Sure, why not.
I pulled my phone from my pocket and thumbed out a quick text to our oldest sister.
Have you checked old Barker ledgers for mysteriously handsome farmhands who disappeared? Asking for a ghost.
Three dots popped up almost immediately but then disappeared again. I smiled to myself. That meant Selene wasalready thinking about it, probably mentally rearranging her entire afternoon around the idea.
I slipped my phone away and kept walking, letting the cold air clear my head.
It was a strange feeling, being back in the town where everyone knew the Darling kids by name ... and having to reintroduce myself. Being the sister who’d left and stayed gone long enough that people forgot about me.
Now I was back, half jobless, living with my parents one week and in my brother’s best friend’s house the next. No husband. No grand plan. Just a complicated living situation and a talent for making wedding dresses look good.
And on top of that, I’d somehow appointed myself the emotional goalie for a man who barely wanted to look me in the eye most days.
By the time I looped back toward my car, my brain had run through every bad decision I’d made since college twice. Back at his house, the pine trees behind his place stood tall and dark, a solid wall between his backyard and the dunes beyond. Smoke curled lazily from a nearby chimney, and the faint swell of the lake carried on the wind.
I paused at the bottom of his front steps, eyeing the porch and the front door and the life I’d stepped into without really thinking it through.
He wanted rules?
A smile tugged at my mouth.Maybe it was time the fridge got an official list.
