he still angry about the edits she’d made to his history project?
Ashley had allowed Jackie to do his project on Rose Howland’s letters and diary. In fact, earlier in the week, she’d helped him make a poster-board presentation with photos from the dig and quotes from Professor Hawkins about what they’d found. She was pretty sure Jackie would ace the assignment, maybe even win the prize that was given out at the Heritage Day celebration next week.
But she’d put her foot down when Jackie had wanted to tell everyone about Abimael St. Pierre and how Rose Howland was probably his mother.
“Why can’t I say that?” he’d asked in that tone of outrage he sometimes used. “It’s the truth.”
“You don’t know it’s the truth,” she’d said.
“But the cap’n says it’s true.”
At that moment she’d truly wanted to kill the captain, except the man was either already dead or a figment of Jackie’s imagination.
“It’s not history. It’s speculation,” she’d said. “You can’t put speculation in your history project. Do you know what that means?”
“It means it might not be true. But it’s not speckilation if the captain says it’s true.”
There’d been no arguing with Jackie’s single-minded logic, so she’d pulled the I’m the Mommy defense and simply ordered him to amend his project.
She’d even stood over him while he’d copied the edited version onto fresh paper, omitting the parts about how Rose taught Henri to read and how they had loved each other.
When he’d finished the written portion, they’d glued it to the poster board, and that had been the end of it. Except that Jackie had been surly about the whole thing ever since.
And now he was MIA on a baseball day.
She stood in the middle of his empty room, worry creeping through her. She shook it off. He was probably out back, tossing a football with Topher. The two of them had become thick as thieves.
She headed down the stairs, through the back door, and across the garden, but Jackie and Topher were not on the lawn. There was no sign of either of them, so she headed up the porch steps and banged like a madwoman on the cottage’s front door.
Topher opened it. “What have I done now?” he asked.
There was a note of resignation in his voice that she found momentarily alarming. She also noted the dark circles under his eyes, as if he hadn’t slept well.
The poor man. He’d been doing better recently, but it certainly looked as if he’d taken a step backward. On the other hand, the sitting room behind him looked tidy, and there were papers on the table that seemed to indicate he was working on something business-related. He was dressed in khakis and a golf shirt, as if he were planning to attend a business-casual meeting or something. She wondered if maybe he had decided to go back to work.
“You haven’t done anything,” she said, slightly breathless. “Have you seen Jackie?”
“This afternoon?” He straightened a bit.
She nodded. “He’s hiding, and we have a fall league baseball game.”
He frowned. “I haven’t seen him all morning. He’s probably up the tree,” he said, stepping through the door. “When I wanted to hide, that’s where I’d go. And believe me, I ran away from home multiple times.”
“You ran away? Why did I not know that?”
He stepped off the porch and headed down the path across the lawn. He was walking much better now, without his cane and with a much less perceptible limp. Ashley followed him.
“Well, for one thing, you didn’t live here as a kid,” Topher said as they headed down the footpath. “And for another, I was the only one who thought I was running away. Sandra, Karen, and Aunt Mary probably thought I came over here to mooch cake. But trust me, I showed up on Aunt Mary’s doorstep every time Dad locked himself in the bedroom. He had a bad time after my mother died. I missed Mom too, but until recently I didn’t fully understand how lost my father was.”
They reached the tree, and Topher hollered, “Come on, Jackie, you don’t want to miss your baseball game, do you?”
Silence. It hung heavy on the hot September day. Jackie must have been staying very still because not a leaf rustled.
Topher surprised Ashley then. He hoisted himself up on the lowest branch, showing a great deal more strength than she thought he possessed.
“Topher, no, you can’t go climbing—”
“Watch me,” he said as he straightened up on the branch and started to ascend