She bounced up to the register to pay for the pack of Juicy Fruit in her hand as Daniel gathered his tools and ladder. She was already in the passenger seat of the Ranger when he stepped outside, avoiding the urge to stare across the street at the café. He had no claim on Annie Heston. She was free to do whatever she liked with whomever she liked. This strange jealousy welling up in his chest was something he had no right to feel.
Daniel loaded the ladder into the bed of the truck and wedged the toolbox in beside it before climbing in next to Jamie. He hadn’t noticed in the store, but she was spritzed with perfume: a sweet, cotton-and-lemonade scent that was borderline cloying, and he held his breath as he buckled his seat belt and rolled down the window.
The Ranger was old and the engine was loud, louder still with the window down, but for once, Daniel was grateful for the noise. It would keep conversation to a minimum.
He pulled out of the parking lot and turned onto Main Street, leaning back in his seat to keep himself from searching the window of the café for a glimpse of the couple inside.
Town was quiet, just a few people out on the sidewalks, strollinghand in hand in pairs or bending their heads over ice cream cones on benches. Daniel hung his arm out over the side of the truck, the metal toasty from the long hours in the sun. It was warming up now that summer was almost here, and before long the town would be bustling with tourists again, tourists who spent their weekends gawking at the lopsided mountain and the ravaged land behind it, then wandering into town to plunk down their dollars and cents on the countertops of businesses who depended on the summer tourism to stay afloat.
Daniel scanned the buildings of Main Street as he rolled past. Still, after all these years, it didn’t feel like home, this blink-and-you’ll-miss-it drive-by town that could quite literally be missed from the highway behind the wall of pines that outnumbered the buildings a thousand to one. It would never grow any bigger than it was now, and that was fine by him. It was a town where nothing ever happened; a place where nothing went wrong. That was why he had chosen it. Claimed it. Built his lie of a life here. There was no safer place for a man in hiding than a small town forgotten by the wider world.
Jamie waved through the window to a pair of teenaged girls walking arm in arm down the sidewalk, and they blew kisses in her direction while Daniel leaned farther back in his seat.
He took a left turn, and the buildings of town fell away behind them into the unbroken tunnel of forest that led up into the briars.
Jamie turned to face him. “I kind of have a favor to ask you.”
Daniel’s brows lifted. “Me?”
She nodded and Daniel glanced sideways at her. What could Jamie Boyd possibly want from him? “Shoot.”
“Okay, so, I really,reallywant the lifeguard job at the pool this summer, but I have to pass this swim test to do it, and I was wondering if I could maybe practice in the lake.”
Daniel pulled his teeth over his lower lip, fingers drumming the steering wheel. “Couldn’t you practice at the pool?”
Jamie flumped back in her seat. “My dad won’t drive me unless I have an actual job there, and I haven’t saved up enough for a car yet.That’s why I need the work this summer. And I could just run right up to the lake if you say it’s okay. It’s only a mile and a half to jog there, and there’s no weird fish or gators or anything like that, right?”
Daniel laughed. “No. No gators that I’ve seen yet.”
“See? Totally safe. Is it true that the lake glows at night, or is that just made up?”
“Not every night, but sometimes. When the water’s warm enough.”
Jamie clasped her hands together beneath her chin. “So, can I? Please?Please?”
Daniel made the right turn onto Lake Lumin Road with another quick glance at the girl in the passenger seat. Could she really be just a few years younger than he was? She seemed so much younger. But maybe this was exactly what teenagers should be: hopeful and emphatic, every little thing either a wonderful excitement or a crushing disappointment. Maybe she wasn’t young for eighteen. Maybe he was just way too old for twenty-three.
Daniel bought time by slowly rolling up the window as the dust from the road billowed thickly around the truck, opting for choking on perfume over choking on dust.
Of course, it was a terrible idea, giving someone he didn’t know permission to walk onto his land anytime they wanted, but what harm could she do? It was just for a few weeks. Just until summer, and she was hardly the type of person who would analyze the place with the scrutiny of a detective, putting the pieces together and figuring out who he was.
She would have been just eleven when his face was plastered all over the news, probably absorbed in the highs and lows of early adolescence. And even if she had been paying attention to the news at that time, it’s likely the story slid right off her mental plate as soon as something she deemed more important dropped onto it. A new crush, a fight with a friend, a part in a school play.
“I guess so,” he agreed, turning his eyes back to the road. “Just until summer?”
“Just until summer,” she said, smiling.
Favor granted, Jamie folded her hands in her lap and rode in contented silence the rest of the way to her house. Daniel didn’t pull into the gravel driveway, but eased the truck alongside the fence. As she climbed out, he glanced through the trees uneasily, but there was no sign of her parents in the overgrown front yard, and the only movement was a striped sheet that flapped on a clothesline between two apple trees.
Jamie hopped around the front of the truck, giving a quick wave at the windshield before bounding toward the house, her long hair flowing out behind her.
Daniel pulled away from the fence and drove the rest of the way to the clearing without seeing the road. Instead, he saw Annie over and over, with Jake’s hand on the small of her back as he steered her out of sight.
Chapter 13DANIEL
It was the belt this time. And not the leather strap, but the vicious silver buckle at the end that bit into Daniel’s skin and tore it, leaving deep, purple welts that lasted for days.
Gary’s face was red, the forked vein in his forehead a blueVagainst the skin as he raised his arm again, cracking the belt downward with a fury that split the air.
