Page 14 of Out of the Shadows
The boy’s light brown hair fell into his eyes that were the same blue as his mother’s. Those eyes narrowed as he assessed Jack.
“You’re Cody, right?” Jack said.
“Where’s Mom?”
“In the barn.”
He walked through the kitchen and out the broken back door. Probably a smart kid, not taking Jack’s word without confirmation. Jack watched from the large kitchen window as the two Labs bounded up to Cody and then followed him into the barn, tails wagging.
Laura had a nice setup here with the animals and the space. It angered him that someone had violated it. But it was the accident that gave him pause. From what Logan had told him earlier, Laura had driven to Cave Creek to have dinner and see his new house. They were together for more than four hours. If someone had been watching her, waiting for an opportunity to break into her house, they’d had ample opportunity. Unless the police learned something new, they didn’t know when the house had been breached—sometime after Laura left at five thirty and before she returned at midnight.
Had the hit-and-run truly been a coincidence? Or had it been to scare her?
He had a lot of questions and hoped Laura wouldn’t be offended when he started asking.
Jack took his coffee back outside and watched the chickens, which had spread out in the pen. There were six white chickens that looked skinnier than the others, eight or nine big brown hens, and three—no, four—bluish-black hens. Three black-and-white chickens were off together in the far corner as if having a conversation. He didn’t know enough about these birds to know what kind they were. But there were nearly two dozen hens running around and twenty eggs in the basket, and suddenly he was thinking breakfast.
Cody came out of the barn and looked at him. “Mom says she’ll be done in fifteen minutes.”
Jack wondered if it normally took more than an hour to care for the animals, or if Laura was delaying the inevitable conversation.
“Nice chickens.”
Cody looked at the flock, nodded. “I gotta get breakfast started.”
“You cook?”
“Yep. Not as good as Mom, but much better than Sydney.”
Cody picked up the basket of eggs, counted. Then he put the basket down, walked around to the tall side of the pen and opened the gate. All the chickens ran to him.
“You’ve been fed, girls. Leave me alone,” he said as he walked through the clucking hens.
Jack hadn’t noticed that the hutch had a bigger access door on the opposite side, with a short staircase that led into the hutch. Cody went in and a minute later came out with three eggs, all greenish-blue.
“Green eggs?”
“Yeah, those girls over there—” he gestured to the flock and Jack couldn’t tell who he was pointing to “—the Ameraucanas. They look like Rhode Island Reds, but they’re not as big.”
“You know your chickens.”
He locked up the pen and put the eggs in the basket. “They’re all different, lay different eggs. The skinny white chickens are leghorns, lay nearly an egg a day, white eggs. The Rhode Island Whites—those two bigger white chickens over there—give about five eggs a week, they’re brown but not as dark brown as the Reds.”
He walked into the house and Jack followed.
“Need help?” Jack asked.
“Naw, I’m just going to prep for Mom. We were in an accident, and she’s really sore.”
“I heard about that. Are you sore?”
He shrugged. “Not really. Just bummed we can’t go to the rec up in Anthem today. We go there every Monday and Wednesday, all my friends do.”
Cody went about sorting the eggs into trays and putting them into the refrigerator. He said, “You’re staying for breakfast, right?”
“Yes, sir,” Jack said, amused at Cody’s efficiency in the kitchen.
Cody took eight eggs that had already been in the trays and carefully cracked them into a large bowl. He added a healthy dollop of milk, scrambled them with a whisk, and put them aside. He went into a pantry and brought out a loaf of thick white bread and put it next to the stove. Then he went back to the refrigerator and took out a package of bacon, opened it and laid the slices on a plate. Finally, he opened a cabinet and pulled out a shaker of cinnamon and set it on the counter. “My mom likes French toast when she’s upset.”
