Buch lesen: «A Harmony Valley Novel»

CHAPTER ONE

“TELL ME THIS isn’t where we’re going to live. It’s too...too...icky.”

“What’s wrong?” Mandy Zapien’s heart had been clinging to a position in her throat for the last hour of the drive to Harmony Valley. It clawed a degree higher as she pushed past her teenage sister to get a good look inside the house they’d left seven years earlier.

Same dark chocolate shag. Same tan-and-navy plaid couch under the front picture window. Same oak side table with Grandma’s sewing basket next to it and the fake ficus in a plastic planter Mandy had Bedazzled when she was ten. Nothing was new or out of place.

Mandy’s heart slid back into her stress-strapped chest.

Icky? It was home and it was vacant. The choke hold on her emotions loosened. “It’s perfect.” Just the way Grandpa, Mandy and Olivia had left it after Grandma died. A testament to the life Grandma and Grandpa had built together before lost jobs had forced them to move. Just the way Grandpa had wanted it to be when he returned after retirement.

“Seriously?” Olivia darted around Mandy, holding her cell phone and panning around the room, videotaping. “I opened the door and there was a nuclear explosion of dust.” Her yellow flip-flops snapped as she made her way into the kitchen. Her pale bare legs looked long because her jean shorts were too short.

Mandy had considered asking Olivia to change this morning and throw away the shorts, or at the very least roll down the thin cuffs, but as the guardian of a seventeen-year-old, she had to pick her battles and not break eggs. Today, moving day, was not the time to upset her little sister.

Mandy moved to the fireplace, pressing her hand against the solid red brick. It was as sturdy as their grandparents had once been. Would they approve of what she was doing? “I have good memories of this place.”

“Really? I don’t remember much about Harmony Valley.” Olivia’s voice bounced off bare walls.

The dust. The emptiness. The relief.

Mandy breathed deeply. Their grandparents may be dead, but they were going to be all right. It didn’t matter if her sister didn’t remember life here. Olivia claimed not to recall the tinsel-covered Christmas tree their grandparents put in the corner every year. Or the photos they’d staged of the girls on the hearth on Christmas morning wearing the annual holiday sweaters Grandma had knitted.

“Hey, the fridge is running.”

“Is it...” Mandy’s heart crept back into her throat. “Is it empty?” Mandy hurried into the kitchen in time to see Olivia pry the sticky refrigerator door open.

“Ew. That’s disgusting.” Olivia stopped filming and covered her nose.

Mandy peeked in. What once might have been a small basket of strawberries (based on the fermented smell) was now a glob of mold. That hadn’t happened overnight. Mandy shut the door, more convinced than ever that no one had lived here recently. More hopeful that no one would visit while they stayed a few weeks.

Olivia and her flip-flops snapped their way down the hall toward the bedrooms. “Hey, I recognize our room.” She disappeared inside. “Why did we leave the bunk beds?”

“Why?” Mandy leaned against the door frame. There were more good memories in this room than bad. “Because I’d slept on top for ten years, and at twenty-five I wasn’t going to do that anymore. And don’t get any ideas.” At thirty-two she was too old to be sleeping on a bunk. “These are out. We’re bringing in your bed and you’re sleeping in here alone.” She’d take her grandparents’ room. “No arguments.”

“It’s freaky how you can read my mind.” But Olivia looked happy, which was a welcome change since they’d had to leave her friends and support group behind.

“Do you remember this?” Mandy closed the door, shutting them inside. They had time for a little reminiscing before the day’s summer heat made it too hot to unload their truck. “This is where Grandma tracked our height.” On the white frame of a tall slim mirror on the back of the door.

The two crowded into the reflection. Mandy, the tallest of the pair, looking too thin and too young with her slight smile and thick dark hair in messy ponytails. Her red tank was as baggy as the circles under her eyes. She’d been worried about her new job, about the move, about the bills, the house, Olivia, about...well...everything.

Olivia’s frame was deceptively solid, as if she’d put on extra adolescent weight preparing for a growth spurt. Her soft brown hair was only an inch long, making her brown eyes and wide mouth seem more prominent.

