Right Where We Belong

“You’re going to walk away from it?”

“Why not? There’s no equity. Gordon took out a second mortgage almost as soon as he inherited it from his grandmother. With the market the way it is...we’ve been upside down on this place for two years or more.”

“What about your credit?”

“The house is in his name. He never put me on the loan or the title. If his mother wants to save this place, she can move in and make the payments. I’ll leave all of his stuff behind—” she’d already boxed them up and stacked them in the garage, anyway “—and put the keys under the mat.”

“But where will you go? Back to Long Beach?”

“No.” They’d sold the beautiful five-bedroom, four-bath home their parents had owned in Los Angeles, where they’d been raised, and split the proceeds. Reese had paid off his student loans and was using what he had left for graduate school. He was planning to be a doctor. She’d spent a portion of her inheritance on Gordon’s defense—which she now considered to be a waste of money.

“Then where?” he asked.

The only place she could go. “The farmhouse in Silver Springs.” It was all she had left.

“Savanna, no. That place needs too much work. Dad was barely getting started with it when he...when they had the boating accident. How will you live there?”

“I’ll renovate it myself.” And why not? They had to do something with it. And neither one of them had wanted to put it up for sale. That home hadn’t been just another real estate purchase to their father, although he’d done a lot with real estate over the course of his life. This was the ranch his grandparents had once owned. He’d had fond memories of the place, was so excited to be able to bring it back into the family where he’d said it belonged.

“With what money?” Reese asked.

“The money I have left from the LA house.”

“That won’t carry you very far, not when you’ll be using it for the repairs as well as your monthly overhead.”

“Without a mortgage or rent, I should be able to manage a basic renovation and survive for a year, if I’m careful.”

“And what will you do once the renovation is complete?”

“I don’t know, Reese. Worst case, I’ll have to sell and move on, figure out what comes next for me. Best case, I’ll be able to get a loan against the property, give you your share and rebuild my life in Silver Springs.”

He cursed.

“What? You don’t like the idea?”

“I don’t like what you’re having to deal with. It’s not fair. First, we lose Mom, Dad and Rand—and then, as if that wasn’t tragic enough, Gordon starts raping women? How does all of that even happen to one person?”

She didn’t answer his question. Her mind had shot off on a tangent. “Maybe that was why I missed it.”

“Missed what?” he said, sounding confused.

“What Gordon was doing. I was so torn up I wasn’t paying as much attention to him as I should have been. I was barely holding myself together, trying to get through it.”

“But he only raped one woman last summer. The other two he attacked six months ago—almost back-to-back. Why the big gap if it was your bereavement over Mom, Dad and Rand that set him off?”

“There might not be a gap. The police believe he victimized other women. They’re looking at unsolved cases that might be similar in the cities and towns near the mines where he worked.”

“Shit...”

“You’re missing the point. I’m saying my grief—the fact that I was wrapped up in my own problems—is what might’ve started him down that road.”

“I understand, but that’s hardly an excuse. My God, you were mourning the loss of more than half your family. He should’ve been trying to support you for a change.”

She took a sip of wine. Gordon had never been particularly supportive, not in an emotional sense. He’d worked and contributed his paycheck to the upkeep of the family, same as she did, but he wasn’t all that engaged. He’d been gone too much and tired and remote when he was home.

Still, she’d thought they had a decent marriage, one that she could make work. Her parents had been together for thirty-two years when they were killed. She’d wanted that kind of life—one devoted to her family—and had been determined to stick it out for the long haul, even if Gordon wasn’t perfect. “You’re right. I don’t know what started it. I just keep guessing.”

“There’s something wrong with him. That’s what started it.”

She leaned against the headboard and covered her feet with a blanket. “I wish I could go back to using Dad’s last name.”

“Why can’t you?”

“Because then I’ll be a Pearce and my kids will be Grays.”

“So change theirs, too.”

“I will eventually. But not now. I can’t deal with that on top of everything else.”

“No one in California will tie you to the rapist in Nephi, Utah, anyway.”

