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Chapter One

J etta Ainsley stood at the kitchen counter sorting through the mail from the past two days. She’d forgotten to empty her mother’s mailbox after a long day spent clearing out the three bathrooms in the house. She rubbed her lower back with one hand while tossing grocery store flyers and postcards from political candidates into a growing pile for the recycle bin.

She separated the bills into a stack to take to Mom, who was in a rehab facility recovering from a nasty leg break after tripping and falling on the escalator at a crowded shopping mall. A battered envelope with a barely legible address piqued her curiosity. She used her mother’s letter opener to slit the brown envelope and dumped the contents onto the counter.

The top paper was a typed, undated note addressed to someone named Jay. Jetta gasped as she realized the letter had been written to her late father. Who would be so cruel as to send a letter to a long-dead man?

Before reading the missive, she checked the envelope for the postmark. Uncertain she’d read the year correctly, she used her phone’s camera to zoom in on the numbers. Sure enough, the postmark bore a date fifteen years ago—two days before her father’s death of a heart attack.

Jetta started a text to her mother to let her know about the envelope but decided to read the papers first. After all, her father was deceased, so it wasn’t like she was violating anyone’s privacy. Given the doctor’s strong recommendation to move to a home with one-level living, Mom had been a little down lately. To leave the home where her mother had spent most of her married life and raised five children hadn’t been an easy one. But at least Jetta had been able to step in and help with the clear out while Mom concentrated on healing.

The letter’s opening words puzzled her.

Dear Jay,

I’m sorry. It’s all my fault you’re in this mess. Believe me when I say I had no intention of blaming you. I’m too much of a coward to confess my part in all of this, but my conscience wouldn’t let me do nothing, and so I’m sending you what I can. I know it’s not enough to completely exonerate you, but it should point FinCEN in the right direction.

No signature adorned the printed page, leaving her no clue as to the author’s identity. Jetta shuffled through the rest of the papers. Account statements from a Cayman Island bank plus several Excel spreadsheets. The numbers meant nothing to her. While her father had been a whizz with digits, she hadn’t inherited his acumen with math. But why would someone send Dad financial documents and apologize for not doing more to exonerate him—from what, Jetta hadn’t a clue. She decided not to text Mom but would bring the papers during her visit tomorrow morning. That way, Mom wouldn’t be able to brush her off like she’d done whenever Jetta asked questions about Dad, who had had a fatal heart attack when Jetta was eleven.

Bingley, her golden retriever mix, bumped her leg, his signal for attention. She scratched his head and glanced at the stove clock. Five fifteen. Time for a quick ball toss in the backyard before she thought about what to eat for dinner.

When she headed to the back door, Bingley pushed ahead of her, his tail wagging. Once outside, she threw the battered tennis ball across the yard, sending Bingley racing after it with a happy bark. He would chase the ball for as long as she tossed it, and she had to admit her oldest sister Jenna had been right in convincing Jetta to adopt the dog when she moved back to the family home six months ago. It had been almost as if Jenna had known Jetta would need a companion as she sorted through the detritus of their parents’ lives.

Bingley trotted up and dropped the ball at her feet. Jetta obliged with another toss, this time sending the ball to the back fence line with the canine in hot pursuit. Her dog panted up, the ball once more in his mouth. She gave it another throw, the rhythm of the game more soothing than she’d anticipated.

But her mind refused to settle down, her thoughts swirling around the mysterious envelope. She flung the tennis ball again to the far corner of the yard, Bingley running all out. Maybe she would finally learn some new information about Dad. While she missed him, she had more memories of her life without him than with him. That had definitely played into volunteering to sort through their parents’ things ahead of putting the house up for sale. Her four older siblings—sixteen, fourteen, twelve, and ten years older than her—had had more time with Dad, although they too rarely talked about the man who had raised and loved them.

Jared, the oldest, had rebuffed her attempts to find out more about their father, while Jenna, the next sibling down, had flat out refused to discuss “the man who ruined our lives.” Jason, preoccupied with his twins and business, never had time for serious conversation. Jade, the youngest of her siblings, had shared the most, but even Jade hadn’t been able to fill in many of the blanks in Jetta’s mind. All of her siblings had either been in college or living on their own at the time of their father’s death.

Bingley nudged her leg with his nose, reminding her to uphold her end of the game. She picked up the tennis ball and complied. Her phone rang, and she pulled it out of her back jean pocket to check caller ID. Jason, the brother who came behind Jenna in birth order. “Hey, what’s up?”

“Just checking in to see how my sis is doing.” A shouting match in the background, the voices high and childlike, made her grin. Mervin and Millicent, no doubt.

“I’m doing okay.” She took the ball from Bingley and walked back to the outside storage bin to deposit it, signaling playtime was over. “Got through the bathrooms today.”

“Find anything interesting?”

She sank into a plastic Adirondak chair as Bingley sniffed along the far-left side of the fenced yard. “Not really, just a lot of expired medications.”

“You know Mom never thought expiration dates applied to her.”

“So true. Didn’t she try to give you an antacid that was eight years old?”

