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“S
o I guess you heard that Sarah's back in town,” Holly Collins said as Clint swiped his debit card through the machine. He was standing at the counter of Collins Lumber, an all-purpose supply store located in a warehouse that had survived two world wars, three generations of ownership by a member of the Collins family, and still stood just off Main Street.

“I heard,” Clint responded, stuffing his card into his wallet.

“Of course, it's because she's planning on renovating that old wreck of a house.” Holly waited as the machine chunked out his receipt. “She's single now, you know.”

“Is that right?”

“C'mon, Clint, don't play dumb with me. I bet you've kept tabs on her. You two were pretty hot and heavy back in the day.” She ripped off the receipt and handed it to him.

“Back in the day was a long time ago.” After signing the receipt, he jammed his wallet into the back pocket of his jeans.

“I just can't imagine trying to bring some life into that old monstrosity of a house. The Blue Pigeon or whatever.”

“Peacock.”

“Right. Jewel of the Columbia, my father used to call it. Like eons ago. No one except the old-timers around here remember it or care. Except Sarah. Looks like you'll be neighbors again.”

“Looks like.”

“If you ask me, it's going to take a fortune to restore that old place. Most people with any sense think it would be best to bulldoze it down, get rid of that rotten old house, all the bad memories, and maybe a ghost or two in the process.” She actually smiled more widely, warming to her idea. “Up there on the point, with that view of the river, a new place would be spectacular! Maybe a resort with a golf course and a spa? Can you imagine? Worth a king's ransom!” She jabbed a finger at Clint. “Now that would be a real jewel, y'know? It's just too damned bad no one asks me.”

“A shame.”

“And well . . . Sarah.” She held his gaze as if they shared a private secret. “She always marched to the beat of a different drum, if you know what I mean.”

He did, but he didn't like where this was heading.

“To each her own, of course,” Holly added, and he felt a ridiculous need to defend her.

“Of course.” He couldn't hide the sarcasm in his tone, not that Holly noticed.

“I just think it's a little weird to move now, with her kids still in school and all. Uproot them less than six weeks after the new school year starts? Who does that?”

“Apparently Sarah.”

“Like I said, ‘different drum' or maybe marching on another planet. Oh, well!” She threw him a “what're ya gonna do?” smile. “I guess I can't say too much about how weird the Stewarts are, as Cam's kind of related to them,” she admitted, mentioning her husband. She leaned over the counter, getting closer. “But I think it all started with Maxim, the one who built that damned house. The way Cam's grandfather tells it, Maxim was a real piece of work. Beat the crap out of both his wives and all his kids. Sick stuff. Cam's grandpa was just a boy, of course.”

“How could he have known Maxim? Maxim disappeared about a hundred years ago,” Clint said.

“Cuz that old coot was nearly sixty when Cam's dad was born, or something like that. Gramps had himself a much younger wife.”

Clint had heard enough. He glanced at his watch. “Gotta run,” he said, hoping to cut off any more gossip about the Stewart clan. “On my lunch break.”

She nodded. “Course.”

Clint rained a smile on Holly and saw something in her melt inside. He'd known she'd had a thing for him all those years ago, and it hadn't completely gone away, not even with a fifteen-plus-year marriage to Cameron, the owner of the store, and four stepping-stone sons.

She clicked on an ancient walkie-talkie. “Clint Walsh is on his way down to pick up his order. You got it ready?” she almost screamed into the receiver before releasing the “speak” button. Static and a crackling “Yep” confirmed the message had gotten through to the loading area. To Clint, Holly added, “Cam'll have your order 'round back, in the lower lot. As always.” She winked at him, and he was reminded of the girl she'd been in high school, sassy and smart, quick with a come-on smile and captain of the cheerleading squad.

“Thanks.” Clint was already near the front door, his boots heavy against floorboards that had weathered over the course of a century under the tread of farmers, loggers, ranchers, and builders. At this “feed and more” store you could buy anything from lumber to penny nails, livestock feed, landscaping tools, and the like. In the spring baby chicks were kept in a special pen complete with water, feed, and heat lamps. For a few weeks, they peeped loudly enough to drown out the country music that played over tinny speakers hidden near the exposed rafters.

