Secret Sisters - an LDS cozy mystery

Chapter Two

Chapter 2 

Aunt Ida Mae?" Ren stuck his head through the back door. "Oh, good. You're home." 

"Where else would I be?" she asked. "You know I have meetings on Tuesday mornings. It would have to be a real emergency to drag me away." 

"Well, sometimes things come up unexpectedly. Because, you know, they're emergencies." 

Ida Mae chose to ignore his flippant remark and concentrated instead on putting the mugs into the cupboard. Ren was her only nephew, the son of her sister, Lola. A bit of a free spirit, he sported an earring in his left ear-just a small one, but an earring nonetheless-and he hadn't decided what to be when he grew up. He didn't consider twentyfive to be grown up yet, obviously. He even had a small ponytail on the back of his head. 

"So, I've dropped out of college," Ren said, taking a seat at the counter. He reached out and plucked a banana from the fruit bowl.  

"Again?" 

"No need to sound like I do it every day. This is only the third time." 

"Three times is a bit more than usual, don't you think?" She handed him a napkin. "Don't people generally enroll and then, at some point down the road, graduate?" 

"That's for people who want to live in a box." Ren halfrose and lobbed his banana peel into the garbage. "Three points." 

"Two. Three would have been farther back, like, from the living room." 

"Oh." He resumed his seat and rolled his napkin into a ball. "Listen, I don't know what's wrong with me. I tried to stick with it this time, I really did. But I was bored out of my mind. Why does society expect people to have college degrees? Why can't I just use what I know and get on with my life?" 

Coming from anyone else, this would have sounded like a whiny, cheap excuse for avoiding an education. From Ren, though, it made perfect sense. The boy had been building his own mechanical gizmos since he could sit up, and had any number of inventions lining the shelves in his room. He could fix anything. He understood everything. From politics to lawnmowers to quantum physics, you could ask the boy anything and get an answer. It might not make sense, but it would be an answer nonetheless. 

Ida Mae reached for the tea kettle, searching for something to do with her hands while she thought about Ren's question. He sat quietly, flicking his napkin back and forth on the counter. 

"It all depends on what you want to do with your life," she said at last, watching the flame on the gas stove light with a spurtspurtspurt. "Do you want to work for a big corporation, or start one of your own? If you're the boss, it won't matter if you have a degree or not. Going to work for someone else might be another story."  

"You know what I really want? I want to market my inventions. I've got a ton of 'em, and they're really useful, too. I could get patents, and then sell the rights, and make my living that way." 

"Why don't you try it?" Ida Mae pulled the hot chocolate tin out of the cupboard. "You've still got the money from your mother's life insurance policy, don't you?" 

"I haven't spent a dime of it," Ren said. "It felt weird, spending money that was only mine because my mother died." 

"I know how you feel." Lola had also left a small bequest to Ida Mae, and it sat in the bank collecting interest. Lola's death had been sudden and shocking, an aneurism that burst the day after she turned fifty. She'd been too young to go, and Ren had been too young to understand. Ida Mae and her now deceased husband took Ren to live with them while he finished high school and dealt with his grief. She loved that boy like her own, and probably coddled him a good deal too much. 

"What would it take to start?" she asked. "How do you get a patent, and how do you find someone interested in buying it?" 

"I don't know, truthfully. I need to get on the Internet and see what I can find. Mind if I use yours? My roommate is studying for a big test, and I told him I'd scram so it would be nice and quiet." 

"Sure, go ahead." 

Ida Mae heard the sound of furious typing a few minutes later and allowed herself a smile. She would not be one bit surprised if the next Bill Gates himself was sitting in her spare bedroom, using her Dell. Ren could do anything he set his mind to. He just needed to set his mind to it longer than the fifteen minutes it took to learn more about it. 

She pulled out the vacuum and was happily Hoovering when Ren emerged from the guest room, his hair somewhat pulled loose from his ponytail. "I found what I need to get started," he said when she turned the vacuum off and could hear him. "But listen, Aunt Ida Mae, there's another reason I'm here." 

"What's that?" He had his Idon'twanttotellyouthis look, and she mentally braced herself.  

"Well, since I'm not a student at the college anymore, and my apartment was in student housing, they want me to leave." He shifted from one foot to the other. "Any chance I could have my old room back for a while?" 

Her heart gave a leap, an unaccustomed thing for it to do. She had missed that boy, no doubt about it. "Of course you can, Ren. I haven't done a thing with it. You can change that, though-the Spiderman bedspread is probably too young for you." 

"I don't know," he said, leaning against the doorjamb and crossing his arms. "I haven't outgrown a lot of things I should have by now. But are you sure I won't be putting you out? I'll contribute to groceries and pay rent. I'm not going to freeload." 

"You could never put me out, Ren," she protested. "Truth be told, it will do me good to have you around. It's been a little too lonely around here." 

Something in her tone of voice must have betrayed her. Ren's eyebrows went up a notch. "Is everything okay, Aunt Ida Mae? You aren't going all melancholy on me, are you?" 

"No, of course not. I don't have time for such nonsense." She began winding the cord on the vacuum. "It'll be good to have you back, that's all." 

Ren crossed the room in four strides and wrapped his arms around her shoulders. "Thanks, Auntie. I really appreciate this." 

"Are you sure you want to live clear out here, though? The closest big town is forty miles away." 

"You've got a Walmart and a McDonald's, and that's good enough for me," he said. "I may head in to Salt Lake or Provo every so often to get parts, but I'm ready for some more country living." 

"Have you got your things with you?" 

"Just my overnight bag. I've still got another three days and figured I could clear out later." 

"Bring it in and get settled, then. I'll start us a good old country lunch." 

Ren grabbed his coat and went outside while Ida Mae rummaged through the fridge for the bottle of mustard that had somehow gotten shoved clear in the back. She couldn't help the smile that played around her lips. Ren was a little uncouth at times, and definitely unconventional. But she'd be "et for a tater" if she didn't love him like her own son. 

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