I breathed out a slow sigh of relief. I hadn’t expected him to be so completely on the same wavelength, but this was great.
“I think so, too. He usually had pretty good instincts about people.”
Wes glanced at me, and I bit my lip, considering what to say next.
“Which is why I don’t understand what’s happened in the company. How did corruption or any criminal activity happen on his watch?”
Wes shrugged but not dismissively. “Let’s not make any judgments till we see the paperwork.”
I nodded and we both fell silent until we reached my parents’ house.
I climbed the steps warily, half-expecting to find Mom red-eyed and wearing black, the curtains all closed, the clocks all stopped.
But an ‘80s power ballad blasted from the living room, and when we walked inside, Mom was shimmying and shaking her way around an open suitcase, her hairbrush in her hand as she belted out a tuneless accompaniment to the singer.
When she saw us, she smiled and stopped moving, but didn’t turn the music down. “Not my fault they’ve forgotten the words and the tune,” she said.
I glanced around the room, taking in the piles of clothes and the assorted suitcases.
“Wesley!” Mom held her arms out, and when Wes didn’t move, she pulled him to her and spun him vigorously to the music, whirling him round the room to an entirely separate beat.
I blinked at the sheer joy she exuded before she deposited Wes in a small space on the sofa and reached for me instead.
“Come on, Jo. Dance with me.” She drew a deep inhale and her eyes sparkled. “Can’t you still feel him, too? His energy is all around, and it just makes me want to dance and bask in it. I want to soak up every last trace of your father while I still have that connection in this house.” She didn’t stop moving as she looked around and sighed. “When I come back from the cruise, the house will be empty. Your dad will be gone. He won’t be here with me anymore. It will be permanent. But for now, I can still feel him all around me, and I want to absorb that and remember it. I want to dance with him one last time.”
I nodded. I hadn’t thought of it that way before, but she was right. Dad’s scent was still everywhere. In this moment, I could almost pretend he hadn’t really gone again. But when Mom returned from her holiday, that would be like another watershed moment, her moving into the future alone.
She could definitely have this special time right now, and I grinned at her as I increased the speed of my slightly off-tempo moves.
Then Mom hugged me and pressed a kiss to my cheek before jiving her way over to a pile of clothes.
“Mom?”
She hadn’t even asked why we were here.
“Was Dad working on some paperwork here in the house? Did Charmaine come over to work with him on it?” The answer to both of those questions was yes, but I wanted to jog her memory.
She stopped briefly. “Yes. There was some paperwork, some files that they were very secret and squirrelly about. They put them away in the attic each time they were done. I never really saw them, but you’re welcome to go and have a look for yourself.” She gestured toward the stairs, and I glanced at Wes.
It sounded like those were definitely the files we needed to see if they were hidden away and not just sitting in Dad’s office.
I turned to walk upstairs, but Mom spoke again.
“Does it matter that the other guy was also asking after any paperwork your dad might have left in the house?”
“Which guy?” Suspicion ran cold through my veins.
Mom frowned, her brow creasing. “Parker, is it?”
When I opened my mouth to speak, she continued.
“Oh, don’t worry. I didn’t tell him anything. He smells as bad as that Ingrid girl you once brought home.” She threw out the last sentence before picking up her dancing again as she tossed a pile of clothes into the open suitcase, and I led Wes out of the living room and up the wide staircase to the next story.
The attic was accessible up a narrow flight of stairs. It was old and dusty, and the source of many wild imaginings from when I was a child. I quite liked it now, though, including the musty smell that emanated from everything stored there.
Mom’s sense of smell was a strange phenomenon. She’d always maintained Ingrid smelled odd, and that had been the basis for neither her nor Dad trusting my friend when I’d chosen to. And now she’d said the same about Parker.
She’d been spot-on about Ingrid, so I couldn’t exactly ignore her intuition a second time.