“But not Chico and not this other brother?”
“No. Tristan was slime too,” she said. “Whereas Barlow would ask a girl out on a date, I heard Tristan was too much like Chico, who just assumed you would go out with him. He’d catch you somewhere, sit down, and take over whatever plans you had for the evening. There is nothing about him that I liked.”
“Well, he’s not here right now,” her aunt said snippily. She got up, cleared away the plates from the table, and headed to the kitchen. Her uncle leaned over, patted Petra’s hand, and said, “You know how she gets.”
“Oh, I know,” she said. “The trouble is, she just won’t hear reason.”
“What reasons?” Cain asked.
“Chico is scum—and he killed his brother Barlow, who was the only good one of those boys. But Chico killed him.”
“On purpose?” Cain asked.
“Not according to him. And, according to the police, it was a bad accident. A bad accident where he ended up with a knife in the chest.” She shook her head. “Sorry. I shouldn’t get you involved in local politics,” she said, “but Barlow was a good man. His father was the mayor at one time, and Barlow had similar political aspirations. Barlow was the eldest, then Tristan, and finally Chico, who is two years older than me.”
“Interesting. I guess I pictured them as older than that,” he said, as he thought back to the gunman. This would have put him maybe in his thirties, early thirties at that. It was possible, but he’d thought the guy had an older look to him.
“If you’d seen him, you’d have thought that too. He lived hard, played hard, and looked hard. He’ll come to a bad end one of these days. His father knows it, and I know he’s already devastated. And given to drink. He hasn’t recovered from the loss of his other son either because, in the back of his mind, he has always worried it was a deliberate killing.”
“Sounds to me like it was,” Eton said.
“It was,” she said. “I saw it happen. I told the cops, but it didn’t matter because it ended up being an accident by the end of the day.”
“You saw it?” Cain asked. He looked at her and frowned.
She shrugged, got up hurriedly from her bench seat at the dining room table, and said, “Dessert time,” as she headed into the kitchen.
Eton heard raised voices in the kitchen and then looked at Cain.
Cain shrugged and looked at him.
“It’ll take a better man than me to go in there,” Eton said.
Cain shouted with laughter, grabbed his glass of water, and headed straight for the kitchen. He heard the old woman, talking this time in a different language—the local dialect—and it flowed fast and hard. He had some knowledge of it, but it wasn’t anything close to this version of it. Finally Migi saw him, and immediately the conversation stopped. He held up his glass and filled it from the sink. Once it was full, he turned and casually walked back to the table. The uncle looked almost a little dazed.
“So, if you lost your job at the factory,” Cain said, “is there any other work around here?”
“No,” the uncle said. “We lost hundreds of young families. It’s really just all us old folks now.”
“Interesting,” he said. “We thought we might go for a walk around town after dinner.”
“Go for it,” the uncle said. “This used to be a beautiful place to live.”
“I’m sure it still is,” Cain said. “It’s just different now.”
The uncle looked at him, grateful in a sadly pathetic way, then nodded. “My great-grandfather used to live here,” he said, motioning around the B&B. “I can’t imagine that it was very easy in his time either. I try to keep that in mind all the time. Just in case.”
“Just in case?”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said, with a smile. Then he got up, reached for his coffee cup, and headed toward the kitchen.
Cain and Eton shared a look, then stared at the doorway into the kitchen. Cain said, “That went well.”
Eton shrugged his shoulders. “Can’t say I feel like sticking around just now. Let’s head out,” he said.
The two men stood, and Eton called out, “Thanks for dinner.”
As Cain got to the front door and went to close it behind him, he saw Petra, standing there in the hallway, hands on her hips, staring at him, an odd look in her eye. He smiled and closed the door firmly between them.
Chapter 3
Petra heard something that Cain had said as he walked out the door. It had been a very awkward dinner, but the questions from the strangers seemed more pointed than anything. But then she was supersensitive on the subject. As she stepped out on the front porch to have coffee with her father, she held a plate of dinner for him, so she could feed him. She watched the two men as they strolled down the street, stopping to look at various buildings.
She couldn’t imagine what their conversation was about now or what interest this old town could hold for them. And she highly doubted any businesses here were of interest to them. She patted her father’s knee and turned his head, so he looked at her, and said, “Dinner, Dad.” She held up the fork, and, using her other hand, she opened his mouth and put the fork in. As soon as she did that, he chewed.
When he was done, he opened his mouth, and she filled it again and again. It had been like this since not long after he’d come home after the accident. The doctor seemed baffled by it, saying that her father was stuck between progress and this weird decline he was in. He was present; yet he wasn’t. By the time the plate was empty, he settled back to rock gently in place.
“At least you seem happy enough,” she said.
He didn’t speak; he didn’t utter a sound anymore. She spent a few very relaxing minutes enjoying her coffee, then kissed her dad goodbye and got up, taking the dirty dishes inside. Quickly she rinsed them and loaded them into the dishwasher. As soon as she was done, she headed out, picking up her purse and sweater.
She called back to her aunt and uncle, “I’m leaving.” Not waiting for a reply, she walked down the steps and across the sidewalk to her car. She hopped in, turned the vehicle around, and headed to her home. Several blocks down the road in the same direction, she saw the men walking. One of them turned to see her coming up behind them, and she lifted a hand as she drove past.
Taking the next corner in front of them, she turned left, and then took the next right, driving past the corner property, where she shook her head sadly. It was Petra’s former family home, a place her aunt and uncle had struggled with because it was bigger and nicer than theirs. It had belonged to Petra’s father, but she had lived there too and, should her sister ever come home, was meant to be a home for her as well. But no more. With a shake of her head, she continued on another block and pulled up outside her apartment.
She didn’t know what it would take to get her sister back here anyway.
Getting out of her car, Petra grabbed her purse and her sweater and headed to her door. Her neighbor’s dog greeted her. Chico often waited for her to come home so he could get extra cuddles. After sharing a big hug and a kiss, she walked over and checked to make sure the dog had food and fresh water on his porch.