“Thanks,” Jacob said.
They high-fived each other, and then Jacob.
“We got you, buddy.”
* * *
The Kingston family wasn’t the only family dealing with ghosts.
Nora Borden, Asher’s high school sweetheart, had just driven past the Tumbleweed Bar and the Yellow Rose Café with a lump in her throat. Her father, Thomas Borden, had finally passed away from Alzheimer’s, and she’d come back to Crossroads to deal with the consequences of what to do with the family home.
It had been vacant ever since she’d moved her dad to a memory care facility in Fort Worth to be near her, and she hadn’t been back to Crossroads since. That was over two years ago. She was concerned about the condition of the house.
Coming back to Crossroads was like going back in time. The same people, the same businesses were still here. Nothing changed. If you didn’t own land and cattle or horses, you didn’t have a lot of options. Crossroads hadn’t grown any bigger, but the plus side was that it was still as lively and vital as it always had been. Good people lived here. And that was the blessing of the place.
But coming back resurrected all kinds of emotions for Nora, most of which were tied to Asher Kingston. He’d been her whole world through all four years of high school. But when they graduated, they both knew that their lives were going to go in different directions.
He wanted a life in some form of law enforcement, and she wanted to work in the field of technology. They swore undying love to each other on their last night together and made promises to stay in touch. They made love for the last time, and the next day he got on a bus bound for Austin, and her parents loaded her up and drove her to Dallas.
They faithfully texted and emailed each other for nearlya year, until the messages became less frequent and less intense, and time finally eroded the connection they’d once had.
After that, every time she’d come home to visit her parents, she never asked about him, because she didn’t want to know that he’d fallen for someone else and got married. She wouldn’t ask, and they never mentioned him.
Now here she was again, a thirty-one-year-old woman with a great job and a fancy apartment in Fort Worth, and nobody left to wonder or worry about where she was, or what she was doing.
Nora paused as she pulled into the driveway and parked beneath a leafless tree, reluctant to give up the comfort of the warm air from the heater on her feet. But there was no reward for putting off the inevitable, so she took a deep breath and killed the engine.
She knew the utilities were still on, because she’d paid the bills to keep them on. She’d called Pearl two weeks ago to ask who to call to get the place cleaned before her arrival.
Pearl quickly assured her not to worry, that she’d get someone in to do that for her, and she could pay Pearl back when she came home. Nora was in tears, thanking her profusely, then immediately mailed a house key and sent a hundred dollars in advance via Venmo, with a note that if it wasn’t enough, she’d settle up with Pearl after her arrival.
Pearl called her the day the key arrived, and that the cleaning would be done before Nora came home, and now she was here, dreading the lingering ghosts within.
A blast of cold air sent a shiver up her spine as she got out and rounded her car to get the suitcases from the trunk, then rolled them up the steps to the front door. But there was still the business of getting inside out of the cold.
There were no tricks to getting in. No security system to disarm. No warm welcome waiting as she turned the key.She heard the lock click, then reached for the doorknob, and pushed the door inward before pulling the luggage in behind her and shutting out the cold.
The house was warm enough to keep the pipes from freezing, but it was an uncomfortable setting, so she turned up the thermostat as she went down the hall to her old bedroom. Everything was so familiar, but the house had been empty for so long, it had lost the vibrancy of human energy. She left the luggage by the bed to unpack later, and as she turned to leave, caught a glimpse of herself in the full-length mirror on the back of her closet door.
Her long brown hair was tangled and windblown. There were dark shadows beneath her eyes from the stress of the last few months of her father’s life, and she knew she’d lost weight. Once he was put in hospice, the days of sitting by his bedside were excruciating. When he finally fell into a coma, she never left his side. Listening to him struggling for every breath had been hell. He’d fought the inevitable for eighteen hours before he managed to exit this world.
But that was over, and she was here, standing in an empty house frowning at her reflection, which accomplished nothing, and left the room. She needed to see what the pantry situation was like and check to see if the fridge needed to be cleared, then go to Belker’s supermarket. It would be foolhardy to wait to stock up, then wake up tomorrow morning to bad weather.
Still, she took the time to walk through every room in the house, including the primary bedroom. Her father’s clothing had long since been removed when he moved with her to Fort Worth, but the faint scent of pipe tobacco was still there when she opened the door.
“I’m here, Daddy. Wish you were, too, but I wouldn’t wish you back the way you were. You were a good man. Youdidn’t deserve that end-of-life journey. I’m still a little mad at God about it, but that’s between Him and me.”
She left the door open to air out, and kept moving through the rooms, then back through the living room to the kitchen, turning on lights as she went. Same pale-blue walls and white cabinets. Same white-and-gray quartz countertops. The dining table and chairs had been polished. Whoever Pearl hired to clean had done a good job.
She pulled the curtains open at the sink to let in more light, then thought she saw a maverick flake of snow, which ended her musings. The fridge was empty and there were only a few cans on the pantry shelves, all over three years out of date. They’d go in the garbage later, and there was no need to make a list. She needed a little bit of everything. After a quick trip to the bathroom to freshen up and brush her hair, she grabbed her purse and keys, locked the door behind her as she left, and quickly drove away.
Within ten minutes of entering the store, she’d been greeted and welcomed home by every person there. They all knew her, and the same question followed. “Are you here to stay?” A question for which she had no answer.
* * *
Long after she’d been home, fed herself, and had a long soak in a hot bath, she was curled up on the sofa under an old quilt, absently watching some game show and remembering sitting on this same sofa with Ash and watching a movie while her parents were at the kitchen table, playing cards with friends.
Later, after she finally went to bed, she lay curled up beneath the covers she pulled to her chin, listening to the wind and the dry rattle of skeletal tree limbs. She felt isolated from humanity without the sound of the city lullingher to sleep, yet sleep she did, and woke up to the sound of the central heating coming on.
