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Chapter2
The day after the fire, Quinn Harper was seated in the kitchen of her family home talking to her mother. Correction: her mother was talking, and she was listening.
She’d been home before, but not for this long. A month, she’d planned for. She was wondering if she could withstand her mother’s attempts to make her into a more suitable marriage prospect for a man—any man, Shelly Harper wasn’t fussy. Just someone who would help her daughter produce grandchildren.
“I’m telling you, that fire was your father’s fault, Quinn.”
“You don’t know that, Mom.”
“I do know it. Just as I know the fall he took was his fault.”
The call saying Ivan Harper had fallen down a ladder, broken his leg, and knocked himself unconscious had scared Quinn because she couldn’t remember a time when he’d done something like that in her lifetime. She’d been due to take leave and had come home as soon as she could. Finding her father looking older and weaker had shocked her. It had also reminded her that she had not been home nearly enough over the last few years.
“Your father needs a checkup, Quinny. He’s working too hard or something more sinister is happening,” her mother said. “I said as much when he was in the hospital after the fall, but your father dismissed it and said I was overreacting to the doctors.”
Which, if Quinn was being honest, her mother was a superstar at.
“He is forgetting things and accidents are happening. We need him to get into the doctor and have some tests.”
As she’d been on this subject for some time, Quinn made an agreeing sound and bit into the walnut and maple syrup cookie she’d stolen from the tray that had just been taken out of the oven.
“These are good, Mom.”
Her mother managed a quick smile before she started buffing the glass on two cabinets vigorously. It was a point of pride to her mother that you could eat off any surface in this kitchen, including the white tiled floors.
Thinking about her rooms back on base, Quinn knew that some of her mom’s compulsive neatness had rubbed off on her.
“That fire was started from a spark off the welder, Quinn.”
“Dad says otherwise.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. He is not himself. All these things are just him becoming forgetful.”
“Tell me about these things?”
“Your father falling down the steps. Broken machinery. The plane had a mechanical issue that he said he fixed but didn’t. I could go on, as the list is long and growing.”
“How long have they been happening, and why am I only hearing about them now?”
“There was nothing you could have done from where you were, so there was no point worrying either you or Matt.”
“Mom, we’d rather know what’s going on. Dad seems the same to me—”
“He’s not.” Shelly Harper slapped the bottle of glass cleaner on the bench with a snap. “He needs to go to the doctor and have a checkup. You need to talk to him and get him to see a doctor before something else happens.”
Her mother’s face looked tight with worry. It was not a look she wore often.
“I’ll talk to him.”
“He’ll say he’s done nothing wrong and that he’s not sure how these things are happening, but seeing as they occur after he’s been working on something, it can only be him who is responsible.”
Her father was stubborn and pigheaded, another trait she’d inherited. But he’d never been careless. She would have to talk to him, if only to work out what was happening. Maybe he did need a checkup?
“He needs that checkup now before something else happens.”
“I know, Mom.”
Shelly Harper wore her usual frilly apron and looked like she’d stepped out of the pages of housewife 101, 1960s-style. Which wasn’t a bad thing. Quinn had never known her mother to change either her hair or fashion since she’d been old enough to take notice.