Outside, he zipped his jacket against an unseasonable cold front, then climbed into his truck and was greeted by Tex, his half-grown dog of indeterminate heritage. With black and white bristly hair and a long nose, the slightly hyper pup had shown up one day and just stayed. Clint hadn't minded. “I missed you too. Now sit,” he ordered, and the dog obeyed, happily sticking his head out the open passenger window. The pickup he'd named the Beast started on the third attempt, its engine finally sparking and coughing before catching.

Driving down a steep hill, he put any lingering thoughts of Sarah Stewart, or whatever her name was now, out of his mind. The less he thought about her, the better it was for everyone, Sarah included. She'd gone to the local Catholic school, and he the public high school, but as Holly had said, they had been neighbors and known each other since childhood. As they'd grown and Sarah had changed from a tomboy who kept to herself to a gorgeous woman who could give as well as she got, he'd looked at her in a new way. Theirs had been a blistering attraction, but it had also been a mistake.

Nosing his truck into the gravel lot, he then backed up so the bed of his truck was only inches from the raised loading dock of the feed store.

Cam and his oldest boy, Eric, were already waiting with his order: ten sacks of feed, a new shovel, and five fence posts to replace those that had rotted near his machine shed. “Stay,” Clint said to Tex. The mutt watched through the open window as Clint climbed out of the truck.

Together Clint, Cam, and Eric loaded the bed of the GMC with his purchases, and then he was off, waving to the man who'd been brave enough to marry Holly Spangler, who had also been known as the biggest flirt in Wasco County.

From the parking lot, he drove up the sharp hillsides of the town that had been named for Sarah's ancestors and was jokingly referred to as “a poor man's Seattle” because of its steep terrain. With the Beast's engine grinding, Clint took the back county road into the hills to his own spread, a hundred and eighty acres of ranchland and timber that he'd inherited from his old man. The ranch sprawled across the foothills of the Cascade Mountains, bordered government land on three sides, and was only half a mile down the road from Blue Peacock Manor, which he, along with most of the locals, called the “the Stewart house.”

His fingers gripped the steering wheel a little more tightly, and though he told himself that it was over, had been for half his life, he wondered about Sarah. What did she look like? Who were her friends? Was she really single . . . ?

“Trouble. That's what she is,” he confided to the dog as he remembered Sarah's mysterious smile, the sparkle in her eyes, her not-so-innocent laugh, low and sexy and free. He told himself that back then he was a horny kid, that she'd just been a fling. However, she was like a burn that had gotten under his skin when he was twenty and, he suspected, had never quite died.

“Son of a bitch,” he muttered under his breath. Though their affair had been over ages ago, he still thought of her now and again . . . well, probably, if he were completely honest with himself, a lot more often than that, but he'd let go of the fantasy of reconnecting with her a long time ago.

“Water under the bridge,” he said as he turned off the county road, then drove down the long, winding lane to the farmhouse where he'd grown up. Through stands of pine and fir and over a short bridge that spanned the creek, the truck bounced along rocky ruts that could use a new load or two of gravel. The lane curved as the forest gave way to dry pasture where horses and cattle grazed. Farther ahead, the homestead house anchored the ranch, outbuildings spaced around a huge parking area filled with a dozen or more potholes. Yeah, before winter really set in, he'd have to order that gravel.

He parked near the barn. “Come on,” he said, whistling to the dog. Tex eagerly bounded out of the truck and ran to the nearest fence post, where he sniffed before lifting his leg. “Yeah, a lotta good you are.” He hauled the sacks of grain up the ramp to the lower level of the barn, under the hay mow, where he stacked them near the old open bins.

This time of day the cattle and horses weren't inside, but their smells assailed him, the acrid odors of manure and urine mixed with the scents of dusty, dry hay and oiled leather—smells he'd grown up with.

