Hannah Alexander - Collateral Damage

She continued to admire the neatly trimmed shrubs, the bricks surrounding the flower beds, the trees, nicely mulched, that shaded the yard with spring green. Nick had begun earning money for college and med school in eighth grade by doing lawn care...and working on a wonderful tan and beautiful muscles that she was sure would’ve had most of the girls in their class following him around like hungry kittens if he’d ever gone without a shirt.

It was difficult for Sarah to decide if she felt more relieved or worried that Emma had spent the night under the Tyler roof—likely with her own father and grandfather, both oblivious. Family and old friends would surround Sarah and Emma here in Jolly Mill...if they stayed.

A dog barked from down the street, and a lawnmower fired up a few blocks away—actually, in a town of eight hundred twelve people, there were only a few blocks in any direction. Sarah had loved growing up here. How she’d missed this place.

Focusing to keep her breaths steady, she marched to the front door and pressed the doorbell. The deep, soothing sounds of Westminster Abbey chimed through the house. She recalled those chimes from her earliest memories, and that soothed a little of her tension. Today was Saturday. Maybe everyone but Emma was sleeping in. Emma never slept in.

The door opened a crack, and dark brown, sleepy eyes peered out.

“Emma?”

The eyes widened and Emma gave a soft gasp as she pulled the door open. “Um, hi, sis. Wow, what’re you doing here so early?”

Sarah stepped past the threshold. She grabbed Emma in a tight hug that obviously surprised Emma as much as it did her. “If you ever do anything like this again I’ll ground you for the rest of your life. Do you know how scared I was?”

Emma held still for a moment, breathing slowly, as if soaking in the hug. They’d been close all of Emma’s life, but because Mom and Dad were the disciplinarians, Sarah had always taken advantage of the opportunity to just enjoy time with her. She would need to start relying on her instincts as a kindergarten teacher when it came to discipline from now on. She could only imagine how Emma would respond to that.

Too soon for Sarah, her daughter wriggled free. “I told you where I was coming.” She folded her arms across her underdeveloped chest. “Don’t you think I’m old enough to take care of myself a few miles from home?”

“You drove across the whole lower state of Missouri! And don’t think you’re going to get away with this.”

Emma sighed. “I know,” she said in a singsong voice, “I’ll have my cousin John to answer to when we get home.”

“You’ll have me to answer to, but the Tylers have been through too much already. They don’t need two feuding sisters on their hands.” It was a little late to start being the boss in Emma’s life, but too often these past weeks she’d depended on John to step in as a father figure.

“According to Nick,” Emma said, “when you and Shelby were together you were always feuding.”

“Nick said that?”

“He even told me he had a crush on Shelby that lasted maybe a couple of weeks.”

Sarah forgot to breathe for a moment. “He said that?” A couple of weeks?

“Okay, then he admitted maybe it lasted a little longer than that, but he wasn’t in her league. He was a nerd, you know, not one of the jocks Shelby went for.” She grinned up at Sarah. “Edward said you were Nick’s true love, and everybody knew it.”

Sarah tried not to react to that, but oh, it felt good to hear those words, whether or not they were true. And then she wondered why she felt so strongly about it after all these years.

“Y’all must’ve talked a lot last night.” Sarah glanced up at the set of family photos to their left in the vestibule. One showed Nick at sixteen, standing above his seated parents. After all these years the memories tied knots around her heart. But before she could get maudlin she caught sight of a photo of Aunt Peg and Edward on their wedding day. Peg was what, twenty-four? Had Emma caught sight of herself in her grandmother’s photo?

Emma closed her eyes with a sigh, and when she opened them again, they were slightly moist. “I’m sorry I scared you, sis, really. I couldn’t stop thinking about that all the way here. I kept imagining how hurt you’d be, and I wanted to call you before I left, but really? Don’t you want to know what happened to Mom and Dad?” Her typically soft, girlish voice tapered to a tiny tremble.

Sarah strolled past a padded foyer bench surrounded by a bentwood hall tree and an umbrella stand. She entered an open kitchen and living area that surely provided a pleasant great room for entertaining. She sank onto a pale green plush chair that faced an unobstructed view of the carefully tended backyard.

“I do want to know what happened to Mom and Dad,” she said. “I also want to keep you safe. Nick’s told me what he and his friend, the ex-cop, are doing, and I’m afraid we’ll just get in the way.”

Emma sat on the edge of a sofa that matched the chair, the sweet floral scent of her shampoo settling around them. “I’m not useless, you know. I can ask around. Besides, I want to get to know folks around here, and you can get reacquainted with old friends, right? What if Nick’s right and someone can tell you something? Don’t you want to know?”

Sarah suppressed a sigh. Her inquisitive, precious, irritating daughter. The trait of friendliness had been learned from the cradle. Sarah, on the other hand, would rather curl up for hours on her sofa in her tiny brick house at the edge of Sikeston, laptop across her knees as she compiled endless pages of fiction in her make-believe world with imaginary characters. For years she’d dreamed of having a novel published. It wasn’t as easy as she’d once thought. With Mom and Dad gone, would she ever be able to return to that?

“Nick’s really cool,” Emma said. “So’s Edward. We stayed up late last night and talked about Mom and Dad and Edward’s wife.”

“Aunt Peg.”

“He said you and Shelby always called her that.” Emma reached over and touched Sarah’s arm. “Please, please, don’t you think we can stay awhile?”

Sarah braced herself against this child’s well-known charm.

Emma turned and looked up at her, eyes large and entreating, a look Sarah had never been able to resist. “Did Nick tell you much about Gerard Vance?”

Sarah raised her eyebrows.

“The man who used to be a policeman down in Corpus Christi.”

“He told me a little.”

“He runs this homeless rehab place up at the top of the hills overlooking the mill. Isn’t that really great?”

“Homeless rehab?”

“Yeah. The guy married an old friend of yours, Megan Bradley?”

“Megan? Really?” With a sense of loss, Sarah realized she had so much catching up to do. She’d missed nearly seventeen years’ worth of Jolly Mill life.

“Yeah, she’s a doctor now, and she met Gerard at his mission in Texas. He looks for people living on the street who want a new start in life, and he moves them to the rehab place. Just up that way on the hill.” She pointed north. “He’s helping Nick research the...the deaths.” Her voice wobbled.

Sarah patted Emma’s knee. “Sorry, sweetie. I’m so sorry. This is hard, I know.” She blinked at the moisture that seemed so ever present in her own eyes the past three weeks. “Where are Nick and Edward now?”

Emma dabbed at her cheeks and sniffed. “Why do you call Edward by just his name when you always called his wife Aunt Peg?”

“Mom once told me it was a modified Southernism—instead of Miss Peg she was Auntie Peg, then the name shortened to Aunt when we got older. Edward insisted everyone call him Edward instead of Pastor or Reverend. He’s kind of a laid-back guy.”