Chapter One

Shay

“Did you know, Shay O’Hanlon, we are flying on a Boeing 737-900ER? ER means extended range! This airplane can go five hundred and twenty-five miles an hour.”

Rocky’s finger appeared between the seats from the row behind and poked my shoulder. “This plane holds one-hundred-eighty adventurers! So, not including us, one hundred and seventy-three people are going on one hundred and seventy-three different adventures.”

“That’s a whole lot of adventures folks are gonna have.”

“Yes, it is, Shay O’Hanlon. I am very excited to go to PDX. Did you know every airport has a three-letter designation? PDX is for Portland. But not Portland in Maine. In Oregon. Pronounced OR-uh-gun, not ORE-ee-gone. The Oregon Trail game has it all wrong.”

Our rather round Rocky was a sprite with savant syndrome and landed somewhere on the less impacted end of the differently abled. He had almost perfect recall and loved to share his knowledge with anyone who’d lend him half an ear.

“Rocky, honey…” Tulip’s head popped up beside Rocky’s. “It’s your turn.”

Rocky adored his French Creole wife, and was fond of food, hugs, and aviator hats. Which was fitting, since right now, his fascination was all things aviation. “Oh! Okay. I must go now, Shay O’Hanlon. I am about to monopolize my bride with the Monopoly game application on my very fancy cellular device.”

“Go on with your bad self,” I told him. A ball of excitement settled low in my belly as the tang of jet fuel swirled into the cabin on the heels of the last of the boarding passengers. I didn’t even mind we were crammed in cattle class tighter than the corset on a drag queen. I was even okay with being pickle-in-the-middle, with my six-four, no-longer-chain-smoking-but-still-mostly-vegetarian best friend, Coop, next to the window and my girlfriend, JT, or rather, now fiancée—god I needed to get used to that word—guarding the aisle on my right.

In less than twenty-four hours, we’d be at the biggest fair-trade coffee convention in the Pacific Northwest. Neither tsunamis nor wildfires would stop me from bringing the hottest-selling, new-to-the-coffee-scene Ochoco Creek brand to the Rabbit Hole, my coffee shop in Uptown Minneapolis. Ochoco Creek Coffee was a fast-rising, West Coast cult favorite, and I wanted to bring that sensibility back home with me to shake up the taste buds of our overwhelmingly Scandinavian population.

JT grunted and gave me the side eye as she got her own Rocky finger poke treatment. In hindsight, I should’ve seated Rocky, Tulip, and Eddy—a mom figure to us all—in front of us instead of behind.

My sister, Lisa, had tagged along for the ride too. She was stuck in the middle seat three rows up, between two behemoth guys who towered over her own six-foot frame, both wearing University of Oregon Ducks football jerseys. From the sound of their extra-loud conversation over the top of poor Lisa’s head, they’d come to the Land of 10,000 Lakes to attend the Power Pull Nationals in central Minnesota, whatever it was, and were returning with some supercharged testosterone pumping through their bloodstream.

“Nick Coop.”

I felt hot breath on my arm. Rocky’s face was now pushed up against the crack between my seat and Coop’s. He must have finished his Monopoly turn. “Did you know this flying tubular air vehicle can travel two thousand eight hundred and ten miles under perfect conditions?”

“Nope, I sure didn’t know that.”

“If you do not know something, Nick Coop, all you have to do is consult the Great and Mighty Oracle.”

Coop barked a laugh. “You’re so right, my friend.” He dangled his hand over the headrest, palm up, and Rocky slapped him five.

The Great and Mighty Oracle was Google, which Rocky loved to access on his brand-new iPhone. He and Tulip had saved long and hard to buy themselves the very latest and greatest in cellular technology, as Rocky would say. Neither had ever owned a cell phone before and they were stoked.

“Hey, Rocky,” Coop said, “what do I need a Great and Mighty Oracle for if I have you?” For a moment the sounds of muffled voices and the slam of overhead storage compartments filled the air. I imagined Rocky’s frown as he seriously considered the question.

“You are right, Nick Coop. But if I am not around to be your Great and Mighty Oracle, you can use your own Oracle.”

“My dearest Rocky,” Tulip said, “sit down and buckle your seat belt. You don’t want to upset the nice flight attendants.”

“Oh, no. No, no, no. I absolutely do not want to upset anyone. I gave the nice flight attendants a bag of Hershey’s Minis with Hershey’s Krackel, Hershey’s Special Dark, Hershey’s Milk Chocolate, and Hershey’s Mr. Goodbar when we boarded, so I hope they will be happy. They work very hard, and some people are not very nice to them. It is mean not to be nice.” Then, in one of his classic lightning-fast topic changes, he added, “Did you know the design of the aviation seat belt hasn’t changed since the 1950s?”