“Yes, she did, telling me there wasn’t anything in there that could ‘go bad.’” He laughed. “I refused and later secretly toss the bottle in the outside garbage can.”

Jetta leaned her head against the chair back. “I did find a bottle of antidepressants with Dad’s name on it under the sink in the ensuite bathroom off Mom’s room. The medication inside had turned to mush, probably because of the moisture of the bathroom, but the label was still legible. I didn’t think Dad had been depressed.”

Jason sighed. “I forget how young you were when he died, so you probably have no idea.”

When he didn’t continue, she pressed. “No idea about what?”

“That Dad had been accused of embezzling millions of dollars but had a fatal heart attack before anything came of it.”

“Wait, what?” Jetta sat bolt upright, her stomach churning at the news. How could her family have not told her this vital piece of their history? “What are you talking about?”

“I told the others we should have said something to you, but none of us wanted to revisit that particular time.”

“I’ll address the idiocy of that statement later—spill it. Now.” Bingley sank on his haunches, laying his head in his lap. She smoothed his silky ear while she listened to her brother tell her about how Topher Robotics, where their father had worked as chief financial officer, had presented evidence he had siphoned off millions over a five-year period, cooking the books to hide the withdrawals. “I can’t believe none of you told me about this. It must have been big news.”

“Mom never said anything?”

Jetta rubbed the bridge of her nose. “To be honest, I never asked her too many questions about his death because talking about Dad made her so sad. Which makes more sense now that I know the whole story.”

“I’m sorry—we should have told you. But I think we all wanted to forget, to move on. Jared had joined a prestigious litigation firm in Boston when Dad was arrested, while Jenna was in the throes of her residency at John Hopkins University Hospital in Baltimore. Jade and I were still in college.”

His explanation made sense but it still didn’t excuse their continued silence. A sharp yell from his end of the phone blasted her ears. Jason shouted something she couldn’t decipher, then he said, “I’ve got to go. Looks like Milicent whacked her brother in the noggin with his favorite blue truck again.”

The antics of her toddler niece and nephew quirked her lips into a smile as she said goodbye, her mind filled with the weight of a family secret everyone else had been carrying but her. Although, to be fair, she was carrying another secret that would soon be out in the open. She rested her hand on her belly, which grew bigger by the day as her due date neared. Mom was the only family member who knew and that was only because Jetta hadn’t been able to hide her pregnancy.

She patted Bingley’s head, her attention straying back to the envelope with its financial documents. The short note made more sense given the context of her father being accused of embezzlement, but she still hadn’t a clue what those papers could do to exonerate a dead man.

All problems for another day, as Mom liked to say in a thick southern accent as she mimicked Scarlett O’Hara. Jetta heaved herself out of the low-slung chair and tucked the phone into her pocket. After she scrambled an egg for dinner, she’d do some internet sleuthing. Millions of missing dollars would certainly have made headlines. Once she had the facts, she could grill her mother about why no one had told her. Being the youngest by so many years meant her siblings and Mom often treated her like a child even though she’d been an adult living on her own for five years now.

“Come on, Bingley. Let’s go inside.” She headed for the sliding doors, but her dog didn’t bound after her. Instead, he staggered, his body shaking violently before he threw up in the grass at the verge of the brick patio. “Bingley!”

She rushed to his side as the dog collapsed in a heap beside the patio, a little foam at his mouth. She laid a hand along his ribs, thankful to feel him breathing. After whipping out her phone, she noted the time—closing in on six. Her regular vet closed at five. “Hang on, Bingley.” Somehow, despite her shaking hands, she managed to Google the nearest emergency vet clinic. There was one on Leesburg Pike, a seven-minute drive away.

Bingley heaved again, spewing more of his stomach contents onto the grass. She laid a hand on his head to reassure him. “I’ll be right back.” Jetta hurried into the house for her keys and a towel to wrap Bingley in.

Back at his side, she placed the faded beach towel around his still body and attempted to lift him into her arms. But no matter how many angles she tried, she couldn’t get the seventy-pound dog more than a couple of inches off the ground. Tears of panic and frustration clouded her vision. She couldn’t lose him!

“Is everything okay?”

The sound of a male voice brought her head up. Seth Whitman, her next-door neighbor, stepped into her backyard through the side gate, his T-shirt accentuating his bulging biceps. “No.” Her voice broke on a sob. “Bingley needs to go to the vet, and I can’t lift him.”

He handed her a set of keys. “I’ll drive so you can sit in the back with him. The back seat should be clear, so open the door and I’ll get the dog.”

Relieved he hadn’t asked delaying questions, she dashed for the gate, leaving it open and headed to his SUV sitting in the adjacent driveway. All the while, she prayed her dog would survive whatever was ailing him and thanked God for bringing Seth to her aid at the right time.

* * *

Seth crouched by the still canine, then reached his arms underneath the dog, being careful to keep the faded pink towel wrapped around Bingley’s lower body. Good thing he regularly dead lifted three hundred pounds or more during his workouts. Carrying the medium-sized pooch wouldn’t be a problem. He rose, the inert dog held easily in his arms.

