Page 1 of Heart of Stone
ONE
Reid
My mother wasn’t dead, and I was irritated.
For four hours, I’d believed the unthinkable. Four hours of living with the knowledge that the woman who’d brought me into the world had suddenly and unexpectedly left it.
Just an hour before lunch today, I received a call telling me little more than that I was needed at home as soon as possible. And from the grim tone in my father’s voice, I could only assume the worst had happened.
As I packed a bag with enough clothes to last me two weeks—plus the suit I’d need for her funeral—memories assaulted me.
All the evenings I’d come home after a long summer day and find her home-cooked meals waiting. All the warmth and patience in her delicate features. All the softness and understanding and encouragement in her voice whenever she spoke.
A good woman, down to her very bones, taken from the world far too soon.
It was an hour and a half after I’d received my father’s call before I was on the road heading from just east of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where I lived and worked, to Cardinal, Ohio, where I was born and raised. Our home in Cardinal was a short fifteen-minute drive to the shores of a beach on Lake Erie, one of the few spots I actually appreciated about my hometown.
This homecoming, the first in just shy of a year, was poised to be fraught with unbearable pain and suffering. I spent the entire drive thinking and doing the very best I could to prepare for the worst but not feeling like there was anything that could truly make me ready for what I was going to face.
My mom.
This had to be about my mom.
My father wouldn’t have called otherwise. He wouldn’t have reached out and spoken with that tone that begged me not to fight him for once.
And because he hadn’t told me to meet him at the hospital, where there might have been some small spark of hope that my mom was just in a precarious situation, I feared the worst had happened. I’d return to Cardinal only to learn that I wouldn’t have the chance to say goodbye to her.
Somewhere in the hollows of my body, somewhere nobody else would ever see, I felt a flicker of regret. It was only a grave occurrence—my mother’s untimely death—that could evoke such a response from me. If someone had deserved better from me, it was her.
But then I arrived and learned the truth.
I should’ve been relieved that I didn’t return home to bury her, to watch as Sylvia Erickson was laid to rest.
Deep down, I was. A couple of hours from now, the reality would settle in, and I’d be grateful she was still here.
But right now, even the knowledge of that silver lining wasn’t enough to erase the aggravation.
I’d pulled up outside my parents’ place ten minutes ago, rushed inside, and found my father in his study, wearing a far-off look. His body was here, but his mind was somewhere else.
And considering my mother was nowhere to be found, something unpleasant bubbled up inside me that my worst fears were coming true.
Swallowing roughly past the pain in my throat, I croaked, “It’s Mom, isn’t it?”
My father’s eyes cut to mine, weariness coating his expression. I’d never seen the man looking so exhausted. As diligent as Barrett Erickson had always been about making each day count, he seemed to have a never-ending supply of energy. To go, go, go… even if it was in complete contrast to how I did the same.
“Thank you for coming so quickly.” His voice was hoarse, his spirit wounded.
In any other scenario, I would have remained in the doorway. Years of encounters had taught me that it’d be futile to sit and hope for some semblance of normalcy between us.
My father and I had always had a tumultuous relationship. We were so vastly different from one another, and finding any common ground had proven to be a struggle.
But at the utter lack of fight in his tone and the absolute defeat in his features, I found myself crossing the room to sit in the chair across from him. “I can… I can take care of the arrangements.”
His brows shot up. “Arrangements?”
“For Mom. For the funeral.”
He blinked, seemingly stunned by my willingness to lend a hand. “Reid, your mother isn’t dead.”
