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Bernie snorted. “I imagine he did.”

“Bernard, we don’t need you starting in on that poor boy,” Mora admonished.

I looked at Bernie and raised my eyebrow. His glance back at me made it clear that only Mora was allowed to call him Bernard. I gave him a chin tilt, and went back to my loaded baked potato.

“I hear from Beau every so often. We don’t have a set time or anything,” Bernie said after he finished his salad.

“More lemonade?” Mora asked.

“How about a beer? Would you like one?” Bernie asked me.

I nodded.

“I can⁠—”

“Sit down.” Bernie smiled as he put his hand on Mora’s shoulder. “Do you want more lemonade, Darlin’?”

“Yes please.”

“Coming right up.”

Mora looked at me closely. “You are the spitting image of your brother.”

“Are you on the FaceTime calls?”

“I’ve been on two. I taught him when he was younger. He was always such a quiet and somber boy. He only had two friends. I would specifically create group projects so that Beau would have to interact with more than his two friends, but he never really opened up. He always ended up the team leader, and made sure the others did their part, but he was never social.”

“Was that because of his moth— I mean, our mother?”

“I think it was partly because of his mother, but he was also missing you.”

She noticed my frown.

“What is it, Kai?”

“I’m just wondering why he remembered me and I didn’t remember him. That doesn’t make any sense.”

“You’ve got to remember, it was a big deal when Arthur kidnapped you. The police were at your house, there were neighbors bringing meals and coming in to babysit Grady and support Rose, because she broke down. It made quite an impact on little Grady. What’s more, he was still injured from the beating he’d received from Arthur, so he needed extra care. All of that had to have made an impression.”

“Are you telling Kai about when he was kidnapped?” Bernie asked as he set down the lemonade pitcher in front of her and handed a longneck to me and set another one at his place setting. “Here’s the bottle opener, but you being Special Operations, I’m assuming you could open this with your teeth.” Bernie laughed.

“Special Operations?” I frowned. “Why do you say that?”

“You have that look about you. Same as Beau.”

“If I had been Spec Ops, those days are long gone,” I said as I used the bottle opener on the beer. I handed it back to Bernie. He gave me a chin tilt then opened his beer and took a swallow. The man still had a shit-eating grin on his face. I wasn’t fooling him one damn bit.

“I had a feeling you’d be stopping by soon. I sent him a message on WhatsApp that I needed to get in touch with him. Beau has an iPhone and he uses FaceTime because of the security. Do you have an iPhone?”

I nodded.

“Give me your number so that I can have him call you. His number is going to come to you as blocked. You’ll know it’s him by the time he’s calling.”

I set down my knife and fork and looked at Bernie. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this.”

“I’ve also talked to Nash Rivers, our sheriff. He doesn’t think that there is a kidnapping case to be made against your dad. There’s the time factor, and the fact that Arthur and your mom weren’t split up.”

“I really didn’t want to have to deal with Arthur or Ronald ever again. Good-bye to bad rubbish as one of my teammates used to say. Last I saw him, life was looking pretty miserable for him. Made me happy.”