Doing It Over (Most Likely To #1)(23)

“Good times.” Jo smiled into the memory.

“Isn’t that the time your dad called you out for drinking?”

“He sure did. Said someone complained about a disturbance in the cemetery, came out the next day while I slept it off and found my school ID next to the leftover lemonade. He left my ID next to the mason jars we’d left behind on the kitchen counter. Signed me up for the summer cross-country team the next day.”

“That was awful. Five miles every day in the summer.”

“Smart bastard. I didn’t have time or energy to drink that summer.”

Zoe lifted her eyebrows. “Not much anyway.”

Jo knelt down and pulled a weed that didn’t need to be pulled. “I miss him,” she said in a low voice. “I swear I can feel him at the strangest times. Like he’s there looking over me.”

Mel knelt beside her. “Sounds like a normal thing. I know if there was a way to watch over Hope if something happened to me, I’d do it.”

Zoe walked along the back of the stone and paused. She lifted a single white lily from the ground and placed it on top. “Must have fallen off.”

Jo narrowed her brow, a memory tried to surface but didn’t make it. “That’s nice.”

Silence filled the space between them before Jo voiced something to her best friends she hadn’t shared with anyone else. “He was murdered.”

Zoe sucked in a breath.

“What? I thought it was an accident,” Mel said, dumfounded.

“I know what everyone thinks. I also know what I know.”

“But everyone said—”

“Accidental shooting. I know. That’s what I was told. No one was more careful with his firearms than my dad.”

“Jo?” Zoe held doubt in her tone.

“What are the chances of you placing your palm in a vat of hot oil, Zoe? Or you pushing Hope off a cliff?” she asked Melanie.

Both women held their breath and stared.

“I know what I know. I read the reports. I have little memories that come back to me every once in a while. They started surfacing after his death. I remember this time of year always being difficult for him.”

“Kids graduating, lots of parties.”

“The annual high school reunion followed by the Fourth of July and everything surrounding it. I know. But it was more than that,” Jo insisted.

“Are you sure?”

Jo nodded. “Yeah. I’m sure. One of the things I learned in the academy is that criminals often return to the scene of the crime.”

“And that’s why you’re still here. To find your dad’s killer.”

Jo met Zoe’s gaze and moved to Mel’s. “Yeah. I’ll find him. Eventually.”

She took in her father’s tombstone and offered her pledge in silence.

I’ll find him, Daddy.





“Did it shrink?”

“The gym?”

Melanie looked up into the eves of the high school gym and could have sworn the room had shrunk. “Wasn’t it bigger?”

“I don’t think so,” Zoe muttered.

“The whole town feels smaller than when we lived here.” It didn’t help that a few staple storefronts had closed down because of the poor economy.

“I hear ya. My old room feels like a shoe box.” Zoe had spent the first night at her mom’s and then decided to bunk up with Jo.

“I’m pretty sure none of us exploded . . . how is it possible everything feels smaller?”

Zoe led Melanie toward the purple and gold decorated registration table. The official reunion party wasn’t for another day, but today they were asked to help sort out the list of names of attendees who were coming to the event into the clubs and activities they knew the alumni had participated in.

“I think our minds expanded, making everything else feel smaller.”

Melanie could buy that. “You know what’s funny . . . the inn doesn’t feel smaller. Everything else . . . yeah. Even the gas station looks tiny. I know it hasn’t changed. It hasn’t, right?”

Zoe fell silent, her eyes locked across the room.

Melanie followed her friend’s gaze and sighed.

Luke stood talking to a couple of guys who looked familiar but she couldn’t place names to.

And Zoe stared.

Melanie stood beside her, silent with her own thoughts.

“Why does he have to look so damn good?” Zoe quietly asked.

“He always looked good.” But he only had eyes for Zoe. Once the two of them hooked up, the town instantly assumed there would be li’l Zoes and li’l Lukes following behind in no time.

The town had been wrong.

“Just the women I’ve been searching for.”

Melanie cringed.

“Margie.”

Full of her fake bubbly self, Margie approached them with a yearbook in one hand, a pom-pom in the other. “If it isn’t Zoe Brown, River Bend’s claim to fame.” The compliment brushed hands with sarcasm.

“Well if it isn’t Margie Taylor.” Zoe matched her sarcasm and added a smirk. “Still motivating the football team?” Zoe wiggled her fingers under the dangling plastic strings of their school colors.

“Once a cheerleader always a cheerleader.”