“Where?”

“Let’s just say that if I ever see that realtor again, I will live up to my former reputation and jack him in his clean-cut jaw.”

Dad had a bit of a record. After he got out of the service and before he met Mom, he’d gotten into a few bar scuffles. One turned out to be the chair-smashing, bottle-over-the-head sort. I never knew about the brawl until after Mom passed. When I’d turned sixteen, though, Dad had sat me down and confessed everything. Not in a get-it-off-his-chest kind of way, but more like I was some kind of lawyer who needed to know the whole truth. He’d said he wanted me to be informed in case it ever came up again. He’d also told me he did time for assault.

Not a long time, he’d said, making it clear that the man he’d pummeled had walked out of the hospital without permanent physical damage. But he’d also wanted me to know why, even though he’d spent several years in anger management and therapy, normal jobs weren’t going to be an option for him. Not the good kind that would allow a single father to properly care for two daughters.

The only part of the story I side-eyed was that last part. Because his Richard Smash days were so far in the past that I felt sure he could have settled in any town he really wanted to.

But Dad needed his projects. And to not be in any environment that encouraged looking back. And I needed him to be Dad.

So, house flipping we a-went.

“What did he leave out?” I asked. The realtor must have omitted some truly odious piece of information for Dad to even joke about breaking his longstanding no-violence track record.

“You know all that tall grass in the back? Close to the woods?”

“Yeah?”

“Turns out there’s a family graveyard hiding in one patch.”

I sucked a hissing breath in through my teeth.

Selling a house rumored to have ghosts was something we’d dealt with before. Successfully, too, since—as far as amenities went—ghosts weren’t real. Sometimes buyers even wanted a “haunted” house.

But bodies in the ground? Not a good selling point.

I tilted my head at him. “Can’t you sue him for that?”

“Not on an ‘as is’ buy, turns out,” he said, making it clear his brain had already traveled these neural pathways and that he’d probably even made some phone calls.

“Well.” I sighed, giving him a pat on the back. “We’ve got six months to figure it out.”

“And six months to keep it hidden from Charlie.”

Like so much else, I added in my head.

“Easy enough,” I said with a shrug. “The grass will hide the graves for at least another month. After that, we can get some tarps to hide them for the winter. It’s too dangerous for Charlie to go that close to the woods anyway.”

“You be careful if you go back there, too,” Dad said. “There’s a lake beyond the trees that belongs to the next lot, and probably snakes and varmints and everything else in those woods.”