Love, Special Delivery. Melinda Curtis

he got the cage open before I could stop him.”

      There were two furry miscreants in the tree with the kid. One was black with white paws. The other was white with a black mask. They mewed from positions too far out on a branch to support a little boy and too far within the canopy for the ladder and bucket to be of any use.

      “Granddad,” Ben said again.

      “It’s not my fault,” the retired fireman repeated.

      Truman, aka the ginger-haired boy in the tree, grinned down at Ben in a way that made it hard to be annoyed at him. “Whichever kitten comes to me first is the one going home with me.” His expression turned earnest. “Here, kitty-cat. Here, boy.”

      “Those kittens are girls,” said a small, solemn voice at Ben’s side.

      Ben smiled down at his godchild. Her fine blond hair was windblown, and the ankles of her socks were dirt-rimmed. “What are you doing here, Han?”

      Hannah didn’t take her bespectacled blue eyes from the felines in the tree. “Granny Vanessa was cleaning, so I went for a bike ride.”

      “Please tell me you left Granny a note.” Or Ben’s mother was going to be calling him any minute, frantic with worry over where her small charge had gone to this time.

      “Tru, come down.” A petite redhead used her mom-voice and pointed to the ground.

      Several spectators chuckled.

      “But, Mom.” Truman’s wide grin was on a first-name basis with mischief. “I don’t have a kitten yet.”

      “Truman...” Immune to the boy’s charm, his mother was cranking up for a good lecture.

      Ben tuned her out. In his experience, one of the two treed parties—kid or kittens—needed to come down to entice the other to the ground. Seeing as how Truman wasn’t budging, that left two felines to convince.

      Hannah had come to the same conclusion. She pushed her glasses firmly in place, opened a can of cat food on Granddad’s table and called, “Here, kitty-kitty-kitty.”

      Two small noses twitched. Two furry tails swished. Two pairs of innocent green eyes turned calculating.

      “We need to ensure capture.” Ben lowered the empty cage to the ground, put the can of food Hannah had opened inside, and backed away.

      “Kitty-kitty-kitty,” Hannah crooned.

      The kittens leaped from one branch to the next, bounced to the ground and raced to the food. Once they were inside, Hannah closed the door.

      The crowd applauded.

      “Way to go, peanut.” Ben knelt and gave Hannah a quick hug.

      Hannah didn’t so much as crack a smile. She was a quiet child by nature, but since her mother had died three months ago and Ben had become the temporary guardian to his firefighting coworker’s child, her smile had been as AWOL as the man listed as father on her birth certificate. He hoped she’d smile freely when he found the man. He hoped by the time his own father retired in nine months that Hannah would be settled with her biological dad and Ben would be free to pursue a career in fire investigation.

      “Well, now I don’t know which one to pick.” Truman reclined on his stomach on the thick branch, arms and legs hanging down as if he was a lion readying for a nap. “We’ll have to take both.”

      Before Granddad could do more than perk up his silver eyebrows in glee, Truman’s mother put the kibosh on that idea. “I don’t think Ghost would appreciate you bringing home one kitten, let alone two. Old cats don’t like to share their turf with other cats. Time to come down.”

      “Okay.” Truman sounded disappointed, but he did as his mother asked. And he did a good job of it, too, moving quickly and with confidence.

      Until his sneaker slipped and he fell, tumbling through the air in a slow-motion cartwheel that sent the crowd gasping.

      Ben was ready. Arms outstretched, he was in the perfect position to catch the boy.

      And a sneaker to the mouth.

       CHAPTER TWO

      “IT’S NOT LIKE the busy hub in Santa Rosa,” Utley Rogers said in a voice thick with age and cigarette smoke. “But your grandfather and I loved the place.”

      Mandy clutched the Harmony Valley Post Office key ring tightly in her hand. She and Olivia had moved what little furniture they had into their grandparents’ house. They’d seen no one and had been visited only by Mandy’s memories, many of them bittersweet.

      The memories were less bitter here. She used to stop by the post office after school, get a Popsicle from the freezer in the break room and sit on her knees at the interior window of Grandpa’s office so she could watch Grandpa and Utley sort mail and work the counter. When she was in high school, she’d been hired to help during the holiday season, which turned into a full-time job. Back then, everything about the post office was neat and tidy. The outside as well kept as the inside.

      And today...

      The gray wood siding was warped and peeling and in desperate need of a fresh coat of paint. The white flagpole was speckled with rust. The lines of the parking spaces were barely visible on the asphalt. So why did the tire swing Grandpa had hung from the oak tree in back look like it was ready for a good spin?

      “I always thought I’d be the next postmaster.” Utley’s expression wavered on the edge of tearful. He cleared his throat and settled a faded blue U.S. Postal Service cap more firmly on his thin white hair. His shoulders were stooped beneath his maroon Hawaiian shirt, as if still weighed down by a mailbag. “Are we going inside or what?”

      Mandy forced herself to smile as she shook the key ring, trying to shake off the feeling that her life was being shaped by her past.

      Inside, the lobby had the same white walls and scuffed gray linoleum she remembered. Everything else had changed. Dust motes drifted lazily in the sunlight. Cobwebs draped like valances over the grimy front windows and connected handles of the post office boxes like modern-day data network servers. Instead of feeling comfortable with its vacant neglect as she had at the house, Mandy felt trepidation. The building and its operations were her responsibility now. There was a lot to be done before it was functional.

      Utley rang the bell on the counter, but he didn’t hit it squarely and the sound was off-key, jangling Mandy’s already raw emotions.

      After Grandma died, the grain mill in town had burned to the ground, incinerating jobs with it. With people moving away in droves, Harmony Valley’s post office had been shut down as a result of budget cuts. Luckily, Grandpa had been offered a postmaster job in Santa Rosa, and he’d found a position for Mandy there, as well. The three Zapiens had moved into a small apartment and tried to build a new life. And for several years, they’d been happy. Maybe Grandpa was a bit grumpier and a bit more forgetful than when Grandma had been alive, and maybe Olivia’s teenage angst was drama-laden, and maybe Mandy had to sacrifice a social life and take on a bit more to keep their family together, but they had enough money to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table.

      And then complications from Grandpa’s diabetes forced him to retire. And the forgetfulness Mandy had once thought was endearing intensified until no one could deny he had dementia. It had all been downhill from there.

      They’d buried Grandpa eighteen months ago. And during his last few weeks in hospice care, the former Santa Rosa postmaster had received visits from many work colleagues. He’d made it clear—in the moments when dementia allowed him to be clear—that his last wish was for Mandy to be postmaster in Harmony Valley. And every time he expressed the request, Mandy had smiled and patted his hand, certain it wasn’t possible, certain no one would take his request seriously, certain she’d never return to Harmony Valley.

      And yet, here she was.