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“Who is she?” My sister pressed. Adele and Frank had been up here for years. It was no surprise they knew who Harper really was.
“Well, I don’t like to gossip,” Adele said, pursing her lips, her little eyes betraying her excitement.
“Bullshit,” I said through a fake cough, and my sister tried to stifle a laugh. Adele liked to gossip very much and everyone knew it. We stood near the door of the diner, Adele at her podium trying to decide whether to share what she knew.
I shook my head. “I’ve gotta get to work. I don’t have time for this. See ya.” I pushed out the doors into the warming morning, wishing my mind wasn’t screaming at me to stay and find out what I could about Harper.
It was better this way. I didn’t need to know anything about her, other than that she was paying rent.
Plus, there was no way Maddie would let Adele off the hook. If I really wanted to know, she’d tell me. Hell, she’d probably tell me either way.
I drove the truck out the back of the parking lot past the Palmer offices and down the dirt service road to the site of the Inn’s outpost restaurant. It was rising up impressively from the forest, with a huge deck as the main feature. Some ingenious engineering would allow a windowed wall to enclose the deck in bad weather and during the winter months, and stay open to the air in the summer. Inside would be a state-of-the-art kitchen and a winter sports rental and repair facility. The place was mostly bones at this point, but it had been progressing quickly and had a good chance of being ready for the Maddie’s wedding reception at the end of the summer.
“Hey Cam,” Chance Palmer strode around the side of the structure, approaching the truck. “Everything good?”
“Yeah, sorry I’m late.”
Chance shook his head, his toothpaste commercial smile spreading across his face. “No worries, man.” He turned back toward the structure as I pulled my tools from the back of the truck. “Can you keep an eye on the deck planking today, and see if we can get that railing up around the edges? We need to reinforce it over here where it’s going to be external to the main building so it can handle a lot of snow.”
“Pretty optimistic,” I commented. Kings Grove hadn’t had a lot of snow in a lot of years.
“One day this drought will end, man.”
I nodded. Chance clapped me on the back, and I got to work, clearing my mind of small dark-haired women and mysterious mountain stories, to focus on the physical exertion that felt like it saved my life some days.
Chapter 4
HARPER
I’d been back in Kings Grove one week and I felt like my skin might crawl right off my body. Everything about being back here was strange and disconcerting. I’d driven to the grocery store the day after I’d arrived, and the place had expanded to three times the size I remembered. The diner had a new paint job, the ranger station was shiny and bigger, and the inn across the parking lot was amazing. But I’d conditioned myself to hate everything about this place, and the resentment I felt at discovering it was nicer than I remembered made me twitchy. I didn’t know if I resented the place, the things that had happened here, or myself.
I decided to blame my rampant angst on my father. He was a good scapegoat, and I’d hand this his way too.
The house I’d rented was too big. It felt like a breathing living thing around me, and for the first time in my life, I found myself getting scared for no reason. When I was in one room, I’d swear I could hear something in another, and I spent half my time patrolling the place, ducking my head into closets and double-checking bedrooms. It was ridiculous—Kings Grove had never had any particular attraction to serial killers or axe murderers—but I guess that’s what you get when you spend most of your adult life living in an apartment that allows you to see every square foot from any spot. I knew people equated space with luxury, but I was fully prepared to disagree. Square footage was exhausting.
Between my constant patrolling and the general disaster that my life had become, I wasn’t sleeping a lot. I was all discombobulated. And I was starting work next week.
I needed to settle myself and figure some things out before I presented myself at the Inn.
The girl I’d been, the woman I’d become, she’d thought she had it all figured out. That girl was so sure of herself, scoring her degree on her own dime and landing a job with her first-choice company in the city. She was so cocky and confident, falling into a relationship with a partner at the firm, believing they were some kind of power couple.
That girl had trusted people. She’d trusted herself.
She was a moron.
I was a moron.
I stepped out onto the sprawling front deck into the darkness, unable to stand another second inside the big house after essentially hiding there for a week trying to adjust. My stomach churned and my skin felt too tight for my body. I wrapped my arms around myself against the evening chill and paced the wide open planks, feeling the quiet presence of the trees looming around me. It was a moonless night, and the woods were eerily quiet, spiking the discomfort I felt to yet-higher levels as I stood alone in the dark, feeling like the only person in the whole world.
A thick and suffocating loneliness threatened to overtake me, and I sent my feet moving again, but stopped my hyper patrol when I heard a stick crack nearby. Was someone out here? I picked up a broom that had been resting in the corner of the deck and was about to investigate when an ungodly yowl rose through the air—not a scream so much as a whining squeal. I’d never heard anything like it, and my instinct told me it was some kind of animal. My mind flashed to the mountain lion Cam had mentioned and I skittered into the circle of light cast by the window of the big house, putting my back to the wall.
I squinted into the darkness and heard another sound—somewhere behind the house. Not a stick cracking, more like a pop this time. And then another sound—a hiss. As terrifying as it was, there was something familiar about that sound. Not a snaky hiss...
A fire?
I scooted sideways back toward the front door and peered over the narrow edge of the deck to the little house that sat just behind mine and off to the side. The one I’d forced myself not to think about.
And there he was.