“Was I ever that short?” Olivia leaned closer to the door, peering at a mark about three feet off the floor.

“You were a petite thing.” Mandy nudged her aside and opened the door, leading the way to the master bedroom. “You should feel lucky you didn’t get my height or my shoe size.”

Neither one of them opened the second bedroom door.

Grandma’s wide bureau sat in the master bedroom in front of a wall with maroon-striped velvet wallpaper. The solid cherry dresser had a white marble top and a large framed mirror attached to the back.

“Grandpa and I couldn’t lift this, so we left it when we moved.” Mandy opened a top drawer. It was filled with her grandmother’s colorful polyester scarves. “He left most of her things.” And then she said with forced casualness, “Do you remember Grandma’s wedding ring?”

“Only because you told me it was made of brass.” Olivia opened the closet. “Her clothes are still here. They smell of lavender.” While Mandy fingered her grandmother’s scarves, Olivia moved clothes across the rod, scraping wire hangers over wood. “There aren’t very many clothes in here.”

Dismay made a special delivery to Mandy’s gut with a one-two punch. “That can’t be.” Grandma had never walked out of a clothing store without a purchase. She’d believed in retail therapy. When they’d moved after her death, Grandma’s closet had been jammed full of pants, blouses and dresses, many with the tags still on.

But the clothes with price tags were gone. Mandy rummaged through the mostly empty bureau. Only the scarf drawer seemed untouched.

An old memory lurched from her past, like a zombie coming to life after a long restless sleep.

Grandma’s voice, pitched low. “If you need money, Teri, ask. Don’t go searching through my drawers.”

“I was just admiring your scarves.” Mandy’s mother slid the drawer closed, looking like a model in a short, clingy black cocktail dress and black heels more appropriate for a hotel bar than Harmony Valley. “They’re so pretty.”

Neither one of them acknowledged eight-year-old Mandy lingering in the hallway, eavesdropping as she held on to the hope that Mom wasn’t going to leave again.

“Save that tone for your father. You hate those scarves.” Her grandmother’s voice wasn’t sweet. It didn’t comfort, not the way it did when she talked to Mandy. “Those scarves remind you of my cancer. They taunt you because I didn’t die.”

Mandy had stumbled back in the hallway and then ran into her room. It wasn’t until the door was closed and she’d burrowed under the covers that she’d realized her mother was laughing.

“Do you think...?” Olivia came to stand near Mandy, unable to complete her question.

It didn’t matter. Mandy knew what her sister had been thinking. They both stared at the closed door across the hall. Grandpa had left the house to their mother, a woman who didn’t value roots or generosity or family. “If Mom stayed here, it was a long time ago.” The dust. The strawberries in the fridge. The drawer full of untouched scarves. “You know how Mom is. She comes for a very brief time and then goes away for a lot longer.”

Still, neither one of them moved toward their mother’s room. Neither one seemed to want to know how long it’d been since Teri Zapien had been here.

“I want to see her.” Olivia’s words sounded like they came from a young girl lost on a once-familiar playground.

“She might show up.” Mandy hoped not.

Their mother was no good at keeping secrets, especially ones that would hurt Olivia.

* * *

“KITTENS?” CAPTAIN BEN LIBBY drove Harmony Valley’s fire truck around the corner toward the crowded town square. “We’re taking the engine out for the first time for kittens?”

“It’s not just kittens.” From the passenger seat, his father, Fire Chief Keith Libby, pointed to the large, sweeping oak tree in the middle of the square and the gathering crowd. “There’s a boy up there, too.”

Sure enough. There was a flash of red hair and knobby knees between the branches.

Dad’s eyesight was still sharp even if the rest of his body wasn’t in its prime.

“Kids seldom need rescuing from trees.” Ben’s godchild came to mind. Seven-year-old stoic Hannah would never find herself in such a predicament.

Dad scoffed. “Need I remind you of a boy who fell out of a tree and broke both wrists?”

