Before She Was Found - Heather Gudenkauf Page 0,23

the injured party disagreed and so did her mother. Jordyn was suspended for a day.

But these examples are eons away from stabbing someone and Thomas pushes the doubts away. He tosses Jordyn’s damp jacket in the dryer, sets the dial to permanent press and then goes out to finally get that cup of coffee. His head pounds from lack of caffeine and the sharp ammonia fumes.

He checks his watch. They need to be at the police station in fifteen minutes and he can still hear Jordyn banging around up in her bedroom. Thomas grabs a broom leaning against a corner and lifts it, soundly tapping it against the ceiling, and Jordyn stomps her foot two times in response. Normally, Tess would scold them both for this noisy mode of communication but over the years it has become a game between them. Today he finds no humor in it.

Thomas pours a cup of coffee into a mug that Jordyn made for him when she was in second grade and takes a tentative sip. His stomach bubbles with nerves. When the boys were young, a visit from a police officer or a sheriff’s deputy wasn’t an uncommon occurrence.

It shouldn’t have been a surprise given Donny’s and Randy’s lack of supervision. It was a catch-22, Thomas thought. If he and Tess kept the boys at the bar where they could keep an eye on them, the questionable clientele and their bad habits were sure to rub off on them. And if they let them run wild they were bound to go searching for trouble with no chance of Thomas or Tess being there to yank them out of harm’s way. It was no wonder that Donny and Randy found themselves in a number of scrapes with the law.

There was many a night when Randy and Donny were deposited on their front step by Sheriff Tate after being caught drinking, carousing and trespassing on some poor farmer’s land while trying to tip a cow or two. It’s all harmless mischief, Thomas used to tell Tess after the boys, pale and hungover, were out of earshot.

Yes, until someone gets hurt, Tess would shoot back until it became kind of a joke between them. They laughed halfheartedly at the time but it was with great relief when Randy finally graduated high school and went off to a nearby community college. Donny went his own direction and left Iowa for college in Oregon. Out of sight, out of mind, Thomas thought. And it worked, at least for a few years. Until Randy showed up on their doorstep with a round-faced spitfire of a four-year-old in tow and they found themselves worrying all over again. This time about Jordyn.

Again Thomas pummels the ceiling with the broom handle. He’s discovered over the years that with girls, with Jordyn, anyway, it was different but much more complicated. The boys only had two moods: silly and sleepy. Jordyn, on the other hand, had too many moods to count. But how Thomas loved that girl.

Thomas was sure that Tess felt the same way, though they never really talked about it. Maybe it was because they’d never had enough time with Betsy. Jordyn had the same round cheeks, the same widow’s peak, the same belly laugh as their daughter.

Thomas knows that Jordyn is just on the edge of growing up. That there’s going to be a lot more sass than sweet in the years to come and it scares him to death that Tess might not be around to guide her, and him, through it. Jordyn needs her. He needs her. He tries not to think about life without Tess. It was just a fall, a bad fall, but Tess is tough. Hell, she put up with him all these years. She’ll be able to get through a pesky setback like a broken hip.

With a sigh, Thomas gives up banging on the ceiling and makes the long trek up the stairs. He pushes open her bedroom door only to find it empty but in typical disarray. Jordyn must be in the bathroom.

The book bag that Jordyn took with her to Cora Landry’s house for the overnight sits in the middle of the floor. Thomas bends over and pulls out the pair of sweatpants and a University of Grayling T-shirt that Jordyn wears as pajamas and adds them to the ever-growing pile of laundry to wash. His hand grazes something soft and Thomas finds Ella, the gray-and-pink stuffed elephant that Jordyn insists she has