Chapter 5

D anica woke to the sound of a vehicle pulling up beside her RV. Benji started barking at the door, which would bring attention to the fact that she was inside the RV. Not what she wanted a visitor because absolutely nothing was good about that vehicle, and she didn’t need to look out the window to know that it was a cruiser.

As she pulled the curtain to the side, she groaned because, of course, the local deputies were here. Two of them. Obviously everybody knew that she was in town, and, although she’d been aware that this could and would likely happen at some point, she hadn’t really been prepared for the idea of it happening right away. But then again, this town was nothing if not full of superstitious old bats.

She quickly dressed, expecting to hear them knock on her door, but instead they went straight to her grandmother’s house. She watched them from behind the curtain, as she brushed her teeth. As her grandmother opened the door, she had a big smile on her face. But then that was her grandmother. She loved everybody, or at least gave them that appearance. She said it was important to keep up appearances, so people didn’t see her the wrong way.

The trouble was, everybody saw Nana as she was, or as they thought she was—a crazy old lady who thought she was psychic, yet had just enough uncanny accuracy to make everybody uneasy around her, which is why Nana had no friends. It broke Danica’s heart to see her grandmother always attempt to be friendly, yet get rebuffed again and again. Nothing was wrong with Nana. She was blessed with the sight—or perhaps cursed, depending on your point of view. Danica didn’t know; she’d had plenty of problems of her own.

The fact that she was back was a testament to the relationship she had with her grandmother, because Danica would make this attempt for nobody else in the world. Yet Nana was failing physically. Danica could see it, even if her grandmother refused to acknowledge it. Watching as the smile fell off her grandmother’s face, Danica winced, quickly put on sandals, opened the door to let out her dog, then stepped outside and called out, “Good morning.”

Immediately the new arrivals turned to look at her. One of the men winced, as he caught sight of her face. She stiffened and stared at him directly. “Were you looking for somebody?”

Her grandmother called out, “It’s all right, honey. They’re just checking up.”

“Checking up on what?” Danica asked coolly, as she studied the two men, who shuffled uncomfortably under her piercing gaze. She’d often found that the only way to deal with people who were out to cause trouble was to face them directly and to make them face themselves, if nothing else.

She looked over at the one man, and a memory twigged. “Hey, Aaron. Is that you?”

He nodded, formed a half smile. “Hey, Danica. Yeah. I’m a deputy in the sheriff’s office now.”

“That is good news,” she said. “I know that’s something you always wanted.”

“It is, thanks. How are you doing?”

She smiled at him. “I’m doing okay. How about you?”

He shrugged. “I’m okay. Sandy and I managed a few years, but it didn’t last,” he muttered, kicking a stone in front of him.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Danica said, from the heart. “No surprise though. She had been after bigger and better places. This town was never really where she wanted to live.”

“Right, and she’s long gone,” he muttered, with a shrug. “I got my boy though.”

“You have a son?” she asked in delight.

He nodded bashfully. “Yeah, and she didn’t want custody because she was heading to Hollywood,” he grumbled, almost spitting onto the ground.

“Maybe she’ll find whatever it is she’s looking for,” Danica suggested, “and you’ve got your boy. How old is he?”

“He’s four and a half,” he stated, beaming.

“That’s lovely,” she murmured. “Again something you always wanted.”

“I did,” he admitted, “except I was thinking about having a whole baseball team to myself.”

She chuckled. “Pick the right woman next time. I can see that it was definitely part of your ultimate vision of family life.”

“I come from eight,” he added, cracking a smile. “It seemed so natural to want the same number.” Such bewilderment filled his tone as he continued. “I just don’t understand why she wasn’t up for it.”

Danica shook her head. “Because Sandy never planned on being a housewife and a mom,” Danica pointed out. “Lots of women would be happy doing that, but Sandy just wasn’t one of them.”

He nodded and then caught sight of the sharp look from the man at his side, who glared at the two of them.

Danica smiled at the other deputy. “Hi, I don’t think we’ve met. I’m Danica.” She reached out a hand, but he almost tripped over himself, trying to get far enough away. She kept the smile plastered on her face, even as Aaron looked uncomfortable at his partner’s actions.

“This is Deputy Trent Smith,” Aaron rushed in to say.

“That’s okay,” she replied, still with a smile and a nod. “I don’t bite. Of course my dog might.” The deputy glared at her, and she chuckled. “I am used to that reaction. So, what’s up? Any particular reason you’re here?”

Deputy Smith glared at her. “Yeah, we heard a stranger was in town.”

“Really?” she asked in confusion, wondering at the weird sense of familiarity to his face. He was older than Aaron and appeared more seasoned, senior even, but he didn’t want much to do with her. “No strangers are here. We were all born and raised here. Unless it’s you. Are you new to town?” she asked him. “Yeah, you must be. I’ve never seen you before.”

He continued to glare at her.

