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Amber tugged her chair into position and put her hand on the drawer. “Okay, Jay. We’re digging in. We know you and Fox had some troubles, but we also know you were both good men. Thank you for leaving us the farm. We appreciate it, and I think you’d both like the fact that we’re all here, working together to make it blossom.”

Her voice trembled at the end. Jolie popped up and hugged her from behind. “We love you both. Now, we’re going to stop the sappy stuff and do some detective work. The sprout wants a happy mama.”

Laughing, Amber pulled open the drawer. “Let’s do this.”

After a few moments, Lawson spoke. “Jay’s clothing tastes are remarkably similar to Fox's.” He held up flannel shirts, jeans, and t-shirts that their grandfather could easily have worn.

Amber gasped softly. “More pictures.”

She opened an envelope and spread the pictures over the desktop while they crowded around her. There were a few dozen photos, all from when Jay and Fox had been kids.

The black-and-white images showed the brothers over the years. Playing with dogs, kicking a soccer ball, and fishing. A few photos showed them posing with their parents outside a small cabin—a group of eight boys clustered around a shiny truck.

Burke turned one over to check for names, but there was nothing there. A quick check showed the same with the rest.

Amber smiled. “I’m going to frame some of these, put them up in the inn and here in the farmhouse.”

Lawson patted Amber’s shoulder. “They’d like that. I’d love that one with the truck for my shop.”

“Perfect.”

The next find was a shoebox filled with baseball cards. Old ones that had been worn thin in spots. Jay had probably flipped through them often. They were soft to the touch and used enough to be worth next to nothing to anyone except them. Burke loved the connection when he found a few old Red Sox cards. “Maybe I can do something with that. Make it a collage or something. Put it up in the library.”

They all smiled at him, and Lawson laughed. “When did you become crafty?”

Burke grinned. “Hasn’t happened yet. I’m hoping someone can help me.”

All eyes turned to Amber, who smiled. “You’ve got it.”

Burke returned to the deep drawer he’d chosen. Files of paperwork for the farm, much of it handwritten in ledgers and notebooks. All of it was carefully detailed. Burke came by his love of order and organization from all their elders.

The last notebook in the drawer contained different information, not for an apple farm, but for personal finances. He flipped through the pages, looking for clues to Jay’s life before the farm. It didn’t take long to find it. “I’ve got something. He kept track of his finances in this notebook. Income and expenses.”

Knox laughed. “You chose the right drawer, Burke. Anything interesting?”

He nodded. “Notes about his income from more than a decade ago.”

Jolie leaned over to peek at the book. “Does he say where the income came from? Where did he work?”

“It’s a lot of short forms; give me a minute.”

Burke flipped through the pages slowly, letting the information sink in. Jay wrote each business name once, then used short forms. Were those city codes?

Someone passed him a clean notebook and a pen. Burke made lists, flipped pages, and revised them. When he lifted his head, his siblings watched him expectantly. “Looks like Jay moved around a lot. This only goes back twenty years, but there might be more somewhere. His pattern was to stay in one place for about five years, then he’d move on. I’m going to need to do some research to figure out what the businesses are, but I’m betting the ones I can’t figure out are types of farms, too. Some of them are obvious from the business names. Parker’s Potatoes. Harvest Heaven. Maple by Morty. Sally Ann’s Pumpkin Patch. Bruni’s Farm and Equipment. Cortin Tractors.”

Jolie grinned. “You’ve got a lot there. I bet we can make a timeline of where he worked and figure out his pathway back to Vermont.”

Which was a decent start, but it didn’t help them figure out the mystery between the two men. Was their theory of a love triangle correct?

They found hints that added to their overall information, but didn’t provide specifics about the split between the brothers.

Amber found more photographs; these ones in color. Landscapes. Farms, potentially matching the ones he’d found listed in the notebook.

Lawson turned to face the group. “Nothing on the top shelf. Should I start packing up the clothes?”

That question brought a beat of silence. Burke broke it. “Unless there’s something anyone wants, we can donate it to charity.”

Amber frowned. “We should go through pockets and shoes before we donate anything.”