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“I’d love to hear more about this,” Brand said, “but we’re both on the clock. How about I take you out to the Roost for a beer or two after work? I want to pick your brain.”
“Yeah, sure, let me text Josiah and make sure he’s okay to chill with Dad for a while longer tonight.”
“Do that. If he isn’t, let me know and we can reschedule.”
Josiah would be fine with it. He’d yet to balk at any request Michael made, and he often suspected it was less about the extra pay and more about spending time in the Pearce house. Being part of their family. “I will. Thanks, Brand.”
“Anytime. Now go. Those stalls won’t muck themselves.”
With a mock salute to his boss, Michael stood and left the office, buoyed by the conversation and curious what ideas of his own Brand might bring to the table tonight.
“No, no, maybe over there?”
Josiah bit back a weary sigh as he began to shift the heavy tool chest for the fourth time in about fifteen minutes. He and Elmer had been in the workshop since supper concluded, completing a task they’d begun that afternoon. Elmer was still determined to clean up the space and get rid of excess garbage, but his donate pile had turned into a “save for next year’s picnic” pile. More than just talking about welding and his art, Elmer wanted to demonstrate what he did, and he’d “need spare parts for the kids to waste.”
The wood floor had scratch lines all over from him dragging the tool chest around, and he could kind of track his path around the space. Josiah didn’t mind the work. Despite the dust that made him sneeze every ten minutes or so, he liked the workshop, and he loved listening to Elmer talk about it. Anything that kept his patient active and engaged, rather than sitting on his butt watching TV, was a win in his book.
“How about here?” Josiah smacked the top of the metal toolbox.
Elmer squinted. “That’ll do for now.”
“Oh good. What next?”
“I think I need that bookcase.”
“What bookcase?”
“The one in the horse stall over there.” He waved vaguely down the long corridor that led to the front of the barn. “If we bring it out, I can organize some of that scrap copper and aluminum on it. Can’t use it if I can’t see it.”
And by “we,” he meant Josiah would bring it out. Josiah had no idea which stall had a bookcase in it, so he went searching while Elmer fiddled around with a bucket of random, rusty tool parts. It took a bit of searching to uncover the four-shelf bookcase—how on earth had Elmer remembered the thing was there when it was buried under grain sacks and horse blankets?—and then a lot of huffing and puffing to get the damned thing out of the stall. By the time he wrangled it back into the workshop, Elmer’s face was pinched.
“Hey, are you doing okay?” Josiah asked.
“Yeah, just, uh...” He scowled. “I need to go inside and use the can.”
“Oh, no problem. It’s getting late and a little cold, so why don’t we call it a night? I’ll take you in.”
“Fine, fine.”
Elmer was getting better at handling the wheelchair around the living room, despite still having some grip weakness in his right hand, so Josiah pushed him out of the barn and toward the house.
“You forgot to turn off the damn lights,” Elmer said just as Josiah began to push him up the porch ramp.
“It’s okay. Let’s get you settled first, and then I’ll go back and turn them off.”
Elmer grunted, and Josiah did just that. Once Elmer was situated in the bathroom, Josiah mostly shut the door to give him privacy, then went back outside. The cold night air nipped at his cheeks as he strode across the yard to the big, open barn doors. It never stopped surprising him that Elmer didn’t want the barn doors shut at night, but the property had two bright outdoor lights that probably dissuaded potential thieves from sneaking around.
He stepped inside the barn and reached to the right where four switches controlled the lights from the front all the way to the rear workshop. He slipped the farthest two switches down, casting the back of the barn in darkness. On the dirt floor ahead, a splotch of green caught his attention and Josiah paused. Probably a rag or something that they dropped—only he hadn’t messed with any cleaning rags tonight. He took four long strides toward the fabric and picked it up, curious.
His curiosity shifted into surprise as he shook out a T-shirt with white block lettering that said Kiss Me I’m Irish. Andy had given him a shirt like that a long time ago as a joke, something he’d picked up at a swap meet for cheap. One of the only meaningful things Josiah had kept from that period of his life, and he’d left it behind at Seamus’s house. Well, technically Michael and his friends had left it behind, but Josiah had never bothered to ask anyone to fetch it, assuming Seamus had tossed out anything that his five saviors hadn’t claimed.
With shaking fingers, Josiah checked the left side seam for a familiar—there. The small tear the shirt had come with and Josiah had never bothered stitching back up. Fear turned his stomach to ice. Had Seamus brought this shirt here and left it as...what? A warning? To rattle him? What the hell?
Someone had been inside the barn in the last few minutes, because he knew in his bones the shirt hadn’t been on the ground when he took Elmer into the house. Shirt clutched in his left hand, Josiah slid his right into his back pocket. Fingers brushed his cell phone. He turned. Something dark zoomed at him.
Pain exploded in his face, and he fell.
Chapter Sixteen
