on her mouth run in here!” Grace started to giggle. The sound made Kelli’s heart swell. “I wonder who that could be!” She went to the curtains, ready to tickle the culprit, when the little girl jumped out on her own.
“Got you,” she yelled. When Grace was excited like this, Kelli couldn’t deny the resemblance between them. Although Grace’s hair was a shade or two darker, their ever-changing green eyes were almost identical. Her facial features, however, all belonged to her father.
“You’re the best hide-and-seeker I think I’ve ever played with,” Kelli said, scooping up the toddler. She was about to unleash another round of tickles when the doorbell chimed. It echoed through the mostly packed up house.
“Me, me,” Grace yelled, already trying to wiggle out of her arms and race to answer the door.
“Not without me,” Kelli answered. She moved Grace to her hip and took a moment to marvel at how big she was getting. A year and seven months, almost to the day.
The past two years had flown by and yet, in some ways, Kelli seemed painfully stuck. As she moved down the hallway to the front of the house, she tried to commit to memory how the wood floor felt beneath her bare feet. She wondered what the next year would bring after all of the changes Grace and she were about to make.
A familiar face was bobbing in front of the windows in the front door, inciting a new excitement in Grace. Kelli put her down with a laugh and opened the door for the godmother of her child.
“You’re late,” Kelli teased Lynn Bradley. The short woman with black hair wore a pair of worn overalls with a long-sleeved yellow flannel shirt that contrasted with her dark skin. Kelli raised her eyebrow at the choice of wardrobe but didn’t say anything. Lynn had been a bit eclectic ever since they were children.
“Listen, it’s not my fault that you already packed up your TV, forcing me to choose between the end of You’ve Got Mail and the care of your child.” The twenty-nine-year-old gave her best friend a smirk before bending down and enveloping Grace in a hug. “My, how you’ve grown! Look at you! Gosh, how old are you now? Three? Five?”
Grace put her hands on her hips and gave Lynn a critical eye. She held up one finger. “One!”
“That’s my girl,” Lynn approved. She mussed Grace’s hair, and the three of them went inside.
“You were here yesterday, you know,” Kelli said as they went into the living room. Lynn laughed.
“That doesn’t discount the fact that that kid of yours is growing like crazy! She’s going to be taller than me before you know it! She’s not two yet and look at her!”
Grace, suddenly uninterested in their conversation, went to her makeshift play area in the corner. It looked like a graveyard for plastic dinosaurs, stuffed animals and Legos.
“I know,” Kelli agreed with a smile. It didn’t last long. Lynn had come over to help pack up the one room Kelli couldn’t get through on her own.
Attached to the living room by a set of French double doors was Victor’s home office. It was a small room but had managed to collect a lot of things in the six years he had lived in the house. Just looking into the room had sent Kelli into tears for the first six months after the fire. Then, slowly, she had been able to bear the sight of the room Victor had spent the most time in. Kelli supposed Grace had helped her with that. She had to stay strong for their child, who would never know her father.
Lynn’s expression softened, but she didn’t comment. Aside from Grace, Lynn had been the most constant part of her world during the past two years.
“Okay, well, let’s get started.” Kelli motioned to the bookcase. “You empty that and I’ll start with the desk.”
“Got yah, Boss.” Lynn pulled the plastic tub over to the small bookshelf. Although there was a library in the house, the office shelves were filled with research materials collected over Victor’s nine-year career as a journalist. Her husband had covered an array of subjects, freelancing from home, and working for newspapers and magazines around the nation. His next goal had been to work internationally, but then they had found out about the pregnancy. Victor had decided his family was more important than work.
Kelli sat down in the office chair, sadness in her heart.
Her thoughts slid back to the night at the cabin.
Sometimes she could still feel the heat of the fire. Smell the smoke in the air. Feel the cold of the water as they waited for help to arrive. The boy behind the fire had been caught, sure, but that didn’t make the memories of what had happened any more bearable.
She took a breath. She didn’t need to remember that night now.
Ten minutes into packing away the office’s contents, Kelli found something she hadn’t known existed.
“Hey, look at this.”
The middle side drawer of the desk had stuck when she tried to open it. She pulled too hard, and the entire drawer slid out. Along with it came a small notebook that had been taped to the bottom of the drawer above it.
“What is it?” Lynn asked, walking over.
“I don’t know. It was hidden.”
The notebook wasn’t labeled, but it was filled with Victor’s pristine handwriting.
“It looks like work notes,” Kelli observed. She flipped through it, scanning as she went. “I recognize some of these names...but I thought all of his notes were—” She cut herself off and rephrased. “He took them to the cabin with us. I didn’t know he had kept notes here.”
Lynn gave her privacy as she thumbed to the last few pages. Possibly the last notes Victor had ever taken. Kelli shook her head. She didn’t need to travel down that road today.
“Wait.” Her eyes stopped on a passage in neat, tiny writing. “This doesn’t make sense.”
Or maybe it did.
* * *
“WE NEED TO TALK.”
Kelli’s back was ramrod straight against the office chair. It wasn’t made to be comfortable—those who sat across from Dennis Crawford, retired editor of the national online publication known as the Scale, didn’t usually intend to keep his company long. Especially during house calls like this. She suspected that he had let her in only because of Victor. Dennis and he hadn’t been friends, but they’d worked together on more than one occasion.
Including the last story of Victor’s life.
“I suspected, considering I haven’t seen you since—” He cleared his throat, trying to avoid the fact that their last meeting had been when her husband had been lowered into the ground. Kelli shifted in her seat. “How have you been?” he asked instead.
“Good. Grace is keeping me busy, but I’m sure that won’t change for another seventeen years or so.”
Dennis, an unmarried man with no children of his own, smiled politely. Victor hadn’t told her the man’s age, but she placed him in his early forties. Kelli couldn’t tell if he was genuinely kind, but she could see he carried a lot of self-pride. Although gray was peppered into his black
