Chapter 2Puttering around Sunday morning after the barbecue did nothing to make the house seem a little less empty. Charlie scrubbed the kitchen until it was spotless and ran the pie over to Mrs. Kinley. He vacuumed the entire ground floor and dusted. He even hosed down the deck to clean away the last of the residue from the party. All it did was kill time. He couldn’t even really enjoy the brilliant sunshine, because he was too busy trying not to focus on Christian’s absence.
At least his talk with Bryce had gone well. In retrospect, Charlie realized it was a little silly to have been so nervous. It could have been possible for Bryce to resent being left out of the loop when he was the one person who could actually help, but that wasn’t the younger man’s style. Charlie should have known
