Page 16 of Honeycombs & Homecomings
“They? No, but Allie, yeah. I mean, Tony always wants to go away for the weekend, but she’s not like that. She goes on mini vacations by herself.” She rubbed at her temples. “You know how she is. She doesn’t like to deal with stress and takes off if things get overwhelming.”
“It’s going to be okay.”
“Is it? Is it really? Because right now, nothing is okay.” The strain in her voice made him feel sick.
“Jo, what’s going on?”
She glanced up, her deep sapphire eyes boring into him. “I—”
Two sets of footsteps pounded up the wooden stairs. “Jo!” Officer Roger called out.
She sprang up from the couch like they had almost caught her with her hands in the cookie jar. “Yes?” It might have been cute, except he knew she hoped no one would gossip about them. He understood that, but felt a little like an evil villain, too.
Roger was the first to the top of the steps, followed by Deputy E. Morrison.
Roger moved forward. “Anything missing from up here?”
“No,” Jo said, and glanced around. “Well, I don’t think so. It’s hard to say, we just kind of shoved all our stuff in here this afternoon. But it looks the same as it did when I left to go to the festival this afternoon.”
“Do you have somewhere you can stay tonight?” Roger asked.
This was about their house again. What was going on?
She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, then nodded to Roger. “My aunt’s.”
“Okay, we’re going to try to get everything we need wrapped up by tomorrow morning so you can get the shop up and going as soon as possible,” Roger said.
Jo let out breath she’d apparently been holding. “Thank you.”
E. Morrison stepped forward. “It’s not likely whoever did this is going to return, but I’m going to stick one of my trail cameras on your back door.”
She nodded.
“How it’ll work,” he explained, “is by taking photos every time there’s movement directly in front of it, which means it’ll catch you and your employees coming in and out as well; you good with that?”
“Yes, thank you so much, Ethan,” Jo said.
Cash smiled and shoved his hands in his pockets. Trail cameras were cameras used by hunters. E. Morrison wasn’t putting up a department camera, he was bringing over a personal camera.
“Do you have a ride to your Aunt Sophie’s?” Roger asked.
“My cars parked outside.”
Roger glanced around. “Okay, well grab what you need and we’ll get this taken care of.”
“What time can I come by in the morning?” she asked.
“We’ll meet you here at nine,” E. Morrison said.
If they were meeting here at nine, then Cash would be here too. Not just because of Jo, though she was definitely the biggest reason, but also because he felt a strange since of proprietorship over this place. He’d been there when Jo had come up with the idea and had heard months of plans regarding it from both the twins after that.
***
A few minutes later, Jo had a small duffle bag packed and was out the door. Cash followed close by until she was at her car, and she was glad for it. Chills were running up and down her entire body since the moment she’d seen her back door open—and not just because it was so cold outside. In all her thirty-one years in this town, she couldn’t recall one break-in.
And she doubted if she asked her mother, her mother could think of a break-in in her fifty-seven years in this town. It was such a violation. And while they had taken nothing but a couple hundred dollars, she just couldn’t shake that ick feeling inside her.
But then Cash had been there, he’d rushed back to help her, and he’d kept within arm’s reach from that moment on. Even now, as she stopped at her car, he was there, and she felt so grateful for him. And that came as something of a revelation to her.