“I’d rather you didn’t.” Ten-year-old Ben had been pretending to battle a blazing high-rise. That’s what third-generation firefighters in the making did—pretend to battle blazes. Unfortunately, his feet had tangled in the garden hose and ladder rungs, sending him tumbling to the ground. He’d had a healthy dislike of ladders ever since.

“Give Harmony Valley a chance, son.” Dad laid his hand on Ben’s shoulder. “I know you didn’t grow up here like I did, but I didn’t ask you to come with me.”

“No. That request came from Mom.”

Decades of sleep-depriving forty-eight-hour shifts and the inhalation of too much toxic smoke in the busy Oakland, California, fire department had taken their toll on his father. Dad’s weakened heart and lungs made the fifty-five-year-old move like the octogenarians who made up the majority of Harmony Valley’s population. Breathing had become a daily struggle. He’d be deadweight on a fire crew in a busy fire station, a danger to himself, those under his command and those in need of rescue. Ben had put his firefighting career on hold to help his father reopen the rural fire department for the ten months his old man had left until retirement. Reaching full retirement meant a 25 percent bigger stipend each month.

No. Dad hadn’t asked. Vanessa Libby had. And despite his father missing out on much of Ben’s childhood to pursue a career in fire, Ben couldn’t live with himself if he wasn’t here to watch over him. So he’d quit his job in the Oakland Fire Department, too, purposefully putting his career on hold.

“Let’s finish this quick and move on to fire inspections,” Ben said. There hadn’t been any fires in Harmony Valley in more than five years, and Ben wanted to keep it that way. He pulled to the curb and put the truck in Park. The engine shook, shuddered and shot out a gasping blast of black smoke. Not exactly the community entrance Ben had hoped for. “I guess we need one more tune-up.”

“Deploy the ladder,” Ben’s dad said in his best I’m-in-charge voice.

“Deploy the...” This was the fire truck’s maiden voyage after fifteen years in storage. They’d barely gotten the engine running and hadn’t had a chance to check the truck’s hydraulics before receiving this call. “Are you going in the bucket?”

“I will. If you don’t have the stomach for it.” A challenge if there ever was one.

“Stay right here.” Ben had a take-charge voice of his own. There was no chance he was allowing Dad to test the ladder. What if he couldn’t catch his breath? What if he got light-headed and tumbled to the ground? What if the town realized Keith’s health wasn’t 100 percent and that Ben was covering for him?

This last was almost as imperative as keeping Dad safe. If Ben’s complicity was exposed, he’d never work as a firefighter again.

Ben hopped out of the truck and headed toward the oak tree. He’d heard there was a farmers market today, but the farm part was hard to see for all the other offerings—quilts, afghans, paintings, metal sculpture. He crossed onto the grass, working his way through a maze of folding tables and elderly residents. Sprinkled through the crowd were a few babies, small children and people who looked to be about his age—early thirties.

More than a decade ago, the grain mill—once the largest employer in town—had exploded and most people in the workforce had moved away, leaving the town more like a retirement community. But now there was a new employer in Harmony Valley, a winery. And people of working age were returning to town, hence the two job openings for full-time firemen.

It was a clear day, and the summer sun beat down on Ben’s shoulders. Given the call had come with the detail that felines were at risk, he hadn’t put on his turnout gear or helmet.

“Look at that! A tall man in uniform.” An elderly woman with short, purplish-gray curls waved at Ben as if he was a returning veteran in a homecoming parade. She stood out from the crowd in her Easter-egg pink tracksuit. “A fireman! And a handsome fireman to boot.”

If there was a bright spot to working in Harmony Valley, it was that its residents were outgoing and welcoming. And yet, that little bright spot couldn’t make up for the fact that their first few calls weren’t exactly what Ben would classify as emergencies—lost house keys, a stuck spigot, a runaway dog. “Who called the fire department?”

“I did.” The mayor separated himself from the crowd. He had a thin face made thinner by a long gray ponytail. The yellow-and-black tie-dyed T-shirt he wore over black khaki shorts made him look like an aging psychedelic bee. “Those kittens have been up there for a good thirty minutes. Breaks my heart.” He leaned in closer to Ben and said in a low voice, “And I thought it’d be the perfect time to show the town we have emergency services again after so long going without.” The mayor craned his neck to see around Ben. “Where’s the chief?”

