Looking for Miracles by Lynn Bulock Page A

months, rent free.”
    “And give them a car.” If you could call it that , Mike’s unspoken words finished the sentence.
    This was almost too much. Lori didn’t trust theman who had employed her husband. But he was a good Christian, a successful business owner and everybody else in Friedens seemed to think the world of him. “It was very kind of Mr. Hughes to do everything for us that he did. Somehow I never thought about him looking for us when Carrie asked who might have a key to the place.”
    “Why don’t we all sit down, and explain this to me before my coffee gets cold,” Hank said. “I see at least one fella who could probably use a doughnut.”
    Tyler bounced from one foot to the other. “Can I? I’m hungry again, Mom.”
    “What a surprise. Yes, Tyler, let’s get you something to eat and I’ll find a pencil so you can draw on the place mat.” Between the two things, he could stay quiet for the few minutes they would need to talk to Hank and Mr. Hughes.
    They settled in at the table, Mikayla’s seat taking up a large portion of it. The efficient waitress cooed over the baby and got Mike’s coffee and glasses of milk for Lori and Tyler. Once she was done serving them, Hank leaned over toward their table.
    “Now, why don’t you explain all this to me. Mike, you seem to have tracked me down on purpose. What for?”
    Lori could barely look Mike in the face. He seemed unhappy to be explaining all this, and itwas her fault that he was on the spot. “Lori’s been staying out at our place. We went by Christmas Day to pick up some things for her and the kids, out to the place she’s renting from you,” he said, motioning to Hughes. “Somebody had been there since she had the baby.”
    “Anything missing?”
    “No, that was the odd part. Plenty of stuff disturbed, but nothing gone. Still, I told her that we needed to report the disturbance, in case something else happened.”
    “And you’re right. Did whoever went through the place break in, Mrs. Harper?”
    Lori shook her head. She felt so silly now. “No. And when Mike and Carrie asked about who else had a key, it didn’t dawn on me that Mr. Hughes might have come out to check on us and tried to find out where we were.”
    Hughes smiled. It was still not a smile that she trusted. “And that’s what happened. But we still have a little problem, because I didn’t touch much of anything. I was concerned that nobody was there, and it looked like you folks had left in a hurry. But aside from opening a drawer or two looking for an address book or something that might tell me where you went, I certainly didn’t disturb anything. It’s not my right, even as a landlord, to just root through things.”

    How did he know things had been rooted through unless he did it? Lori’s head snapped up and she looked at Hughes. His bland expression challenged her. What was she thinking? How could she accuse him of anything, when he was the trusted wealthy man who’d lived here for a lifetime and she was at the receiving end of his charity? She looked down at the table again.
    Mike had caught the change in her expression and seemed to be asking her something silently. She refused to look straight at him. There was nothing she could do about this situation of her own making. Better to just keep quiet.
    “I don’t know what else to say,” she finally said quietly. “Nothing was taken, and I didn’t think about Mr. Hughes having a key, or looking for us when we were gone. I guess I wasted everybody’s time.”
    Hughes laughed. His chuckle set her teeth on edge with its oily smoothness. “I don’t consider my time wasted. I was just telling Hank that my tenants were missing and I was concerned. I didn’t know whether to start calling hospitals looking for you. Now that you’ve shown up here, I don’t have to worry.”
    He stood up, and the other men stood with him. Lori reached out a hand to Mikayla’s infant seat to give her a reason to stay sitting.