She realized she probably shouldn’t be pissing him off, but it was too much fun. Besides, that reaction from people was getting very old. She had a scar on her face, but it was hardly anything that made her look like a gargoyle. For the first time, she had to laugh at herself because it really wasn’t that terrible. It was disturbing, sure, distressing and probably scary to little kids, but to adults? It shouldn’t have any effect at all.

“So, now that you know I’m here, is there anything else I can do for you?” She walked toward her grandmother, then put an arm around her small shoulders, and added, “I’m here to help look after my grandmother. I’m sure you can agree that’s a good thing to do.”

Aaron smiled, looking over at Nana. “It’s been a while since I’ve seen you, Harriet.”

She beamed at him. “I’m always here. Anytime you want to pop in and have a cup of tea, come on by.”

He nodded, then looked back at Danica, this time a little more nervously. “It was good to see you, Danica.” He nudged his partner. “We just wanted to stop in and to confirm who was here.”

“Now you know,” Danica stated, giving them both a bright, mocking smile. “Stop in anytime.”

And the two of them hastily returned to the cruiser and pulled away.

Danica and Nana remained outside, standing on the grass, watching the sheriff’s cruiser go on down the road.

Her grandmother looked at her. “You know, if you were nicer, they might have come in.”

“If I was any nicer, they might have taken me down to the station and charged me,” she snapped.

Her grandmother sucked in her breath. “I hope you don’t believe that’ll happen.”

“I hope it won’t happen,” she shared, “but I am perfectly aware that plenty of people around here would like to see me arrested. It’s not even that they think I did anything wrong, but simply because I’m different, and that makes them all very uncomfortable.”

“That just displays their faults,” Nana declared. “Not yours.”

“I know that, Nana. Yet it was funny because, while Aaron was here talking to me, I saw the new deputy’s reaction. Meanwhile, I had just admitted to myself that my face isn’t that bad. It’s a bit of a shock, yes, at first glance. And it might be something that people have to look at a couple times before they’re more comfortable with it,” she added, with a chuckle. “However, it’s not something to recoil from, the way the new deputy just did. So, definitely something else is going on.”

“It’s the same as the rumors I told you about.”

“Right, those rumors,” Danica noted, with a shake of her head. “Do people really think I killed my own mother?”

“I think they don’t quite understand, so they’re looking at everything. Plus scared people always lash out,” Nana explained, patting Danica’s hand. “Remember that.”

“I know. Scared people hurt people.”

“Hurt people?” Nana repeated.

“Exactly, and they don’t know they’re doing it, so we can’t blame them for it.” She looked at Nana. “Have you been doing anything around town to make them leery of you?”

She snorted. “No, I sure haven’t, but occasionally something pops up, and I do feel compelled to tell people about it.”

“Of course you do.” Danica let out a sigh. “You also know that’s guaranteed to make them afraid of you.”

“Maybe, but I still think that, if somebody is in danger of getting hurt in the next few days, I need to tell them about it. And that will never change.”

“No, and, because it won’t ever change,” Danica replied, with a smile, “none of this will ever change. You will always be on the outside.”

“Just like you,” her grandmother pointed out shrewdly.

She smiled and nodded. “Yes, just like me.”

“But you think you’re on the outside because of your looks.”

“No, I’m on the outside because my own mother tried to murder me,” she stated, shaking her head. “Even worse, old ideas and fears stick around. However, I’ve never really expected anyone to think I might have had something to do with my mother’s death, so I’m surprised to find they’ve jumped on that bandwagon to begin with.”

“I don’t know why they would have jumped on it either,” Nana said. “It was never fair to you, but I suppose there really is no such thing as fairness.”

“No, that’s very true. They’re not thinking. They’re reacting. And, when people just react,” she added, with a shrug, “all kinds of shit happens.”

Her grandmother smiled. “Come on inside. Let’s get you some coffee. I wish you would sleep in the house though.”

“That won’t happen, as you very well know,” Danica argued, “not when we know who runs the house.”

“If you ask me, is there a choice?”

“No, there’s not. If I try to stay in this house after dark, you know perfectly well what will happen.”

“We could work on that,” Nana suggested somewhat hopefully.

“My RV is parked in the driveway, Nana. I think that will be close enough in this situation.”

“I would still prefer that you were in the house.”

“Maybe, at some point, but, for now, it seems that this is as far as I can go.” Danica swung her arm around, noting the grassy side yard they stood on.

“You could ask Daisy nicely,” her grandmother offered in a charming tone.

Rolling her eyes at that, Danica walked up to the steps, looked at the house, and asked, “May I come in for coffee?”

The door opened but just a tad.

“See? I can come in for coffee if I ask politely,” she noted in a mocking tone, “but only because it’s daytime. As soon as it gets dark out, you know that the house won’t want me in here.”

Her grandmother winced. “I’m sorry, dear.” Nana opened the door wider, and they both stepped inside.

