Her Road Home

CHAPTER FIVE

TWO WEEKS LATER, Sam packed her belongings. After extracting a promise from Mr. Raven to visit her, with new house keys tucked in her pocket, she drove to the house. Pulling into the driveway, she stared at it. Her house. For a while, anyway. She pictured it complete—a stately grande dame, holding dignified court over the tan hills that bowed at her feet.

She was itching to get back inside, to see if her idea of a loft would really work.

Her fingers ached for her tools as she looked forward to mindless hours spent restoring a windowsill, to listening to the old house whispering its secrets.

Why this house should stand out from her other projects, she couldn’t say. Perhaps the secret would be revealed in the renovation.

Sam gathered as much stuff as she could with one hand, navigated the weed-choked sidewalk and climbed the steps to the front porch. She looked out over the sleepy hills. Puffs of eucalyptus-scented breeze touched her face and fat honeybees droned in the overgrown shrubbery at her feet. No traffic noise, no human voices—only the sounds of spring, and the countryside drowsing in the heat. Sam closed her eyes, feeling the edges of the hole in her chest where the restlessness usually lived. Peace stole in. Her mind quieted.

“Come on, Crozier, start hauling ash.” Realizing that her father’s words were literal in this case, she smiled, dropped her stuff, unlocked the door, and went in search of a broom. She was attempting to clean out the pieces of ceiling in the dining room with one hand and a sling, when the sound of a large truck laboring up the hill disturbed the quiet.

She walked to the front parlor and looked out the tall front windows to see a moving van towing her Jeep, turn in the drive. She directed the men to put her single bed in the front parlor, along with her boxes of clothes and sundries. Most of her furniture would go into storage for the duration of the renovation.

Last off the truck were her red toolboxes. After rolling them into the kitchen, the movers left. For a half hour, Sam indulged herself, pulling and closing the long flat drawers, hefting mallets, rearranging hardware, stroking her father’s antique hand plane. The world tilted to a more familiar axis and the ground settled under her feet. Traveling was fun, but nowhere was home until her tools arrived.

I so miss you, Dad. With a last lingering caress, she closed the drawer and got to work.

She spent the rest of the weekend settling in. After driving the Love Machine to town for much-needed supplies, Sam did a good cleaning of the bathroom, the kitchen and front parlor, her chosen bedroom for the duration of the remodel.

Surveying the roof, she judged the framing solid, but everything else would go—from the sheathing out. She took measurements and visited the lumber company to order supplies. Her body hurt just imagining the labor involved. She pictured herself, on the roof, trying to tear off sheathing with one hand.

Dammit! She liked working alone. Liked knowing at the end of a job that the satisfying result was hers alone. Others may not realize after Sam had moved on, that the mark left behind was hers, but she’d know. And that had always been enough.

But wanting didn’t make it so. Given her injuries, she’d have to get help. She’d curse the accident, but if not for that, she wouldn’t have found this great house. Reluctantly, she decided to stop by the high school on Monday.

You can always bite the bullet and pay through the nose for professionals if students turn out to be a hairball idea.

Nursing a cup of coffee on her porch after dinner, Sam imagined pioneer wagons carrying tired families coming over the hills. How would they have felt, after facing unbelievable hardships on their way west, seeing this beautiful land for the first time? The view from her porch probably hadn’t changed much since then, and she liked that.

The self-satisfied purr of an expensive engine disturbed her reverie. A sleek black Mercedes convertible slowed, and then pulled into her drive. Her muscles snapped to attention like guard dogs on a leash.

Probably a lost tourist. She set her cup down.

The driver glanced in the rearview mirror and smoothed his hair before climbing from the car’s cream leather interior, a bottle of wine in his hand tied with a blowsy scarlet bow. Squinting into the low sun, Sam recognized the man who’d hit her motorcycle that day in the rain. She stood.

He found the edge of the sidewalk in the weeds and, head down, followed the trail in the tall grass. As he neared, he looked up with a broad smile. “I’m here to officially welcome you to Widow’s Grove.”