“Thank God I won’t have everyone staring at me when I go to a gas station or a store.” She heard a woman talking to him in the background. “I’ll let you go. Have a nice night.”

“Savanna?”

She pulled the phone back to her ear. “Yeah?”

“Call me when you’re ready to move. I’ll come help you pack and drive the van.”

He was in graduate school at the University of Oregon in Eugene, which wasn’t close. And it was the third week in April, so he had finals coming up. She didn’t plan to wait until he could help. “There’s no need, little brother. I got it.”

Taking a deep breath, she hung up, finished her wine and somehow resisted the urge to pour another glass. She had to be careful, couldn’t allow herself to fall into a bottle. Gordon’s mother had been an abusive alcoholic—it was why his father had left them so long ago. Savanna would never forget some of the upsetting stories he’d told her—of coming home to find his mother passed out on the couch, soaked in her own urine; of his mother nearly dying of smoke inhalation after falling asleep with a lit cigarette; of his mother screaming and cursing and throwing objects at him when he was a small boy. Maybe Dorothy was the reason he’d turned out so bad. The detective investigating his case had said that rape was more about power and control—and venting anger—than sexual gratification. But it wasn’t as if Gordon’s victims had resembled his mother in any way. And he’d grown close to Dorothy in recent years. They seemed to adore each other...

There were no easy answers, she decided, and got up to start packing. Part of her felt she should stay until the end of the school year. Although it went longer than Reese’s semester in college, it was still only six weeks away. But now that she’d made the decision to move, she couldn’t wait even that long.

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Two months ago, Gavin Turner had given up his studio apartment over the thrift store in Silver Springs, California, an artsy town of five thousand not far from Santa Barbara, and purchased a home—a converted bunkhouse from the 1920s that sat on a whole acre about ten minutes outside of town. After living in such a small space, surrounded by buildings, he almost didn’t know what to do with all the extra room. His friends jokingly referred to his remote location as the “boondocks,” but he enjoyed being out in the open and even closer to the Topatopa Mountains, where he often went hiking or mountain biking. He’d always been drawn to the outdoors. The beauty and solitude brought him peace. He was pretty sure he wouldn’t have been able to navigate his unusual and difficult childhood if not for his love of nature. And music, of course. He strummed on his guitar almost every night, had started singing at various bars in the area and along Highway 101, which ran along California’s coast. He hadn’t landed any notable gigs yet, just performed in various coastal or farming communities, mostly up north. He wanted to break into the music scene, but the competition was so fierce he felt he’d have to move to Nashville, where there was so much happening in the music industry these days, to get where he was hoping to go, and he couldn’t commit to that quite yet. Not while his mother—or, rather, the woman he called his mother—needed him. For now, he enjoyed singing at a different hole-in-the-wall each week. The money he earned augmented what he made working at New Horizons Boys Ranch, the boarding school for troubled boys his adoptive mother had started over twenty years ago and where he’d gone to high school himself.

Tonight the weather was warm and the cicadas were loud as he sat out on the porch in a simple T-shirt and worn jeans, writing a new song. He’d just sat back to take a break and was wondering whether he should get a puppy—he was leaning toward yes, since he hadn’t been able to have a pet in town—when a large moving van came rumbling down his road.

He rarely had visitors, but no one else lived on this road, so he set his guitar to the side and stood.

The truck didn’t stop, however. The woman driving—he was fairly certain it was a woman, but he was judging on size alone, since it was difficult to see in the dark—barely glanced his way. Focused on what was right in front of her, she barreled forward as if she’d had a hard journey and would finish it, this uneven surface be damned.

Who was that? And where was she going? The only other house nearby was the ranch house to which his own converted bunkhouse had once belonged. And it had sat empty for the past three years or longer. According to what Gavin had been told, it wasn’t even for sale—not that he could’ve afforded the bigger property, anyway.

He shoved his hands in his pockets as he watched the truck bounce and sway past him. Although the road was supposed to be privately maintained, it hadn’t been maintained at all, not in a number of years, which made the potholes deep and difficult to miss—and she seemed to be hitting most of them.