Page 4 of You're the Reason

“Care to explain yourself, son?”

“Was I speeding?”

Officer Hammond motioned to a forty-five-miles-per-hour speed limit sign about twenty yards ahead.

Guess the gazebo wasn’t the only thing new around here.

“Is there a reason you’re driving Jon’s car out of town?”

Well, this didn’t look good. “He borrowed mine because Leah went into labor. I was driving down to Muskegon to trade it back at the hospital there.”

Hammond stared at him for a long moment as if weighing the truth of his statement. But it wasn’t like Jon would take his call right now to confirm it. Hammond, like everyone else in town, probably had already heard through the gossip mill that Jon’s wife was in labor.

Hammond gave a curt nod, then walked back to his cruiser. He’d only been gone a minute when he returned. “We just received a complaint about a break-in in an empty house on Henderson. The person was driving a black Mustang. Know anything about that?”

His face must have said it all because Hammond took a step back and rested his hand on his gun again. “I am going to need you to step out of the car slowly and put your hands on the car.”

Of course, because no matter what anyone said, Seth would always be a criminal in the town of Heritage.

Ballet had always been the one thing Grace Howell could count on, but now even that was failing her. She got out of her car and looked up at the two-story Victorian that had been her childhood home. With the new white siding and the white flower boxes on the porch bursting with daffodils in full bloom, it was picturesque—the quintessential Midwest family home. And from the outside it was.

Grace squared her shoulders and hurried up the steps as fast as her aching knee would let her. She knocked twice, then stepped into her parents’ house. “Hello?”

The word seemed to echo off the bare white walls and hardwood floors. An outsider might guess that her parents were just moving in... or out. But her mother wasn’t one for clutter or sentiment, and every time she came home, there were fewer knickknacks, fewer family photos, fewer memories. As if every day they were a little more detached from the family they had once been.

She stepped into the entryway and shed her shoes by the door as a spicy aroma surrounded her. “Dance to the Music” interrupted the stillness from the small speaker in her phone. Her best friend Mallory’s designated ringtone. “Hey, Mal. You should be stretching not calling me. The show’s in an hour.”

“Thank you, Madame Grace.” The sarcasm was thick in her friend’s tone. “Now, what did your magic doctor say?”

“He isn’t magic.” She dropped her purse on the kitchen table with her keys and lifted the lid of the Crock-Pot. Homemade soup. One piece she missed of home. “And he didn’t say anything because they had to move my appointment to tomorrow.”

“Did you get a hotel?” Mallory’s voice grew muffled. No doubt her friend had wedged the phone between her shoulder and her cheek as she slipped on her pointe shoes.

“I’m staying with my parents.” She walked over toward the garage, pushed open the heavy door, and flicked on the light—no cars. “It’s after five so they should be home any minute.”

The barre her father had secured to the wall when she’d been just eight remained, but other than that the place was swept clean of both dirt and anything else that would point to her childhood.

“Are you going to tell them?” Mallory’s voice cleared, but the increased background noise meant she was at least in the green room stretching now.

“I don’t see a way around it.” She flicked off the light and pulled the door shut.

“Maybe it will be fine.” Mallory was ever the optimist.

“Maybe.” But unlikely. They would see it as her failure. Maybe it was.

She walked into the living room and over to the mantel, running her finger over a photo of herself and her two brothers. They were eating ice cream. Gabe had it everywhere, but Gregory’s was licked clean.

She stepped back and took in the entire mantel. Had her mother added another photo of Gregory? Maybe they weren’t detaching from everything.

“You’ve gotten quiet. You only get this quiet when you’re thinking about your brother. Are you going to try and find out more details about his death while you’re there?”

“What would be the point? They seem to have swept it all under the rug about as fast as they swept me back to Paris after the funeral. They see it as protecting me. I see it as they’re treating me like a child.”

“It’s a small town; someone should know something.”

“Because that’s a fun question. ‘Grace, good to see you home.’ ‘Good to be home. Do you know how my brother, who didn’t do drugs, died of an overdose’?”

“Are you going to be okay?” Mallory would probably jump in her car and drive up from Chicago if Grace were really honest with her, but she couldn’t ask that. Mallory had a show tonight. A show that Grace was supposed to be in.

---