Rose and Jacob

“Don’t be worrying. You have enough on your plate right now. Lucas will be fine. If I didn’t think he would be, I wouldn’t take him.”

“Okay, but I’ll pick him up just after lunch.”

Lucas started to jump up and down. “Yes, yes, yes, I’m going to the pub. I’m going to the pub.” He started to sing around the kitchen.

Mack put her head in her hands. Dean and Thomas roared with laughter.

“Oh, my God, Lucas. Do not, under any condition, tell your father.”

“Why, Auntie Mack? Daddy always says you have

to at least do everything once.”

Mack glanced at Thomas and Dean then gave them a dirty look because they were still laughing. “Lucas, I don’t think your daddy meant for you to do it all while you’re still six!”

“Okay, scout’s honor, this is our secret. I’m going up to wash my hands. Back in a minute, Thomas.” Lucas rushed off.

“You do realize as soon as he sees his father that his adventure at the pub will be the first thing he tells him?” Mack picked up her coffee and took a sip while thinking about Lucas’s trip to the ‘Irish pub’ with Thomas. Hopefully, he wouldn’t get into too much trouble.

“Spend today with me again?” Dean asked, breaking into her thoughts.

“I’d love to.”

“Well, who do we have here, Thomas?”

“This is my good friend, Lucas Cartwright. Lucas, meet a couple of friends of mine, Levi and Walt. We’ve been friends for seventy-seven years.”

Lucas’s jaw dropped and Levi smiled. “Well, come on over here and tell us some gossip, kid.”

He took a seat between Levi and Thomas. “What do you want to know?”

“Well now, let me think. What’s going on up at that cottage of Thomas’s that you’re staying in?”

“Oh, that’s easy. My auntie has a secret about something she found about someone named Rose, and Dean slept in her bed last night, but she doesn’t know I know that. Is that what you mean?” Lucas looked at the stunned faces looking back at him. “What did I say?”

Thomas came back to his wits first. “You did fine, Lucas. Why don’t I teach you how to play poker so you can fleece your father,” he replied, trying to change the subject.

“That would be cool.” Lucas grinned.

Thomas hadn’t expected that kind of gossip to come out of Lucas’s mouth. He was a handful all right. He chuckled to himself.

Tomorrow. Tomorrow, he would talk to Mack about the night Rose died. Maybe. Maybe not.

Thomas glanced quickly over at Levi and Walt, who still seemed a little bit preoccupied. He was guessing they were thinking back to the time Rose died.

“Okay, let’s shuffle the cards.”

Chapter 26

“Dean, do you think the library here in town will have newspaper archives from 1947?” Mack moved to sit beside him on the sofa.

He reached out and pulled her toward him for a hug. “Probably, why? What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking that if Thomas can’t talk, then surely there would have been something about a young woman going off the cliffs written up in the newspaper. If there was, why didn’t Jacob read about it? Most people read newspapers.”

“You’ve got a point. Do you want to go?”

She sat up to look closely at him. “Are you sure you don’t mind spending time at the library?”