“Come on, you’re the reporter. Figure it out.”

Jase waited.

Prescott shrugged. “Hell, I’m in insurance. Always pressured to get new clients, so I checked. Who knows, maybe she could use some term life?”

Jase let further conversation about Brianna Hayward slide, didn’t want to go there. “You’re already looking to move?” he asked, following his brother down a short, familiar hallway.

“It’s gone a little further than that.”

In the kitchen, where the old linoleum curled and the counters were scarred by decades of use, Lena was pouring cereal into bowls. Pale hair had been scraped into a loose bun on the top of her head, and she was wearing a T-shirt that hugged her large belly, a white skirt, and flip-flops that snapped as she moved briskly around the kitchen.

A short woman who had once boasted an hourglass figure, Lena was in her eighth month of pregnancy and appeared squat. She glanced over her shoulder at her brother-in-law. “Pres told you we’re moving, right?” she asked, slipping the tab on the top of the Cheerios box into its slot.

Jase nodded.

As if needing to explain, she said, “I can’t stay here. I just can’t. I won’t bring another child into the world to be brought up out here in the middle of nowhere.” She walked to the pantry, stuck the box into the cupboard, and yelled up the back stairs. “Kids! Come on! We’re gonna be late for VBS! Trinity? You hear me? Caleb, you come on down here! Pronto!”

Hearing the shuffle of feet on the floor above, Lena walked to the refrigerator where she pulled out a carton of milk and placed it, along with two spoons, on the small table pushed against the wall opposite the sink, the same spot where Jase and Prescott had sat during all of their years growing up on this farm.

“Prescott said the place has too many ghosts for you,” Jase said.

Lena shot her husband a glance, then automatically rubbed the cross that hung from a chain at her neck. “Shhh!” she warned as her children thundered down the staircase and clambered into the room.

“Uncle Jase!” Trinity’s brown eyes lit up when she saw him. She raced across the room, blond hair flying, and flung herself into his arms. “I didn’t know you were here!”

“I snuck in,” he teased, juggling her onto a hip.

A moment later, her younger brother barreled into the room with a squeal of delight. “Hey!” Caleb cried, shooting across the floor to jump up.

Jase caught his nephew with his free arm. “Hey yourself, little man.” Jase had never considered himself much of a kid person, but when his niece was born seven years earlier, all that changed.