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more thing before you go, lassie. Central Florida has one of the highest density lightning strikes in the world. And has about one million cloud-to-ground lightning strikes each year.”
    “If you call me lassie or love one more time, I’m going to slam this door on your crazy Irish hand.”
    Ty tilted back his head and roared a belt of belly laughter.
    He did take his hand off the truck, Laurel noted.
    Slamming her door shut, she looked at Mary Helen, who was now hugging herself with both arms. She looked a bit forlorn. “You going to be okay?”
    Mary Helen summoned a huge smile as she tucked a hand back under Ty’s arm.
    “I’ll be fine, girlfriend. Call you tomorrow.”
    Nodding at Ty, she asked. “Weather? Hobby of yours?”
    Another chuckle from the bewildering man.
    “You might say that. G’night, Laurel.” There wasn’t the slightest trace of an Irish accent.
    Before she started the engine, she picked up the phone and listened to the message.
    A campground host was asking her to call as soon as possible. An altercation between campers on site 58 and site 60 had escalated to a fight.
    Laurel considered telephoning Lt. Meer, the Florida Park Service (FPS) Law Enforcement Officer on call for the night. Pondering the message left on her cell, she figured she could handle it alone. Carolyn Meer would jump on the request. Laurel ranked her up there with one of the people in this world she regarded with high respect.
    By the time she arrived at the campground the campers had resolved their issue over which breed of dog was better, a Great Dane or a Chihuahua. This argument had escalated into a full-scale war, or so she was told by the volunteer campground hosts. The size comparison seemed to have nothing to do with the disagreement.
    After parking her truck across from the now serene camping sites, Laurel opened the door and closed it with a quiet click. Walking over to the adjoining campsites, she noted the large quantity of Miller Lite bottles lying on the ground. No wonder they had fought. She doubted that there was a single bottle of this particular beer left in Seminole county.
    The phone vibrated on her waist. Squinting at the light of the phone, she saw her sister, Kathy’s, name and number. With a feeling of foreboding, she answered in a very quiet voice in the still of the night.
    Their ninety-three-year-old mother was in the hospital and not expected to live long. Could she come right away?
     
     

Chapter 5
     
     
    G ordon Cemetery. The chill wind lifted the brown, ankle-length down coat of Laurel Gordon Grey as she stared at the tombstone of her mother and father. Lifting her gaze, she stared over the old post and wire fence row across acres of prime farm land. As the small family cemetery rested on top of a hill, a vista of land and sky met in a line on the gray horizon. Modern grain farming with huge equipment raped the Midwestern terrain of almost all natural resources, leaving bare, rich soil. Turning her head slightly to the right, she saw the old Gordon homestead—a white clapboard two-story house with a hipped roof where her father, Charles Knight Gordon, had been born. In the early 1900s, he was fourth in the nine siblings born to Gertrude and Victor Gordon.
    Shivering from the cold November breeze that swirled around her ankles and up her thighs, she pulled the coat collar tightly around her neck with both leather-gloved hands. A strand of ebony hair escaped from the hood of the coat, catching on her long black eyelashes. Tears filled her eyes, but that's as far as they got. Her determination made months earlier to not give into the grief of her mother's death was a false strength. She knew that postponing this grieving was taking a toll on her physical and emotional health. Not time yet.
    With an abrupt turn, Laurel marched to her trusty vehicle. A vintage dark-green Toyota Landcruiser, rugged and practical, the truck helped ground her to the present. She had stored the vehicle in her