Glancing up at the hay mow, he remembered more than one summer night when he and Sarah had climbed the old metal rungs to lie on an old blanket and make out for hours. It's not that the mow was special; they'd also spent hours on the shore of the pond on her parents' property and high on the ridge above the river. For no good reason, he climbed upward and stood on the wooden floor before the bales stacked to the high, pitched ceiling. It was pretty much the same as it had been all those years before, the small round window at the apex of the roof line cracked open a bit. He remembered breathing hard, holding her naked body close, the scents of dusty hay, sweat, and sex mingling as his hands tangled in her hair. He'd stared through that same round window and seen hundreds of stars strewn across the night sky.

He shook his head and mentally chastised himself before climbing down the ladder again. No need for nostalgia right now, Sarah or no Sarah.

None whatsoever.

 

“Hey, Sleeping Beauty, join the party,” her mother said.

Jade opened a bleary eye to find Sarah standing over her. “It's afternoon, and I let you sleep in today,” she went on, “but now it's time to get up and get going. We've got a lot to do.”

Jade groaned and rolled over in her sleeping bag, pulling it over her head.

“You can start with the garbage sacks that Gracie and I've filled.” Her mother's voice was muffled but firm. “I'm serious, Jade, let's go!”

“Great,” Jade mumbled and knew she couldn't argue when Mom adopted that “I'm in charge” tone.

With a dramatic effort, Jade dragged herself out of the sleeping bag and saw that Sarah had left and, to judge from the noise emanating from the kitchen, was already hard at work.

Sighing, Jade got to her feet and found a pair of flip-flops near the hearth. She shuffled into the sty of a bathroom, peed, splashed water over her face, and tried to wake up. After Gracie had made all the commotion about seeing a damned ghost and waking her, Jade had been too hyped up to go back to sleep, though she'd tried. Really. Finally she'd given up and discovered both her mother and sister were dead to the world, so she'd started texting Cody, begging him to come and rescue her as she was still without a car.

She'd been up most of the night until she'd fallen asleep sometime around five in the morning, so she wasn't all that interested in any projects her mother might dream up. Ever since Sarah had come up with the crazy decision to move back here, Jade's life had been on a downward spiral that she was certain was heading straight to hell. Hauling out garbage was just one more task confirming her suspicions that some greater force was punishing her and making her life miserable.

“Okay, let's get moving,” Sarah yelled again. “We need to clean this place up as best we can.”

“We?” Jade said and cringed as her mother had obviously heard her from the other room.

“Yes, we. Like it or not, we're all in this together.”

“I don't. Like it.”

“I know. Today, your vote doesn't count.”

“That's not fair,” she shouted, but knew she was fighting a losing battle.

“Probably not.”

Grumbling under her breath, Jade, in one of Cody's T-shirts and pajama bottoms, made her way into the kitchen, where Gracie and Sarah were already scurrying around, trying to clean up the filthy room. The old counters were covered with jars, boxes, utensils, and all kinds of garbage.

Jade flopped into an old chair at the table.

Her mother was already sweeping the uneven, cracked linoleum or whatever it was that had once covered the floor. “We'll start here and clean out everything that we don't want or need or can't be restored.” Gracie, the suck-up, was filling trash bags with stuff Mom had already pulled out of the gross-looking cupboards. Tall and narrow, the cabinets and shelves stretched to the ceiling. It looked like they'd once been painted a soft green, but now the doors and boxes were dirty and dingy, the hinges rusting, the glass panes of a sideboard nearly opaque with years of grease and grime.

Still tired, Jade wasn't into this at all, but as she opened her mouth to suggest putting a lit match to the place, she caught the warning look on her mother's face and knew she should stop arguing.

“Oh . . . yuck . . . ,” Gracie wrinkled her nose as she read the label of a box of baking soda. “Nineteen ninety-eight.”

“Grandma was never one to throw things out. ‘Waste not, want not' was her credo,” Sarah said dryly.

“And a good way to get salmonella or ptomaine or whatever,” Jade pointed out.

“No kidding.” Gracie quickly tossed the box into a bag she was filling.

“Where is she anyway?” Jade asked, hauling one of the full bags off an old table and tying the plastic cords. She saw her mother's back stiffen slightly.