Treasure on Lilac Lane: A Jewell Cove Novel Read Online Free

pride in—especially considering she’d shouldered all the financial responsibility after his dad took off. It would be stupid to sell when he was scrambling to pay rent for a run-down bachelor apartment on the northwest side of town.
    If Jewell Cove had a “bad” area, that was it. It wasn’t the picturesque rainbow-colored buildings of Main Street with their fancy window boxes and stained-glass windows. It was people struggling to make ends meet and keep their heads above water. It had suited him just fine, because people minded their own damn business.
    He went from the kitchen into the living room, past her favorite chair and the silent television and the video cabinet that held her chick-flick DVDs. Beyond that was the back porch, where a few pieces of wicker furniture made a nice spot to sit in the sun. Rick frowned, realizing that this porch would be the perfect spot to work on his painting. Lots of natural light and space that wasn’t taken up with anything important. Cabinets along one end, below the windows, where he could store his paints and brushes … and privacy, so no one need know what he got up to in his spare time. Not that anyone would believe it if they saw it. He wouldn’t have believed it either, but he could honestly say that his new hobby had been the one thing that had kept him sane since leaving the hot, dusty hell where he’d been deployed.
    Was he really considering doing it? Moving back home?
    He went up the stairs to the master bedroom, looked in on the abandoned bed and floral duvet, stared at the closed closet doors, and ventured into the bathroom where the scent of her lavender soap still mysteriously clung to the air even though she hadn’t lived at home for over a month.
    He couldn’t do this. Couldn’t go through her things like they didn’t matter, like they belonged to someone else.
    But he had to. He was the only one. He didn’t want a bunch of women from the church coming in and pawing through his mom’s stuff like a flock of crows. He took a moment and inhaled, and then exhaled slowly, dropping an intentional barrier over his emotions, deadening himself to the grief and sentimentality that had overtaken him so often lately. He knew how to do it. To block out the darkness and guilt and simply do the job at hand. God knows he’d managed it while overseas, any time Kyle’s name was mentioned. Dead inside. Yeah, that was it.
    Jaw set, he went back out to his truck and retrieved the bundle of boxes and packing tape he’d brought along. Methodically he made up the boxes, adjusting to the awkward task using his prosthetic. Then he went through his mother’s clothing and personal effects, boxing them up for Goodwill. It was what she would have wanted. He had no use for her clothing, the shelves of old romance novels, face creams and makeup and hair rollers. Someone else might as well get good use out of them.
    Lifting the boxes into his arms was awkward, but once he had the weight balanced it was no problem to carry them downstairs and into the back of his truck. Box after box of shirts, jeans, dresses, shoes. It was okay as long as he didn’t stop to think too much about them belonging to his mom. Detached. Unemotional. He could do this.
    When her bedroom and bathroom were done, he ventured into the third bedroom, the “spare” room as she’d always called it, and the closet there. It contained very little: a few heavy winter coats that were out of season and a handful of banking boxes tucked in behind the clothes. Rick took one out, lifted the lid, and saw a row of coiled spines—photo albums.
    His stomach clenched.
    He put the lid back on. There were some things he simply couldn’t tackle today. One of them was a trip down memory lane.
    “Rick?”
    He jumped as a deep voice called up the stairs. Tom, if he could venture a guess. Part of his every-other-day check-in. Rick wanted to be annoyed, but the truth was he’d started to look forward to the short visits from