Page 83 of The Moment They Can't Forget

“Did you tell him you did it?”

Ally nodded beside her. “I said I was sorry, but if he stopped annoying me, then I wouldn’t do anything else like putting earwigs in his lunch again.”

“And has he left you alone?”

“That only happened last week, so it’s early days,” Ally said, sounding about twenty. She’d been brought up around adults and sometimes spoke like them.

“Nice work on dealing with it yourself, then,” Zoe said, hoping she was saying the right things. “Did you tell your daddy or anyone else in the family?”

Ally shook her head.

“Your secret is safe with me, and if you need my help anytime, you let me know.”

“Thanks, Aunty Zoe. I’m really glad you’re home. It’s nice having another woman around.”

“It’s good to be back, honey, and we women need to stick together,” she said solemnly.

“We came here on a school trip last month,” Ally said when Zoe pulled her car to a stop beside JD’s.

She’d been to his house twice, and both times were etched in her memory.

“No way, really?”

“JD showed us his animals and other cool stuff. Then we all went for a ride in the trailer behind his ATV.”

“He has an ATV?”

Ally turned in her seat to look at Zoe. “JD’s cool, Aunt Zoe.”

“If you say so,” she muttered, getting out of her car. Opening the rear door, Ted and Sylvie leaped out and ran to a gate in the fence. Her eyes went to the direction of the hammock by the water. Nope, not going there.

Getting the supplies she had to deliver out of the trunk, Zoe followed her niece through the gate and locked it behind her. She then walked down the path to the large barn. Hopefully, he wasn’t home.

She could hear the excited barks of the dogs as they ran with her niece, and then they disappeared into the huge red barn. Zoe followed.

The building had a large central space and stalls off it on both sides. She could hear Ally’s voice and hoped she was talking to the animals. Moving down the rows, she peeked in each. One had a sheep; another, two goats. At the end, there was a cow, and beside it was a donkey.

At the end of the stalls, she found an open door into a large room. Looking in, Zoe found shelves filled with things and JD. He was bent at the waist, examining something on the bottom shelf with Ally crouched beside him.

“I think you should put that on Potato,” her niece was saying. “It would look nice braided into her mane, and it may make her happier.”

“That donkey doesn’t know the meaning of the word happy,” JD said.

He wore worn denim cutoffs and an old, faded black T-shirt. It was the first time she’d seen him in clothes that were creased.

“Hi.”

He rose so fast, he stumbled into the shelves. JD’s eyes then shot to her and back to Ally.

“I thought your nana drove you?”

“No, Aunt Zoe. Nana had to work.”

Ted and Sylvie ran in barking with JD’s dogs, and he bent to give them some love. Zoe took a deep, steadying breath as his eyes went to the dogs.

“Is Vi here, JD?”

“She is, somewhere,” he said, his words muffled by the fur as the four dogs tried to get closer to him.

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