Hard Edge Read Online Free

on her candy shop blog that orders might be delayed due to a friend’s death, she still had plenty to do. I’d promised to help her. I badly needed something to distract me.
    I got up and walked to the window. I pulled open the blinds. It was a bright, sunny day, but it might just as well have been cold and gloomy. The entire town seemed stunned into a darkly quiet lull. News of Grady’s death had, as I’d predicted, hit the town hard. My parents had both looked nearly gray with sorrow as they stood outside the airport terminal waiting for me to retrieve my luggage.
    I had a hard time directing my gaze toward the house across the street. It seemed the buttery yellow facade, the slate colored roof and the blue flower boxes that had always made Grady’s house vibrate with life, looked grim, overshadowed by the heartbreak pulsating from within.
    I wondered if Caden was there, inside, sitting in that tiny den slash bedroom, the sleeping space the Strattons had carved out for him when he stayed over. He hated that pretend bedroom almost as much as he hated being tossed back and forth between houses for holidays. I briefly imagined him sitting in the family room where Grady and I had always done homework, consoling his Dad and, himself, deep in anguish, trying to come to grips with how something like this could have happened to his brother. Of all the people I would be facing, in the next few days, all the people who knew and loved Grady, facing Caden would be the hardest of all. I’d been holding myself together amazingly well, even after seeing the grief on my parents’ faces, but something told me that those invisible bindings, those tenuous strings that were keeping me from falling apart, would break the moment I saw Caden.
    Dad knocked and spoke through the door. “Kenna?”
    “Come in, Dad.”
    He opened the door and poked his head inside. “I bought some donuts, kiddo. Why don’t you come out? Your mom could use some help. She told me I was more of a nuisance than an asset in the kitchen.”
    “Uh huh,” I said with a smile. “Drop the pretense, Dad. I already know you go out of your way to pretend as if you have lobster claws instead of hands when you’re in the kitchen, just so you don’t have to help with the candy.”
    He stepped inside and patted his round stomach. “Can you blame me? Look at this. It’s like I’m going to hatch my own twin one of these days.”
    Dad had grown older and paunchier, but he still had that Robert Redford smile, or at least that’s what my mom had named it. I’d inherited his blonde hair, but, much to my chagrin, not his blue eyes. My mom’s brown eye genes had won on that front.
    Our brief, much needed, moment of levity vanished. Dad opened his arms for yet another hug, one of at least thirty since I’d gotten back to Mayfair. I wasn’t a parent, but it seemed instinctual—that need to hug your own child when someone you knew had lost theirs.
    I walked into his arms and realized how much I’d missed his comforting embrace. We stood that way until Mom’s smacking of pots and pans in the kitchen jarred us from the quiet moment. Dad kissed my forehead and reluctantly lowered his arms.
    I raised my brow at him. “You mentioned donuts? Chocolate devil’s food with nuts?”
    “Would I forget my little Kenny’s favorite donut? I think your mom has a few tasks lined up for you, so get dressed and I’ll see you in the kitchen.” He walked out.
    The warmth in my room assured me that the sun outside was hot. I pulled on a pair of shorts and a tank shirt and dragged a brush through my hair. I placed Scooby back on my pillow and patted his brown head.
    Mom was at the stove standing in a swirl of sugar scented steam as I walked into the kitchen. With the candy business booming, Dad had hired a contractor to knock out the room dividing the kitchen from the dining room. It was now one giant kitchen with an eight burner professional stove and a massive granite island for