No River Too Wide Read Online Free Page B

have been brought in and continue to search, but the home’s residents, Rex and Janine Stoddard, remain unaccounted for at this time.
    “You doing okay, Harmony?” a voice asked from the doorway. “Taylor’s not here yet?”
    Harmony wiped her eyes with the back of her hand before she turned in the desk chair. “Rilla, I think my mother’s dead.”
    If someday Hollywood scouted the Asheville countryside for the perfect farm wife, Rilla Reynolds, clothed today in overalls, would easily be chosen. She was stocky but not overweight, easy to look at without being either plain or pretty. Her face was rectangular, her nose snubbed, and her brown eyes searched for answers even when she was engaging in small talk.
    This wasn’t small talk.
    “Did you get a phone call?” she asked, coming to stand beside Harmony and placing her hand on her younger friend’s shoulder for comfort. Then, before Harmony could answer, she shook her head. “Of course not. Nobody in Topeka knows you’re here.”
    “I found this on the internet.” Harmony got up, as much to put distance between herself and the computer screen as to give Rilla a chance to read it.
    Rilla took the chair, slowly bending her knees until she was finally sitting. From some distant point in her mind, Harmony realized that Rilla had already been on her feet too long today and would pay the price when she tried to sleep tonight.
    Rilla silently read the article. Then she swiveled to face Harmony. “That’s the house you grew up in?”
    Harmony nodded, thankful that Rilla hadn’t called it a home.
    “They haven’t found a body yet. You saw that part?”
    Harmony nodded again.
    Rilla never danced around anything. “I guess it’s possible the fire was so extreme they never will, but it’s also possible nobody was home.”
    “My parents don’t go anywhere except a cabin up north where my father can fish, and my mother can wait on him. They always do that during the first week in June, not September. If my father has to be away for work, it’s usually only for a night, and he never takes my mother. She’s always in that house unless she’s making a quick trip to the grocery store.”
    “You haven’t been home in how long?”
    Harmony shrugged, because doing math right now was impossible. “I’m twenty-three. I left right after high school graduation.”
    “That’s years, Harmony. And you don’t talk to your parents. Maybe things have changed.”
    “Sure, maybe my father found Jesus.” Harmony paused. “Or a different Jesus than the one he claimed he found years ago. You know, the Jesus who insisted that he beat my mother into submission if she planted petunias when he preferred marigolds.”
    “People can change.”
    Harmony considered that, but not for long. “He likes himself too much to think there might be a reason to.”
    “No family they might be visiting?”
    “My mother has no family, and my father only has distant cousins. They stay far away from him, which shows there might be good sensible people on the Stoddard side and my genes aren’t complete poison.” She heard the bitterness in her voice, but she didn’t care. She would deal with her father’s death if she had to, but right now her only concern was for her mother.
    Rilla was assessing the situation, looking past Harmony’s shoulder as her mind whirled. Harmony could see it in her eyes. Rilla was compassionate and empathetic, but right now Rilla-the-problem-solver was in play.
    “I think we ought to call Brad at the office and get him to make inquiries. You don’t want to give yourself away, and Brad will know how to go about doing it so the call isn’t traced back to you.”
    Harmony wasn’t sure what to say. Brad Reynolds was a lawyer, and a good one. She needed answers. She just didn’t feel ready for them.
    “It will take him some time,” Rilla said, reading her expression. “You’ll have time to prepare.”
    “He could have killed her. Finally. He could have set