“Door’s open.” Jetta hovered by the gate as he strode as fast as he could without jostling the animal. After gently laying him on the back seat, he repositioned the towel over the dog and stepped back. She passed him his keys, then hopped in beside Bingley, moving faster than he expected for someone as pregnant as she was. “It’s the Veterinary Emergency Group on Leesburg Pike.”

“Got it.” He closed the back door, then slid behind the wheel, connecting his phone to the vehicle’s Bluetooth. He hit the “Ask Siri” icon and fed the virtual assistant the clinic name to get directions. In less than ten minutes, they arrived at the clinic. He carried Bingley into the office, where staff immediately directed him to an empty exam room. After depositing the dog onto the stainless-steel table, he stepped back to allow Jetta access to the table.

A male tech came in, along with an older woman wearing a lab coat and stethoscope around her neck. “I’m Dr. Williams and this is Nolan, one of our techs. What’s going on with this handsome guy?”

Jetta swiped at her cheeks with her fingers. “I’d been playing fetch with Bingley and his favorite tennis ball in the backyard when he suddenly started vomiting and then collapsed.”

“How many times did he throw up?”

Seth gave into his impulse to move closer to Jetta, wanting her to feel she wasn’t alone. He stood by her right shoulder as she stroked Bingley’s head while the tech checked the dog’s vitals and answered their questions. “At least twice.”

“How long ago did this happen?”

She shrugged. “I’m not sure, maybe fifteen, twenty minutes? Not more than half an hour.”

“I think it was less than that,” Seth inserted, not wanting to interrupt, but he had to correct Jetta’s statement in case it was important in figuring out what was going on with Bingley. “When I arrived, it was five-fifty-eight. It’s now six-ten, so it’s probably closer to fifteen than twenty minutes.”

The doctor nodded. “Good. Now I’m going to ask you both to step out so we can pump Bingley’s stomach and see if we can get out the rest of whatever he ingested.”

Jetta opened her mouth as if to protest, but the tech added, “It’s not something you really want to see. We’ll take good care of Bingley.”

“Come on, let’s let them get Bingley better.” Seth gently touched Jetta’s arm. He guided her back to the waiting area.

“Ma’am? Would you come check in now?” The receptionist beckoned Jetta over to the counter.

“I’ll grab a seat.” Seth wanted to stay with her but wasn’t sure if his presence would annoy or crowd her. Best not to chance it. He picked a magenta plastic chair and settled into it, the molded frame groaning under his bulk.

He prayed Bingley would recover from whatever ailed the dog—he could see how much the animal meant to Jetta. He’d always wanted a pet, had even enticed a stray cat into their apartment one summer. Seth hadn’t thought about that feline in years. He’d named the small tabby Buttercup because of her very light, almost yellow stripes. Buttercup had been his companion nearly all summer until his mom had caught him pouring milk into a saucer for the cat. Seth shifted uncomfortably as the memory of his mother’s anger and her man-of-the-moment’s vicious kick that sent Buttercup over the Rainbow Bridge, as he’d later learned people say when a beloved pet died.

“Guess we wait now.” Jetta dropped into the seat beside him, a hand on her belly. “I’m so glad you came by when you did. I couldn’t have lifted Bingley myself.”

Her praise warmed his heart—and his neck. He instinctively rubbed the back of his neck, as if his movement could erase the telltale signs of his embarrassment. “I’m happy to help.”

A tear slipped down her cheek. “You’ve been so kind to me.”

How could he not be? His protective instincts had kicked in the moment her mother had introduced Jetta to him on the grassy strip between their driveways when Jetta had brought Bingley home from the pound. A light breeze had carried the fruity scent of her shampoo to tickle his nose. Since he had often assisted Emily Ainsley with household tasks, he had continued to do so with Jetta after Emily’s accident.

Breathing deeply, he caught a whiff of that same citrusy smell underneath the antiseptic of the vet’s waiting room. “How’s your mom doing?”

“She’s impatient with the slow recovery.” Jetta sighed. “Her leg isn’t healing as fast as the surgeon would like, and there’s talk she may not fully recover the ability to walk unaided.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” Emily had become a dear friend in the three years he’d rented the house next door, and his heart ached for the older woman’s not-so-great prognosis. “I guess it’s a good thing she’ll be moving to one-level living soon.”

“I guess.”

Her desultory response reminded him she was clearing out her childhood home. Seth couldn’t fathom having such a connection to a house. He and his mom had moved countless times, and he’d had even more moves after social services stepped in and removed him when he was nine. He envied her stable childhood, although losing her father at eleven meant it wasn’t without pain. At least she’d known who her father was, something he had no idea of how to find out for himself, since his mother had left him no clues as to where he might look.

“Ms. Ainsley?” Nolan stood a few feet away.

Seth rose along with Jetta.

“Yes?”

“Come this way.” The tech walked toward the examine room.

Jetta hurried after Nolan without looking back or asking Seth to accompany her. The story of his life—always destined to stay on the fringes of any friendship. But there was one thing he could do from afar, and he bowed his head to pray again for Bingley’s recovery. If he gave into temptation and added a line or two that his lovely next-door neighbor noticed him beyond his helpfulness, then that was between him and God.