Page 18 of Reckoning

Curly’s eyes widened. “He’s my sister’s husband.”

“Reggie put something in your daddy’s nighttime cocoa. Reggie did a bad thing to your daddy for money. That’s all I saw.”

Curly staggered backward against the door. “Oh lord…oh lord.”

Abel steadied his boss until he found his footing. “First things first, Curly. Under no circumstances do you accuse Reggie. Don’t confront him. Don’t point a finger. Just tell the doctor that you need a confirmed cause of death from an autopsy for his life insurance policy. Ask the coroner to check for any kind of poison or illegal substances in his body. If he was poisoned, it will tell. Retrieve the will and take it straight to the lawyer’s office. The rest will play out as it’s meant to be. Say nothing about coming here. You keep my son out of this, understand?”

“Absolutely. I will take this to my grave,” Curly said, and then glanced at the boy again. “Tate, what a blessing you are to this world. Thank you.” Then he shook Abel’s hand. “Thank you for allowing your son to help. Consider yourself on a little vacation with pay until all the shouting is over, okay?”

Abel nodded, then watched as Curly made a run for his truck. He got through the blowing snow with some difficulty, then backed up and drove away. When Abel turned around, he noticed Tate was gone, and then he heard him talking and laughing with Lilith and thought, thank God, he sheds what he knows like water off a duck’s back.

Before the day got any older, his parents presented Tate with an adult-size sled. A boy was never too old to slide down a snowy hill on a sled.

Tate was elated. “Best birthday ever! Thanks, Mom and Dad! As soon as it quits snowing, I’m gonna try it out!”

* * *

Curly found the will where Tate Bandy said it would be and took it straight to Rocky Morris’s law office. Then he went to the coroner and told him the story Abel had suggested about needing autopsy confirmation for insurance purposes.

Sure enough, instead of a heart attack, the cause of death was changed to poisoning. Once the poison was identified, the police searched the homes of each of the old man’s six children and found a bottle of what had killed their father in a gardening shed on Reggie Landers’s property.

Reggie confessed.

His wife was horrified that her husband had murdered her father. Embarrassed and ashamed of what he’d done, she promptly divorced him and moved away.

The siblings’ fight over property ended, and Curly kept his promise. He never breathed a word of having sought the help of Abel Bandy’s son.

* * *

Tate’s life still revolved around home and Briar. She had always been his best friend, but in his heart, their friendship had turned into something more. He wanted her to see him as a boyfriend and a friend, but he was unsure of what to do with the changing emotions for fear it would destroy their relationship as it was, and so he let it slide until the end of their junior year in high school. By then, he was so madly in love with his best friend that he didn’t know what to do with his emotions.

Chapter 4

Tate woke up on the morning of the Fourth of July with a knowing. Briar loved him like he loved her. He’d seen it as he was waking up, right before he opened his eyes. It was the biggest relief of his young life, but to move forward, one of them had to admit it. And when it came to Briar, Tate would have moved mountains for her, so admitting to his feelings should have been easy.

And yet it wasn’t that simple.

Saying this aloud was an unknown. It was going to shift everything they’d accepted of each other for all these years. Like stepping into adult shoes without knowing if they would fit. What he did know was that she would be wearing purple shorts and a lavender-colored T-shirt today, and they’d already made plans to meet at the circle bench beneath the spreading oak at the far end of the park.

They’d long since outgrown participating in the turtle race and the sack races, but the ambiance of the celebration was part of the community’s tradition, and nobody outgrew hot dogs and cherry slushies.

He showered and shaved, then hurried through breakfast.

Lilith winked at Abel as they watched him shoveling food in his mouth like he hadn’t eaten in a week.

“Son,” Abel said.

Tate paused and glanced up. “What?”

“Are you chewing all that, or is it going down whole?”

Tate grinned. “Probably a little of both. Message received.”

“What’s on your agenda today?” Lilith asked.

“Briar and the Fourth of July,” he said. “Are you and Dad going to the park?”

Lilith rolled her eyes. “You already know the answer to that. We can watch fireworks from the front porch if we get to feeling patriotic. Otherwise, I’m just looking forward to spending the day with my guy.”