She felt the house’s empty rooms at her back. “How did you know where I live?”

“Well, now, that tells me that you didn’t grow up in a small town. When I heard a biker chick bought the old Sutton place, I knew it had to be you.” Smiling, he bowed over the bottle of wine like a maître d’, awaiting a diner’s approval.

Sam tucked her good hand in her back pocket. “Thank you. But I don’t drink.” She did, but she wasn’t telling him that.

His smile went a bit stale. “That’s okay. You can save it for your housewarming.” He extended his hand. “We never had the chance to be properly introduced. The name’s Brad Sexton.”

Not knowing what else to do, she took his hand and gave it a quick shake. “Samantha Crozier.” She let go. He didn’t.

“I just wanted you to know how very sorry I am for the accident.” He gave her hand a gentle squeeze, then let go. His bored-with-my-life, family-man eyes took a tour of her body. “You look like you got the worst of it.”

She wrapped her good hand around the arm in the sling, covering her chest. “I’m fine.”

He glanced up at the house. “I used to play in this place as a kid. Sure looks different than I remember.”

Sam studied his faded-handsome face. He looked like a former high school quarterback, gone to seed. Middle-age thickness had crept up from his waist to his heavy jowls. Age and easy living had begun to assault the skin at his neck.

But his eyes, when he glanced back to her, seemed innocuous. “Mind giving me a tour?”

Her shoulder muscles tightened as the sound of “no” moved from her brain to her lips. She’d always been a lousy judge of character—trusting those she shouldn’t, and spurning offers of friendship from well-meaning people. It was as if some internal compass constantly pointed her in the wrong direction.

But Brad didn’t see her hesitation, because he’d turned and walked through the open front door.

“Hey!” Shrugging off the ice-water trickle of déjà vu at the back of her neck, she hurried inside.

She stepped to the doors of the front parlor and pulled them closed, hiding the tortured pillows and rumpled sheets of her narrow bed. When she turned back to Brad, there was a flash of something at the back of his eyes. Something oily. Her stomach twisted, remembering that her closest neighbor was a quarter mile away.

Maybe it was just her uneasy brain, superimposing the past on the present.

He walked to the stairs. “Donny Sutton and I used to slide down these banisters.” He patted the newel post. “I remember when his mother ordered that window.” He tipped his chin to the ornate fleur-de-lis etched in the tall glass window at the stair landing. “His dad bitched up a storm about it. Must’ve cost a pretty penny, even back then.”

When he bent to place the wine on the top step of the landing, a late afternoon sunray caught his diamond-studded wedding ring and threw dancing sparks up the shadowed wall of the staircase.

“I want to thank you for this. It’s not often you get to walk into your past.” His face formed a mask of sincerity.

Maybe it wasn’t a mask. Maybe she was wrong, this time.

“Could I see the upstairs? Donny and I spent a lot of time in his room, conspiring on world domination.”

“Um. I guess.”

He stepped back, gesturing for her to lead. She pictured him watching her butt as she climbed, and waved him on ahead.

“Old man Sutton died about ten years ago, and his wife, two years later.” His voice echoed in the narrow space as he turned at the landing and started up. “Donny and his sisters have fought over this place ever since.”

Sam stayed well back, not wanting to watch his pudgy rear end struggle up the stairs, but not able to stop herself. On her way by, she grabbed a screwdriver from the window ledge and slipped it in her back pocket. The weight of it there somehow felt right.

He was huffing by the time he reached the top landing. “I don’t know why I’m telling you all this....” He wandered down the hall, opening doors as he went.

“Don’t go in that one!”

He stood at the doorway of the ruined room. “Wow. Donny sure would be pissed to see his room now.”

He wandered down the hall. Sam closed the door to the room.

“Oh, my God.” His voice echoed from the large bathroom at the hall’s end.

Sam hurried, wondering if he’d hurt himself on something. She had liability insurance, but sure didn’t want to have to use it.