Her dad was indeed hovering behind her mom. The hall light gave him a misleading halo. It was funny how age seemed to fade some people, but her parents only got more vivid. Her mother’s red hair bordered on scarlet now, assisted by whatever box of color happened to be on sale; her dad’s was gleaming silver, and his mustache would have won Best in Show in any mustache pageant. They both took up a little more space: both a little softer, a little broader, a little more imposing, perhaps, with a sort of seen-it-all, can-handle-it-all, usually enjoy-it-all dignity.
Sherrie Harwood gave her husband’s arm a little squeeze and he gave her bottom a reflexive, affectionate pat as she retreated.
Her dad propped a hand on the bedroom door frame. “If you need help sleeping, Avalon, I can get you a shot of brandy. I think I have a bottle around here left over from last year’s Chamber of Commerce Christmas gift exchange.”
“Good parenting, Dad.”
“Only the best for you, pumpkin.”
She managed a little laugh.
He hovered there in the doorway, as if he could body block anything else that might want to get in there and hurt her. “So... do you know what you’re going to do yet about...?”
“Nope. But we have a company together, so...”
Funny how they were talking in ellipses about Corbin. Kind of like he was Voldemort, suddenly. Her dad wasn’t one for long, heartfelt, girlish talks.
“I’m doing fine, though, Pop. Really.”
Right on cue, a text pinged in from Corbin. She seized her phone and squeezed it like a KGB assassin strangling an enemy spy. The little screen finally went black.
Then she slapped it punishingly down on the nightstand.
Her dad watched all this wordlessly.
“Yeah, you seem fine,” he said dryly, finally.
She sighed.
“Hey, I was talking to Lloyd at the feed store today. He says that that old Coltrane house at Devil’s Leap is finally up for auction. Tomorrow morning, nine o’clock, courthouse steps.”
Her heart lurched.
She couldn’t say a word for a few seconds.
“I’ll be damned,” she said, almost stammering. “I was just...” Just what? Reviewing the ignominy of her romantic past? “I just saw it through the trees on the way here.”
“Yeah, Lloyd checked out the photos on the auction website. Says it’s pretty much unchanged inside. Won’t sell, though. No one around here has that kind of money or needs a house like that.”
“I suppose you’re right. Kind of a shame, though.”
In her memories, the inside of that house glowed like a burnished romantic flashback in a movie. Golden hardwood floors and about a half dozen crystal chandeliers and an extravagance of windows, many of them trimmed with William Morris–esque stained glass. Its beauty had been an ache.
Sometimes it seemed that as long as that house remained empty, it was like a snow globe around that time with Mac.
“Well, it’s kind of a ridiculous house,” her dad said with typical pragmatism. “It has a damned turret. Beautiful grounds around it, though. Remember how you guys loved jumping off that rock into that swimming hole at Devil’s Leap? Those summer days when your mom and I could get away when you all played with those Coltrane boys.”
She couldn’t speak for a moment.
“Vaguely,” she lied. Her voice frayed.
The Coltranes had bought the house the summer when Avalon was about ten years old. She and her siblings and Mac, and sometimes his brother Ty, had all run about together like little forest creatures up at Devil’s Leap, summer friends.
But she and Mac had competed with each other in every imaginable way from the moment they met. She’d had no idea what to call that sort of exhilarating hybrid of fear and wild joy she’d felt in his presence, but she did know it was almost exactly the same way she’d felt that first time she’d jumped off Devil’s Leap into the watering hole.
By the first time Mac kissed her—coincidentally right after she’d beat him in another race to the rock—she’d fully understood what to call those feelings.
“We loved taking you out there,” her dad said. “You kids had such a blast, and you all were so damn cute. I remember like yesterday watching you flying off that rock right into the swimming hole that day you raced young Mac Coltrane.”
