"It's true, then? You're back to stay?"
"I didn't say that."
"That's the buzz. I thought it was wrong." He shrugged. "But you never know."
"Meaning what?" she asked, folding her arms across her chest.
"Am I making you uncomfortable?"
"No, of course not." Annoyed with herself, she dropped her arms. "I had dinner with your parents tonight."
"And Matt. Heard that, too."
"I thought you might have been there."
"So they told you I was living in Cypress Springs?"
"Matt did."
"And did he tell you why?"
"Only that you'd had some troubles."
"Nice euphemism." He swept his gaze over the facade of her parents' house. "Sorry about your dad. He was a great man."
"I think so, too." She jiggled her car keys, suddenly on edge, anxious to be inside.
"Aren't you going to ask me?"
"What?"
"If I talked to him before he died."
The question off-balanced her. "What do you mean?"
"It seemed a pretty straightforward question to me."
"Okay. Did you?"
"Yes. He was worriedabout you."
"About me?" She frowned. "Why?"
"Because your mother died before the two of you worked out your issues."
Issues, she thought. Is that how one summed up a lifetime of hurt feelings, a lifetime of longing for her mother's unconditional love and approval and being disappointed time and again? Her head filled with a litany of advice her mother had offered her over the years.
'Avery, little girls don't climb trees and build forts or play cowboys and Indians with boys. They wear bows and dresses with ruffles, not blue-jean cutoffs and T-shirts. Good girls make ladylike choices. They don't run off to the city to become newspapermen. I hey don't throw away a good man to chase a dream."
"He thought you might be sad about that," Hunter continued. She was. He hated that she died without your making peace."
"He said that?" she managed to get out, voice tight.
He nodded and she looked away, memory flooding with the words she had flung at her mother just before she had left for college.
"Drop the loving concern, Mother! You 've never approved of me or my choices. I've never been the daughter you wanted. Why don't you just admit it? "
Her mother hadn't admitted it and Avery had headed off to college with the accusation between them. They had never spoken of it again, though it had been a wedge between them forever more.
"He figured that's why you hardly ever came home." Hunter shrugged. "Interesting, you couldn't come to terms with your mother's life, he her death."
She jumped on the last. "What does that mean, he couldn't come to terms with her death?"
"I would think it's obvious, Avery. It's called grieving."
He was toying with her, she realized. It pissed her off. "And when did all these conversations take place?"
Hunter paused. "We had many conversations, he and I."
The past two days, her shock and grief, the grueling hours of travel, the onslaught of so much that was both foreign and familiar, came crashing down on her. "I don't have the energy to deal with your shit, even if I wanted to. If you decide you want to be a decent human being, look me up."
One corner of his mouth lifted in a sardonic smile. "I didn't answer your question before, the one about my opinion of the local buzz. Personally, I figured you'd pop your old man in a box and go. Fast as you could."
She took a step back, stung. Shocked that he would say that to her. That he would be so cruel. After the closeness they had shared. She pushed past him, unlocked her front door and stepped inside. She caught a glimpse of his face, of the stark pain that etched his features as she slammed the door.
Hunter Stevens was a man pursued by demons.
To hell with his, she thought, twisting the dead-bolt lock. She had her own to deal with.
CHAPTER 4
Hunter gazed at the row of unopened bottles: beer, wine, whisky, vodka. All sins from his past. Each a nail in the coffin of his life. He kept them around to prove that he could. Such a strategy went counter to traditional AA teaching, but he was a masochistic son of a bitch.
Hunter thought of Avery and anger rose up in him in a white-hot, suffocating wave. Once upon a time they'd been the best of friends: him, Matt and Avery. Before everything had begun spin-ning crazily out of control. Before his life had turned to shit.
He pictured her sitting next to Matt at his family's dinner table. All of them laughing, swapping memories. Reveling in the good old days.
What part had he played in those memories? Had they shared stories that hadn't included him? Or had they simply plucked him out as if he had never existed?
Shut out again. Always the one on the outside, looking in. The one who didn't belong.
"Wnat's wrong with you, Hunter? What went wrong with you? "
Good question, he thought, gazing at the bottles, squeezing his fists against the urge that swelled inside him. The urge to open a bottle and get stinking, fall-down drunk.
He'd been down that path; he knew the only place it would lead him was straight to hell. A hell of his own making. One populated by children screaming in terror. One in which he was helpless to stop the inevitable. Helpless to do more than look on in horror and self-loathing. In despair.
Hunter swung away from the bottles. He sucked in a deep breath and moved deliberately away from the kitchen and toward the makeshift desk he had set up in the corner of his small living room. On the desk sat a computer, monitor glowing in the dimly lit room, fan humming softly. Beside it the pages of a novel. His novel. A story about a lawyer's spiral to the depths.
If only he knew the story's end. Some days, he thought his protagonist would manage to claw his way up from those depths. Other days, hopelessness held him so tightly in its grip he couldn't breathe let alone imagine a happy ending.
He pulled out the chair and sat, intent on channeling his energy and anger into his novel. Instead, he found his thoughts turning to Avery once more.
What caused a man to douse himself with a flammable substance and strike a match?
He knew. He understood.
He had been there, too.
The blinking cursor drew his attention. He focused on the words he had written:
Jack fought the forces that threatened to devour him. To his right lay the laws of man, to his left the greatness of God. One wrong step and he would be lost.
Lost. And found. He had come home to set things right. To start over. He had already begun.
And now, here was Avery.
All together again, he thought. He, Matt and Avery. The same as when his life had begun to implode. How would this affect his plans? The timetable of events he had carefully constructed?
It wouldn't, he decided. Things would be set right. His life would be set right. No matter how much it hurt.
CHAPTER 5
Avery bolted upright in bed, heart pounding, her father's name a scream on her lips. She darted her gaze to the bedroom door, for a split second a kid again, expecting her parents to charge through, all concerned hugs and comforting arms.
They didn't, of course, and she sagged back against the headboard. She hadn't slept well, no surprise there. She'd tossed and turned, each creak and moan of the old house unfamiliar and jarring. She had been up a half dozen times. Checking the doors. Peering out the windows. Pacing the floor.
In truth, she suspected it hadn't been the noises that had kept her awake. It had been the quiet. The reason for the quiet.
Finally, she'd taken the couple of Tylenol PM caplets she'd dug out of her travel bag. Sleep had come.
But not rest. For sleep had brought nightmares. In them, she had been enfolded in a womb, warm and contented. Protected. Sud-denly, she had been torn from her safe haven and thrust into a bright, white place. The light had burned. She had been naked. And cold.
In the next instant flames had engulfed her. And she had awakened, calling out her father's name. Not too tough figuring that one out.