Treasure on Lilac Lane: A Jewell Cove Novel Read Free Page B

Cod he’d once called home. It seemed wrong. Wrong that his mother wouldn’t be there to say hello in her warm, welcoming voice. She wouldn’t give him shit for never coming over or having a decent meal. She’d never make his favorite clam chowder again, or the blueberry cake with the cinnamon crumb topping that he liked so well, or hang clothes out on the clothesline to dance in the breeze.
    It felt … final. That once he stepped off the porch and into the kitchen, it would really be real. She was never coming back.
    He swallowed, trying to screw up his courage. All his life his mom had been his lighthouse. Even when he’d been far away, she’d been there, a light in the darkness to bring him home safely again, especially after she and Rick’s father had divorced when he was eight and it had just been the two of them. She’d driven him to Little League, gone to every parent-teacher conference, and once bailed him out of jail when he’d been picked up for underage drinking when he was seventeen.
    The disappointment in her eyes was worse than being arrested. Worse than the punishment she’d doled out, which had been walking the highway ditches three Saturdays in a row picking up garbage wearing an orange jumpsuit just like inmates wore.
    He stood, looking in at the empty kitchen, and felt his anger build. It was damned unfair. Unfair that she’d taken sick just when he’d come back for good. Unfair that she’d had to suffer, that she’d had to die. Unfair that she hadn’t said anything about the recurring pain until the truth couldn’t be ignored. Now he was left all alone. No family. Not one relative he knew of that cared if he lived or died.
    He’d needed her. He’d pushed her away more than he ought to. And now he wouldn’t have a chance to make it right. One thing he knew for sure. He didn’t give a good damn whether he’d been adopted or not. Roberta Sullivan had given him far too much for him to push her memory aside just because she’d died. She was, and always would be, his mother. He’d loved her as a son and he mourned her the same way.
    A hornet buzzed by his head, reminding him that he was standing with the door open. He stepped inside and closed it, the catch clicking loudly in the silence. He felt a grief so intense he hardly knew what to do with it.
    He’d seen horrible things, gruesome things, some of the worst parts of humanity, and he’d come through all right. Well, mostly. So why couldn’t he handle this without feeling like he was going to fall apart?
    The house was too quiet. His footsteps echoed off the hardwood as he walked farther into the kitchen and threw the package his mom’s lawyer had given him that afternoon onto the worn table. Inside were his mom’s final papers, bank statements, and a safe deposit box key. God only knew what his mom had placed in the thing. Probably more papers and his childhood treasures. All of which he was definitely not up to going through at the moment. Instead, he walked over to the sink and turned on the radio on the kitchen counter. It was set to a country station out of Portland, so he turned the dial to the classic rock station instead. The familiar guitar licks of Angus Young and AC/DC filled the air and he let out a breath.
    This was his house now. It was where he’d grown up. He shouldn’t feel so weird about the possibility of moving back in. But it was like trying to put on shoes that were a size too small. The shape was familiar but didn’t quite fit. The man he’d become bore little resemblance to that long-ago kid. He’d thought he’d had it so rough, but those had been the easy years. It really was true what they said: you couldn’t go back.
    He turned on the tap and poured himself a glass of water. He could always sell the house, he supposed, looking around the room. A thin film of dust covered the surfaces. No one had lived here for several weeks. But he knew that under the dust was a place that his mom had taken great