Blue Dahlia

kind of trick?”
    “A tricky trick. I’m not sure we can pull it off. She’s pretty smart; I could tell. So we’d have to be really sneaky.”
    “I can be sneaky,” Luke assured her. And her glance in the rearview mirror told her the battle blood was already fading from his cheeks.
    “Okay, then, here’s the plan.” She swiveled around so she could face both her boys. It struck her, as it often did, what an interesting meld of herself and Kevin they were. Her blue eyes in Luke’s face, Kevin’s gray-green ones in Gavin’s. Her mouth to Gavin, Kevin’s to Luke. Her coloring—poor baby—to Luke, and Kevin’s sunny blond to Gavin.
    She paused, dramatically, noted that both her sons were eagerly focused.
    “No, I don’t know.” She shook her head regretfully. “It’s probably not a good idea.”
    There was a chorus of pleas, protests, and a great deal of seat bouncing that sent Parker into a spate of enthusiastic barking.
    “Okay, okay.” She held up her hands. “What we do is, we drive up to the house, and we go up to the door. And when we’re inside and you meet Ms. Harper—this is going to have to be really sneaky, really clever.”
    “We can do it!” Gavin shouted.
    “Well, when that happens, you have to pretend to be ... this is tough, but I think you can do it. You have to pretend to be polite, well-behaved, well-mannered boys.”
    “We can do it! We ...” Luke’s face scrunched up. “Hey!”
    “And I have to pretend not to be a bit surprised by finding myself with two well-behaved, well-mannered boys. Think we can pull it off?”
    “Maybe we won’t like it there,” Gavin muttered.
    Guilt roiled up to churn with nerves. “Maybe we won’t. Maybe we will. We’ll have to see.”
    “I’d rather live with Granddad and Nana Jo in their house.” Luke’s little mouth trembled, and wrenched at Stella’s heart. “Can’t we?”
    “We really can’t. We can visit, lots. And they can visit us, too. Now that we’re going to live down here, we can see them all the time. This is supposed to be an adventure, remember? If we try it, really try it, and we’re not happy, we’ll try something else.”
    “People talk funny here,” Gavin complained.
    “No, just different.”
    “And there’s no snow. How are we supposed to build snowmen and go sledding if it’s too stupid to snow?”
    “You’ve got me there, but there’ll be other things to do.” Had she seen her last white Christmas? Why hadn’t she considered that before?
    He jutted his chin out. “If she’s mean, I’m not staying.”
    “That’s a deal.” Stella started the car, took a steadying breath, and continued down the drive.
    Moments later she heard Luke’s wondering: “It’s big!”
    No question about that, Stella mused, and wondered how her children saw it. Was it the sheer size of the threestoried structure that overwhelmed them? Or would they notice the details? The pale, pale yellow stone, the majestic columns, the charm of the entrance that was covered by the double stairway leading to the second floor and its pretty wraparound terrace?
    Or would they just see the bulk of it—triple the size of their sweet house in Southfield?
    “It’s really old,” she told them. “Over a hundred and fifty years old. And Ms. Harper’s family’s lived here always.”
    “Is she a hundred and fifty?” Luke wanted to know and earned a snort and an elbow jab from his brother.
    “Dummy. Then she’d be dead. And there’d be worms crawling all over her—”
    “I have to remind you, polite, well-mannered, well-behaved boys don’t call their brothers dummy. See all the lawn? Won’t Parker love being taken for walks out here? And there’s so much room for you to play. But you have to stay out of the gardens and flower beds, just like at home. Back in Michigan,” she corrected herself. “And we’ll have to ask Ms. Harper where you’re allowed to go.”
    “There’s really big trees,” Luke murmured. “Really big.”
    “That one there? That’s a sycamore, and I bet it’s even older than the house.”
    She pulled around the parking circle, admiring the use of Japanese red maple and golden mop cedar along with azaleas in the island.
    She clipped on Parker’s leash with hands that were a lot more steady than her heart rate. “Gavin, you take Parker. We’ll come out for our things after we go in and see Ms. Harper.”
    “Does she get to boss us?” he demanded.
    “Yes. The sad and horrible fate of