“News to me,” Eddy said, her voice groggy thick. Talk of safety equipment must’ve awakened her from one of her not-so-micro snoozes. “But I’m glad to know it now.” She harrumphed. “We haven’t even left the gate and I’m pooped. I need me a gallon of diet Mello Yello, and I think I gotta pee. See? I told you kids I shoulda stayed home.”

“Come on, Eddy.” I twisted around as best I could. “You’re gonna have a great time. You’ll be up to your elbows in coffee samples for the next three days. Plus, you wanted to hit Voodoo Doughnuts. Holy mahoney, I can’t wait.”

Lisa had spent some time in Portland early in her college career. When she learned we were headed to Stumptown, she’d raved about Voodoo deliciousness. After spending some time on the Internet doing a bit of intense doughnut surfing, my eye was on Voodoo’s Old Dirty Bastard, a long john-like, chocolate, peanut butter, and Oreo topped creation. Voodoo, hoodoo, doo doo, I was all in. Well, maybe not so much the doo doo part.

Eddy harrumphed again and I resettled myself. For the last few months, Eddy’d been snappish, totally out of character, and had a terrible time staying awake, which was also out of character. She’d lost interest in much of the shizz which usually occupied her time.

Instead of dealing cards with the Mad Knitters, her not-so-much-knitting-but-poker-playing posse, she was asleep in her recliner with the television tuned into some cooking channel instead of avidly watching the crime shows she loved. She wasn’t bopping around the Rabbit Hole, helping as she usually did. I’d hunt her down to find she was in her bedroom taking a nap.

When she was awake, she was constantly downing coffee or diet Mello Yello, and more recently she’d added Red Bull to her arsenal. I didn’t know how she could stand the god-awful cough syrup taste, but she could guzzle that shit with the best of them. It came as no surprise with all the liquid she poured down her gullet, she had to go to the bathroom practically every ten minutes. Therefore, most of her naps were pretty short.

The situation would be funny if her actions, or rather, lack thereof, didn’t worry me so much. All this had come on so gradually I hadn’t noticed anything was truly off till a couple weeks ago. I walked into her living room one morning and found her conked out with three empty Mello Yello cans, two equally empty Red Bulls, and a Rabbit Hole coffee cup on a table beside her recliner. A couple more bottles were strewn on the ground beside her chair. I wondered if she’d suddenly come down with a lingering case of insomnia or maybe late-onset narcolepsy.

It was for those reasons I booked her a ticket to come with us to the City of Roses and the famous Big on Beans Convention—better known as BOB—in Portland, at the last minute. I figured a change of scenery would be good for her, and besides, she usually loved to travel. Anywhere. Anytime.

JT’s hand rested on my thigh, and I gave her fingers a squeeze. She glanced up from her in-flight magazine and gifted me an affectionate smile.

God, what she did to my insides. I tilted my head toward her. “You notice Eddy’s been acting weird?”

The disembodied voice of the airline world’s Oz drowned out my words. “Ladies and gentlemen, the captain has turned on the fasten seat belt sign. If you haven’t already done so, please stow…” The announcement droned on. I kissed JT’s temple and sighed heavily.

She threaded her fingers through mine and held tight. “We can chat once we’re in the air after a successful takeoff.”

“It’s gonna be fine, baby.”

“I know, I know. But still.”

JT wasn’t a nervous flyer except for the takeoff part. Maybe it was because she had to surrender all control and there was no going back once the wheels kissed the pavement goodbye. Whatever the reason, I held tight to the strong, capable, hand of my slightly scared homicide detective and sat back to “enjoy” my flight.

Fourteen minutes and 31,000 feet later, we leveled off. JT had given me my hand back, and now that she’d survived takeoff, she returned to leafing through her magazine. Behind her seat, a loud, sharp snore emanated at regular intervals. For once, Eddy’s need to go to the bathroom wasn’t enough to keep her awake. Rocky and Tulip continued to duke it out over electronic Monopoly, and Coop’s nose was buried in a copy of PC Gamer.

“Hey.” I nuzzled the soft shell of JT’s ear and considered giving her a wet willie, then decided I better behave.

She kissed the tip of my nose. “What about Eddy?”

“I think she’s depressed.”

“I’ve noticed she’s tired, like all the time.”

My “Yeah,” was punctuated by a particularly loud snort from the person in question. Even the dull roar of the jet’s engines outside couldn’t completely drown our matriarch out. “I think maybe all the stuff that came out about my mom and her family really affected her. It’s not even been three months since it happened.”

This past St. Paddy’s Day holiday weekend I’d found out what exactly happened the fateful day that had changed both mine and Eddy’s lives forever. My mother had been driving Eddy and her son, Neil, to the bus station to send them to family down south in an attempt to help them avoid some seriously big-time trouble. On the way to the station, my mom’s car was T-boned by a truck.

My mom was killed, and so was Neil. Eddy dragged me out of the wreckage and held my insides where they belonged until help arrived. She saved my life.

