touch. With a weary sigh, he closed his eyes and let himself feel the memories clinging to the fireplace and the floor, searching for that one kernel
