Page 70 of Peaks and Promises

“He has, but he’s been a trouper.”

“Where are you staying?”

“At Mom and Dad’s for now.”

“We’re going to fast-track the new house,” Josiah said. “They’ll move in once it’s ready.”

“Oh, that’s perfect,” she said. “That house has so much potential. I’ll stop by Mom and Dad’s tomorrow and see if she needs anything.”

“As long as Will doesn’t get stuck in another tree,” Luke said.

“True.” With a smile, she met my eyes. “It’s so good to see you.”

“You too.”

She hugged me again, and after saying her goodbyes, she left. I took my seat and cleared my throat, trying to get rid of the lump of emotion.

Zachary took a drink of his beer and set his empty bottle on the table. “You all know what needs to happen now.”

Coming from him, that was ominous.

Josiah narrowed his eyes, Theo and Luke both nodded slowly in agreement, and Garrett leaned back in his chair, as if resigned to the inevitable.

“What?” I asked.

Zachary grinned. “You need to help us with a prank. As a sign of Haven solidarity.”

“A prank?” I asked. For most of my life, our family had been embroiled in a generations-long feud with the Bailey family, mostly carried out in the form of elaborate back-and-forth pranks. “I thought you guys quit doing that after Annika married Levi Bailey.”

“We did,” Luke said. “Mostly. We still get each other once in a while.”

“The more kids everyone has, the less often we do it,” Zachary added. “But I’m not talking about pranking the Baileys. We need to think bigger.”

“What do you mean?” Garrett asked, his voice laced with suspicion.

“We need to prank the whole town.”

Garrett sighed. “Just don’t—”

“I know.” Zachary waved a hand. “Nothing illegal, no property damage. I wouldn’t risk your job for a prank.”

“Then what do you have in mind?” Luke asked.

Zachary’s mischievous smile made him look like a teenager again. He rubbed his hands together. “I’ve wanted to do this one for years.”

CHAPTER 16

Reese

Zachary said he’d need a few days to prepare for the town prank. I didn’t know what to think. He wouldn’t tell me a thing about the plan, and neither would the rest of my brothers. For all I knew, the whole thing was aimed at me. An old-fashioned welcome-back hazing.

In the meantime, I got started helping Dad and Josiah on the house while Summer looked for work.

It took her all of an afternoon to land a job at the Copper Kettle Diner. We didn’t have her new ID yet, but she told the owner, Rob Landon, that she’d lost some things in the move. He was an old friend of the family and didn’t ask questions—just offered to pay her in cash until she could get things sorted.

Mom offered to watch Nate while she worked, and I could bring him to the remodel at least some of the time. He was old enough to learn some basic skills with tools, and my Dad was an expert at keeping kids busy, even on a jobsite.

I still wasn’t sure how to handle the way my family had reacted to my homecoming. I’d expected the worst. And maybe if I’d returned ten years earlier, that’s what would have happened. But we’d all grown up and matured a lot. My brothers had been through their own stuff and come out the other side. They were business owners, husbands, family men. No longer the wild bunch of kids who settled things with childish taunts and sometimes fists.