After the accident, Eddy wracked with guilt, had taken over Mom’s duties as best she could and helped my dad, who now had to raise a feisty kid along with keeping his bar, the Leprechaun, out of the red. He’d guzzled booze like it was Kool-Aid for as long as I could remember, and after my mom died, he doubled down on the escape juice. I hated his drinking. He hated the fact I wasn’t straight.

Eddy was our peacemaker, often mediating when things between us went south, which tended to happen when he was tanked. Over the years, he and I had come to a wary truce. As I grew older, I better understood his need to drown out the pain. Eventually my father began to work on curbing his liquor intake, and while his truce with alcohol sometimes fell apart, he was doing better, and that’s what counted.

Plus, not so long ago, he finally chilled about the gay thing and had actually accepted JT into the family. The passing of time was good for my old man.

Unfortunately, the years hadn’t eased a bit of Eddy’s guilt. Guilt I never knew she harbored. She never once stopped blaming herself for what had happened, although I could tell she was relieved when the truth came out and I didn’t hate her, or worse, turn my back on her.

Like I’d ever do a thing like that. The woman meant everything to me.

Once we’d made it through the revelations and confessions, Eddy had begun sinking. Even dealing with half of those events would take any regular person down. But all of it at once? Eddy was one of the strongest people I knew, and if anyone could survive, it was her. But I knew strong people could also be depressed people.

JT peered out the oval window and I followed her gaze. The sky was a rich blue. Bright sunlight reflected off the metallic surface of the wing, making me squint. She said, “Thinking about it, you’re right. She hasn’t been to the Lep to play five-card stud for weeks—I forgot your dad mentioned it when I helped him with inventory day before yesterday—and I don’t think I’ve seen her around the Rabbit Hole in the mornings when I’ve stopped by. Or Agnes either, for that matter. You think they had a falling out?”

Agnes was Eddy’s closest friend and coconspirator extraordinaire. “They bicker all the time, but I can’t ever remember them getting mad enough they stopped talking for more than one day. They’ve been besties forever.”

“What about the not-so-much-knitting, more often pokering Mad Knitters? Has she been meeting with them?”

“Not really, I don’t think.” I felt somewhat alarmed and a little ashamed. I’d been so busy with the Rabbit Hole and the efforts Kate—café co-owner and great friend—and I were making to expand our product base I hadn’t paid the kind of attention I should’ve. I should have seen this happening and said something before it ever got to this point.

JT caught my eye. “Babe, don’t.”

I scrunched my nose at her. Easier said than done. I leaned over to Coop. “Hey,” I whispered, “has Eddy been to any Mad Knitter meetings lately?” He was a metro kinda guy, happy to play poker with women three times his age, and even willing to suffer through a knitting or crocheting lesson on occasion.

He blinked then blinked again as he struggled to shift his brain from gaming mode to the present. “Maybe a month ago.”

“Was it at her place?”

“Yeah. Why?”

I gave him the rundown of our depression diagnosis.

“You going to talk to her?”

“Yeah, I guess I better.” So not what I wanted to do. Sorting through emotional crap was not my idea of a pleasant time. He was right, though. When Eddy and I had a moment alone this weekend, I’d pin her down for a chat. I knew she’d feared I’d hate her. But I could never, ever feel that way. She was as close to a mother to me as my own mom, and nothing could change my feelings for her.

Personally, I thought I’d dealt with those revelations pretty damn gracefully, but maybe Eddy hadn’t fared so well in the reprocessing of those dark bits of history.

“Hey, Shay.” Tulip’s quiet voice slid through the gap between the seats.

I cranked myself around again. “Yeah?”

“Did you guys pick out a wedding date yet?” She gave me a wide-eyed, come-on-already smirk.

I glanced at JT and she shot me a silent expression of panic.

Not long ago, in a rush of emotion after I’d almost been blown to smithereens in a meth lab explosion, and when the truth came out about Eddy and my mother, I’d asked for JT’s hand in holy matrimony and bliss. JT gave me the thumbs-up, which, to this day, still surprised me.

Since then, we’d talked about it a little, but both of us were overwhelmed with the entire idea. What do you wear to a wedding when you hate dressing up? Who do you invite? Who don’t you invite? Then you had to mess around with writing invitations, and then there was the catering. And flowers. Did all weddings have to have flowers? I felt a little sick when I considered the implications. We didn’t have a lot of money and neither did my father. JT’s folks were an unknown. One good thing was my dad offered up the Lep as the venue, shocking the shit out of me.

“Tulip, great question. We’re still working it out.”

“Okay. But you better hurry up cause one day you might be expecting a bundle of joy too. Come on, Rocky.” She gave him a nudge. “I’ll let you win another game of Monopoly.”

I gaped at JT.

She whispered, “Did you hear that?”

“Yes!” Holy shit on a shingle. Were they gonna have a baby?