“Stuffins,” Kyle repeated, clueless.
“Doc McStuffins,” Harmony elaborated. “Disney. She’s allowed to watch one episode before bed. I’m sure Kyle would rather finish his walk and go home.”
“Actually,” he said, “Stuffins sounds perfect.”
“Really?” Harmony asked as Bea cheered his decision-making skills.
“Really. If you don’t mind.” He smirked. “Mama.”
Harmony rolled her eyes as Bea sounded off with a chorus of pleases. “I don’t have mac-and-cheese. Tonight’s leftovers.”
“Chitlins and dumplin’s,” Bea informed him very matter-of-factly.
“Chicken and dumplings, baby,” Harmony said when Kyle’s brow peaked. To him she added, “I don’t feed her pig intestines. I swear.”
“They’re not so bad.” When Harmony and Bea’s noses wrinkled in sync, Kyle grinned in a wicked sort of way that resonated from the past. “Come on. You’d try them once.”
“Only if you wolf that big strawberry down first,” Harmony suggested.
Kyle frowned at the moon. They both knew he was allergic to the fruit. It’d always puzzled Harmony—someone as strong as him, felled by a berry. “Did, ah, these leftovers come from your mom, by chance?”
Harmony ran her tongue over her teeth. He was allergic to strawberries. But unlike her mother—the culinary goddess of the south—she was allergic to cooking. “Yes. But I mashed the taters.”
“With the raw bits left in?”
“How else would they stick to your ribs?”
Bea tugged on his hand, and Kyle followed her, rising to his feet and swinging their linked fingers as he fell into step with Harmony. “Now, that sounds like a treat.”
“You didn’t eat with your family?” Harmony asked as they began to walk down the lane to the suite.
“I did,” he admitted. “Mom made her glazed Andouille-stuffed pork because she knows that’s all I think about when I’m away. But when I’m really tired of MREs, I’ve been known to think about Briar’s chicken and dumplings.”
“Anything else?”
“Your freaking macaroni and cheese,” he noted. “Though it is bound to kill me eventually.”
She smoothed her lips together, pleased to make the cut.
“And if your mother’s thinking about making a blackberry pie or her coq au vin anytime soon...”
“I’ll be sure to bring leftovers home for you.” Harmony picked up the hint.
He sent her a sly sideways smile. “Thanks.”
Bea skipped ahead, buzzing with excitement. The wind swept up her hair as it tossed through the alley of trees arcing like an awning over the narrow pathway. Honeysuckle blossoms tumbled down, a soft white rain. The sweet fragrance teased up memories of summers long ago. Summers when life was still simple, rich and undefined. “I envy her,” Harmony mused as she watched her daughter caper toward the lights of the white-framed house. Kyle turned to question her. She explained, “She gets to grow up at The Farm. Could childhood be any better?”
A frown toggled Kyle’s mouth, and he looked at the ground as they kicked honeysuckle blossoms up under their feet. “No.”
“I was so jealous of Gavin when we were kids,” she pointed out. “All those weekends he got to come here and run wild with you.”
“You came with him,” he remembered.
“Not as much as I wanted to.” They walked on, quiet together. Almost at the point of lollygagging. The night was one of those lulling complacent ones, tepid and inky, luring people outdoors like a crooking finger. “And, anyway, you boys reveled in leaving me behind.”
“Not true.” When she arched a brow, he digressed. “Not entirely true. Not on my part.”
She smiled at bit over the admission. “Have you seen him? Gavin? He hasn’t called in a while. I know he’s all right. Dad tells me. He gets emails. I know y’all are on separate teams and you take turns on the hopper, but I was hoping, in the crossover, you might’ve seen one another.”
“I haven’t seen him,” Kyle said shortly, that frown pulling at his mouth again.
Harmony licked her lips. “I know the new job in DC has kept him tied up when he’s stateside. Still, it’d be nice to have him visit.”
A line burrowed between Kyle’s brows. “Job?”
“He didn’t tell you?” Harmony crossed her arms, oddly chilled. She knew things hadn’t been the same between Kyle and Gavin since Benji’s death. Their business was their own, and, when it came to the details of service, they kept it that way. Harmony understood even as she bristled at the not knowing what had gone amiss between her brother and the friend he’d once claimed was like a brother to him.
“No, he didn’t,” Kyle stated. The frown deepened. “Harm, when was the last time you talked to him?”
“A while.”
“What’s a while?”
She thought about it. “Must be six months now. Maybe seven.”
“Seven...” He trailed off, perturbed. “Did he visit then?”
“No. He rarely does.” At Kyle’s curse, she added quickly, “There’s been the job. And I know he has a life. From the sound of it, there might have been a girl at one point...” When Kyle only shook his head, she trailed off.
“So you spoke on the phone,” he surmised. “What about?”
She crawled back into her memory. The conversation had been brief, stilted. Yawning absences did that to the tightest of siblings. “He talked about work. He asked after Bea, made sure Dad was telling him the truth and all’s well with him and Mom and the inn...”
“Nothing else?” Kyle asked.
What was he waiting for her to say? She took herself back over the conversation with Gavin but couldn’t think of anything more. “Don’t think so. Why?” she asked. Though nothing changed on the surface, she could all but hear the hum of Kyle’s indignation building. “Do you know something I don’t?”
He seemed to hesitate. His outer shell was as good as a bullet casing. He kept tight to that casing. “He should be here.”
“If you’re here,” she calculated, “then isn’t his team rotating to active?”
“The team is,” he said and nothing more.
Harmony was growing irritated, too. “He’s my brother. If you know something, tell me.”
“It’s not my place,” he said shortly. “He should be the one talking to you about this. When was the last he came home?”
Harmony sighed. “I don’t know. Last summer sometime.”
“For how long?”
“He stayed overnight at the inn and left the next evening. Mom and Dad both wanted him to stay longer. We all did.”
“Why didn’t he?”
“He said he had training.”
“You believe that?”
She rolled her eyes heavenward, tired of the third degree. “I don’t know.”
“He visits once a year and is hardly around for twenty-four hours when he does. That’s bullshit, Harmony. I know it. You know it. Everybody knows