LOGAN HARPER WAS having lunch with his dad in the break room of Dunn Right Auto Repair and Service when Joy stuck her head in and said, “Harp, you’ve got a call. Line three.”

“Tell them I’ll call back when I’m done,” Logan’s dad said.

“They said it’s important.”

Harp frowned as he set his sandwich down and stood up. “Who is it?”

“Someone named…um…Mueller, I think.”

“Mueller?” Harp looked at Logan. “Your uncle Len.”

With a smile, Harp walked over to the phone mounted on the wall, and punched the button for line three.

“Len? What’s going on?”

The smile on Harp’s face froze, then faltered. “Oh, no,” he said as he closed his eyes for a moment.

Logan rose quickly from his chair and went over to him. “You all right, Dad?”

Harp shook his head and waved him off. He said into the phone, “When?…I’m so sorry…I understand. Don’t worry about it…Of course. What time?…We’ll be there.”

When he hung up, he just stood there, staring at nothing.

“Dad?” Logan said.

A second passed, then another, and another. Finally, Harp looked over. “What?”

“What’s going on?”

His father hesitated. “It’s…Len. He passed away this morning.”

Len Mueller wasn’t a blood relative, but that didn’t matter. He was as much an uncle to Logan and a brother to Harp as any man could have ever been. The Mueller family and the Harper family had lived on neighboring farms back in Kansas where Harp had grown up. Len had been best friends with Harp’s older brother Tommy. They had both served in World War II, and while Len had come back-minus two fingers on his left hand-Tommy hadn’t returned at all. Len had done what he could to fill in for Tommy-helping Harp, advising him, teasing him, and eventually serving as best man at Harp’s wedding.