Page 61 of Return to Telegraph Creek

“I—” he said.

“Here, you stay with the kids,” Trick said, moving forward and joining me in front of the barn door.“I’ll go with Jimmy.”

Oscar nodded with relief.“Okay.”

He stepped back to stand beside Peter and Lizzie.Peter was still holding little Sam, and Lizzie was plastered to Peter’s side, an expression of pure terror on her face.

I reached for the handle of the door, and Sam started wailing again, as if I was about to release the devil or some such thing.

“’Tis all right,” Peter shushed him.“We ain’t goin’ in there.They are…for a minute.”

That made me feel better, as Peter didn’t seem worried about us going in the barn.There likely wasn’t anything out of the ordinary inside it.But something had happened there—something that they didn’t want to tell us.Or that Cal didn’t want us to know.

I tugged the door open a bit and peered inside, in case there was a dead hog or something.But the kids would have told us if ’twas something so ordinary.And we’d have smelled it.

Sunbeams slipped between the rafters through the unsound roof of the outbuilding, making dust motes in the air.There was straw on the floor that looked pretty fresh, even though Cal had said they didn’t use the barn.Trick and I looked around at the ramshackle walls then meet each other’s gaze.

Trick shrugged.

“Looks like a plain old barn to me.”

“Yep,” I agreed.I gazed at the open door behind us, then back at her.“But there’s a story here of some kind.”

“Sure enough,” she said.“I suppose we’ll have to ask Cal about it, though she might not tell us.”

I nodded.“Not today.Let’s see what Miss June finds out first.”

“All right.”

We went back out into the bright daylight and smiled at the children, who still seemed unsettled.

“What a boring old barn,” I said.“Ain’t much of anythin’, is it?”

Peter seemed to sigh with relief, and he gave me a hesitant smile.“No, it ain’t much.”

Lizzie flashed her gaze to him and back to me.

“You want to try ridin’ Dixie?”I asked her.“Or maybe Oscar will let you ride Onyx.”

Lizzie’s eyes went wide, and she smiled, all her fear about the barn gone in an instant.

“Onis!Please, can I ride her?Please!”

Oscar and I exchanged a relieved glance, even smiling at Lizzie’s twist on Onyx’ name.

“Of course you can.I reckon Onyx will be happy to have you up there,” he said, holding out his hand to Lizzie, who rushed over and clasped it.

I met Oscar’s gaze as we walked back to the horses and smiled.He was good with them kids, and it made me happy to see it.Didn’t seem like he’d had much parenting when he was small, but he knew how to do it, sure enough.

I glanced back at Peter, who had let Samuel down so the little one could follow us on his own.Peter stood stock still and stared at the barn, as if he couldn’t let go of whatever ’twas that it meant to him.

“You comin’?”I said, wanting to break him out of the spell.Maybe, if Cal refused to tell us what had happened there, I could get it out of Peter.

“Sure,” he said in a quiet voice, and moved to follow us.

We led the children around the field on the horses, steering clear of the barn, until finally Miss June came out of the house with Cal, and they walked toward us.

Cal’s face was red, like she’d been crying, and Miss June seemed concerned.