Page 5 of Will Bark for Pizza
“Why is he looking to get rid of the place?”
“Karl doesn’t come out here anymore. Hasn’t for years.” Luke cleared his throat. “Not since Aaron.”
I never met his cousin, but having served in the Army with some of his family, I felt as though I knew him. He was the reason Luke, Connor, and Thoren enlisted together more than a decade ago. The reason I met any of them.
“You don’t want it?”
“I don’t need another place to keep up, and I can’t live here twenty-four seven. It takes too long to respond to calls from out here.”
“No one else in the family wants it?”
“Anyone here is set up. Everyone else has moved away and isn’t interested in coming back or being responsible for a property that’ll sit empty most of the year.”
“Has it been empty long?”
“Aspen lived out here for a few years,” Luke said of Karl’s daughter. “But not since she got married.” By my calculations, the cabin had only been vacant a year. “She still comes out here to clean once a month. I check on it to make sure there’re no squatters.”
In other words, the house wasn’t neglected. It was looked after, and hopefully wouldn’t need major repairs. I didn’t mind a personal renovation project, but I didn’t anticipate having time for something extensive when I was just getting settled with my new commercial ventures.
“C’mon,” Luke said, nodding toward the back door off the kitchen. “You need to see the rest of it.”
I followed him through the enclosed outdoor space, noting an old charcoal grill in the corner. Though it needed a solid scrubbing and possibly a power wash, my stomach growled at the thought of a burger grilled over coals.
“The property goes all the way past the clearing,” Luke said, pointing toward a dirt area through the trees. The ground was hard-packed around what appeared to be a small wood-planked dock, but no boats or any water toys were tied to it. “The road dead-ends there. It’s also your best lake access.”
“It’s private?”
“Yeah. You might get someone turning around once in a while. Occasionally, a lone fisherman avoiding his honey-do list. But they’re harmless. They won’t bother you if you don’t bother them.”
The full acre on the quiet lake was exactly the kind of property I hoped to find. The cabin could be updated,and until then, it was perfectly livable. It didn’t have a garage or shop space, but it’d probably be easier to store my materials in town anyway. It was the perfect setup.
We walked down to the edge of the water, and serenity greeted me like an old friend. Nana would approve, even if I wrote Karl a check for the whole thing today. We had a long chat about me putting down roots in this town. Yet the permanence of even a rent-to-own situation made my stomach tie in knots. If I backed out of buying it down the road because I found something better, what kind of rift would that cause? How would that affect my decision to make this town my own? This wasn’t a property I could simply flip.
“See? Quiet.”
I stepped right up to the edge. The ground dropped off a few feet into the lake, a tangle of tree roots and boulders making it a less than ideal place to get into the water if I felt like taking a swim or getting in a kayak. I could see the boat dock from here, though, down a dirt-packed trail. And I had a pretty good view of the entire lake.
“Does anyone hereusethe lake?”
A kayaker paddled off in the distance, a fisherman was camped out on a dock directly across, and a gaggle of geese enjoyed the calm waters. But otherwise, the lake was empty.
“Oh, yeah.” Luke pulled a vibrating phone from his uniform pocket. “But it’s all locals out here.”
It was a random Tuesday afternoon. “They’re working.”
“Fuck me,” Luck groaned, staring at the phone cradled in his hand. “I have to go. Some tourist got into a fenderbender with Dana Wilcox downtown. She’s all bent out of shape. I better go defuse the situation.”
I couldn’t place the name to a specific person. But I also didn’t grow up in the small town like Luke did. He knew everyone. Some he liked, many he tolerated, and a special few grated on his last nerve. Judging by his expression, Dana was one of those special pains in his side.
But he vowed to serve and protect, so that’s exactly what he did. And while he might pretend it inconvenienced him to deal with the thorns, I knew better. I served downrange with Luke Mason during two deployments. He felt a personal duty to protect them all, as though the citizens of Bluebell Springs were an extension of his family.
“Mind if I hang out for a while?”
He handed me the keys, already on the way to his police SUV. “Lock up when you’re done?”
“Yep.”
“Hey, Beckett,” he said, pulling open the driver’s side door. “Stop by and talk to my dad soon.”