The truth pressed in on Ben. He couldn’t quite meet the mayor’s gaze. “He’s waiting on my assessment of the scene.”

Ben’s grandfather stood beneath the oak tree next to a folding table stacked with cans of cat food.

“Granddad.” Ben gave the empty cage near his grandfather a disapproving look.

“It’s not my fault.” Granddad brushed white cat hair from his navy T-shirt and looked like he wanted to slink away with his empty cat cage. Felix Libby was the retired fire chief and just as thickly muscled as he’d been when he was active. Now he ran a feline rescue. “Truman wanted a kitten and he got the cage open before I could stop him.”

There were two furry miscreants in the tree with the kid. One was black with white paws. The other was white with a black mask. They mewed from positions too far out on a branch to support a little boy and too far within the canopy for the ladder and bucket to be of any use.

“Granddad,” Ben said again.

“It’s not my fault,” the retired fireman repeated.

Truman, aka the ginger-haired boy in the tree, grinned down at Ben in a way that made it hard to be annoyed at him. “Whichever kitten comes to me first is the one going home with me.” His expression turned earnest. “Here, kitty-cat. Here, boy.”

“Those kittens are girls,” said a small, solemn voice at Ben’s side.

Ben smiled down at his godchild. Her fine blond hair was windblown, and the ankles of her socks were dirt-rimmed. “What are you doing here, Han?”

Hannah didn’t take her bespectacled blue eyes from the felines in the tree. “Granny Vanessa was cleaning, so I went for a bike ride.”

“Please tell me you left Granny a note.” Or Ben’s mother was going to be calling him any minute, frantic with worry over where her small charge had gone to this time.

“Tru, come down.” A petite redhead used her mom-voice and pointed to the ground.

Several spectators chuckled.

“But, Mom.” Truman’s wide grin was on a first-name basis with mischief. “I don’t have a kitten yet.”

“Truman...” Immune to the boy’s charm, his mother was cranking up for a good lecture.

Ben tuned her out. In his experience, one of the two treed parties—kid or kittens—needed to come down to entice the other to the ground. Seeing as how Truman wasn’t budging, that left two felines to convince.

Hannah had come to the same conclusion. She pushed her glasses firmly in place, opened a can of cat food on Granddad’s table and called, “Here, kitty-kitty-kitty.”

Two small noses twitched. Two furry tails swished. Two pairs of innocent green eyes turned calculating.

“We need to ensure capture.” Ben lowered the empty cage to the ground, put the can of food Hannah had opened inside, and backed away.

“Kitty-kitty-kitty,” Hannah crooned.

The kittens leaped from one branch to the next, bounced to the ground and raced to the food. Once they were inside, Hannah closed the door.

The crowd applauded.

“Way to go, peanut.” Ben knelt and gave Hannah a quick hug.

Hannah didn’t so much as crack a smile. She was a quiet child by nature, but since her mother had died three months ago and Ben had become the temporary guardian to his firefighting coworker’s child, her smile had been as AWOL as the man listed as father on her birth certificate. He hoped she’d smile freely when he found the man. He hoped by the time his own father retired in nine months that Hannah would be settled with her biological dad and Ben would be free to pursue a career in fire investigation.

“Well, now I don’t know which one to pick.” Truman reclined on his stomach on the thick branch, arms and legs hanging down as if he was a lion readying for a nap. “We’ll have to take both.”

Before Granddad could do more than perk up his silver eyebrows in glee, Truman’s mother put the kibosh on that idea. “I don’t think Ghost would appreciate you bringing home one kitten, let alone two. Old cats don’t like to share their turf with other cats. Time to come down.”

“Okay.” Truman sounded disappointed, but he did as his mother asked. And he did a good job of it, too, moving quickly and with confidence.

Until his sneaker slipped and he fell, tumbling through the air in a slow-motion cartwheel that sent the crowd gasping.

Ben was ready. Arms outstretched, he was in the perfect position to catch the boy.

And a sneaker to the mouth.