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Then he locked it behind him.
Kodiak spent the morning cleaning up around the back porch. He tossed the old milk crate in the trash, along with the cigarette butts he’d collected. After sweeping ashes off the wooden planks and hosing down cobwebs from the walls, no one would be able to tell Jarrid had signed his own death warrant here.
Wiping the dirt from his shoes, he went inside the house. Linnea stood in the kitchen, holding Charlotte with one hand, and whisking eggs with the other. Focused on her task, she inquired, “Are we going to see him this morning?”
“Here, let me take her.” Scooping up his niece, Kodiak kissed her little head. “I thought we’d finish up here first. What do we have left?”
“Just his closet.”
“We can grab some dinner in Decatur. See how he’s doing after, okay?” he suggested, smacking his lips to Linnea’s cheek.
“Okay.” She wrinkled her nose. “You’re all sweaty, Seth. Put the baby in her swing and go take a shower. You stink.”
“Guess I better do what Mommy says, huh?” He chuckled, buckling the baby in. “Sorry, Charlotte.”
After breakfast, they got to tackling what remained in Jarrid’s room. As a kid, he never came in here much. Unless his father summoned him, it was forbidden. Bed stripped, walls painted, drawers emptied, it shouldn’t take them very long to be done with it.
Kodiak spied a sealed box by the door. Written in bold, feminine script, his sister’s name was on it.
Damn letters.
“Burn those, Linnea.”
“They’re mine, aren’t they?” She didn’t wait for an answer, tossing clothes upon the bed. “Help me empty out the closet, will you? It’ll be easier to sort through it all this way.”
Doing as Linnea asked, he took everything off the shelves up high and set them on the floor. “Done.”
“Which suit, you think?” She held up two. “The gray one or navy blue?”
“Does it matter?”
Her brow shot up.
Guess so.
“Navy blue.”
She put Jarrid’s suit to the side, along with a crisp, white dress shirt and matching tie. “Donate the rest?”
“Yeah.”
Once they’d bagged up all the clothes, Kodiak hauled them downstairs. Glancing at the church across the street, he loaded them into the back of the Tahoe. They’d been dropping off donations at the collection box in Decatur every time they passed through.
When he returned, Linnea had brought everything he’d dumped on the floor up onto the bed. Sitting cross-legged on the bare mattress, she reached for the closest box and looked up at him. “After this, we’re done.”
Nodding, he sat down across from her. Old receipts. Playboy magazines. Most of it was garbage, really.
“Take what you want and burn the rest. Leave nothing behind.”
What were you afraid they’d find, old man? Cigarettes, booze, and naked women?
Snickering under his breath, he kept on going.
Small and white, the box itself was innocuous. He lifted the lid. A diary. Nestled in a bed of tissue, it was covered in soft, red moleskin and embroidered with flowers. Kodiak didn’t have to look inside to know it wasn’t his father’s.
Grace.
His gaze briefly flicking to his sister, he turned to the first entry. She was fifteen when she wrote it.
