Page 25 of Rafe: Sins of the Father

“You need to reset it?” I ask.

She steps over and opens the glass, stopping their swaying, then starting them again. “There. That should do it.”

I follow Bubba to the other room, and we move a low chest of drawers to the dining room.

The last piece is the one I’ve been dreading. It’s a marble topped coffee table.

“This thing come apart?” Bubba asks.

Tori shrugs. “I have no idea.”

“Guess we’re about to find out,” he mutters and points me to the other side. We both lift, and thankfully the marble is not attached to the wooden base, which will make it a damn sight easier to get it down a flight of stairs.

I’m on the end near the archway, so I get stuck walking backward into the hall and through to the kitchen.

Tori runs ahead of us and opens the door, turning on the light.

“Hang on, Bubba.” I adjust my grip, struggling under the weight, and take the first step. The stairs are old and wooden, and they flex under my boot.

At this angle, almost all the weight is on me, and my muscles strain, my arms shaking, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to drop the thing in front of this girl.

We make it to the bottom and half the weight shifts back to Bubba.

“Where do you want it?” I call up the stairs.

Tori comes down with an old quilt and points to a far wall. “There, but let me drape this over it before you lean it against the concrete.”

Once it's wrapped and settled against the wall, we head up for the wooden base.

Grabbing an end, I realize the solid wood base is just as heavy as the damn marble. “What the hell’s this made of?”

“Solid oak,” the old aunt snaps from the doorway, then shakes her finger. “And I don’t want to hear another cuss word out of your mouth, young man.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Bubba and I both murmur, and we can’t get the thing down the hall fast enough. This time Bubba is the one going backward down the steps, and after he stops to get a better grip. His boot slips off a step, and he almost goes down.

Thankfully, I’m able to hook a forearm through a shelf and keep the whole damn thing from crushing him. “You got it?” I shout, straining to hold it up.

“Yeah.” He hefts it and takes another step.

We manhandle the unwieldy piece down the stairs and set it against the wall.

Tori waits with an old sheet to drape over the piece and protect it from dust.

Bubba trudges up the stairs, and I take a second to glance around the basement. A dozen framed paintings—at least I think they’re paintings from the edge of the gilt frames—lean in a stack.

I gesture to them. “Somebody must like art.”

Tori follows my eyes. “My grandfather collected a lot of paintings.”

“Why are they down here?”

She shrugs. “I think they’ve been down here since I was a little girl.”

“Can I take a look?”

“If you want.” She pulls the sheet back, revealing them, then crouches down and flips through the frames—all oil paintings of landscapes. She stops on one. “Oh, my God.”

“What is it?” I tilt my head, studying the painting.

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