“Me too, but let’s not forget that she’s also your daughter,” she murmured. “Plenty of pain for all of us.”

“Indeed,” Nana said. “I still struggle to understand why she would have done that to you.”

“Yet you also know that, in the last few years before it happened, she couldn’t stand the sight of me.” She looked around the room, bright and colorful. “In a way, it would be nice to know. Why does anybody choose to kill someone they should by all rights love?” She sat down at the kitchen table, filled with an odd sense of discomfort. The house had never been home to her, certainly not since she’d left. After coming back, it had a definite You’re not welcome energy to it.

“Did she ever tell you that she loved you?” her grandmother asked from the far side of the room.

Danica thought about it, then shook her head. “Honestly, no. I don’t think she ever did. She wasn’t into that lovey-dovey stuff, and she sure as hell wasn’t into hugs and cuddles and looking after people,” she added, “but you already knew that.”

“Of course. I couldn’t get a hug out of my own daughter,” Nana sadly admitted. “I don’t know what I did wrong.”

“Why do you assume that you did something wrong?” Danica asked. “My mother was a force unto herself. She did as she pleased, and the rest of us were just on the edges of her life, if she let us, and, if not, we weren’t. In the end, I’m not sure Daisy was really all there.”

“I think that’s an easier way for you to look at it too,” Nana replied, bringing a tall silver pot of coffee over to the table. “It’s hard for me to think about what she did, but it’s got to be even harder for you.”

“I try not to think about it at all,” Danica shared in a quiet tone. She waved her hand. “Now, let’s talk about something much nicer.”

“We could, but that would mean telling you that the hot water heater seems to have quit completely last night.”

She stared at her grandmother and groaned. “Seriously?”

Nana grimaced. “I don’t think I did anything to break it, but it’s not acting right today.”

“Of course not,” Danica said, with a sigh. “I’ll take a look at it.”

“You don’t have to. I can call somebody in. I’m sure somebody will come and look after it.”

Danica looked over at her grandmother and shook her head. “Are you sure? Because I’m not. I’m not sure at all. Too often, as you and I both know, the people who come aren’t ones we can trust. The people who come end up causing us all kinds of trouble and likely have a negative purpose.”

“That talk is practically guaranteed to make people not come at all,” Nana noted, with a laugh. “Sure. I sense all kinds of ghosties in this place, and some of them are pretty-damn cranky about your being here at all, but I also know that some of them aren’t bad. They’re just people attached to the home.” Her grandmother sighed. “I’m in an odd mood these days. We’re not to that point yet, but you do know that the spirits are calling me daily.”

“Tell them to F-off ,” Danica demanded, glaring at her grandmother. “I didn’t come all this way to have you up and die on me.”

“No, and I do appreciate the fact that you did come all this way, even if I don’t quite understand it.” Danica glared at her grandmother, and her grandmother smiled. “I know you don’t like it when I talk like that, but it’s confusing for me, sometimes a little more confusing than intended.”

“Of course,” Danica replied. “Don’t you worry about a thing. I’ll get the hot water heater fixed.”

Nana shook her head. “Do you have any money to get it fixed?”

“I have some money. The rest, we’ll find a way.”

Her grandmother nodded slowly. “I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t come home.”

“I’m here now, so let’s just deal with that and forget about the rest.”

“In that case, maybe you should take a look at the hot water heater,” Nana suggested hopefully. “I don’t know if you can do anything to fix it, but I would really like a shower.”

With a crack of laughter, Danica nodded, smiled, and got up, heading down to the ancient basement, where all the utilities were. As she walked up to the hot water heater, she sighed. “Come on. Do you really want to knock off now? Can’t you wait just a little bit longer?”

And it almost seemed as if she got a message across, as she heard something.

It wasn’t a voice in her head. It may have been a noise, yet it wasn’t. She’d always found that equipment talked to her, though she knew that would sound foolish to anybody else.

She glanced around the room. “How about holding on a little bit longer? Just a little bit. I don’t suspect Nana’s got more than six months, but what are the chances that you can give her hot water for that time?” She placed her hands on the actual hot water heater itself, checking out what she could feel, and it wasn’t long before she realized that it just needed to be relit.

She bent down, checked the pilot light, and looked for the lighter she’d left down here years and years ago. Sure enough, there the lighter was, and she quickly relit the pilot, listening as it fired up again.

She made her way upstairs to her grandmother, who stood at the top of the stairs with a hopeful expression on her face. “The pilot light had gone out again,” Danica shared.

Her grandmother cackled with joy. “I’d already checked that damn pilot light,” she stated, “and it wasn’t out before.”

“It’s working now,” Danica confirmed, with a smile, “so you can have your shower in a few hours.”

“That’s good to hear,” her grandmother replied. “If nothing else, having you home always keeps the equipment running smoothly.” As she walked back to the kitchen table and her cup of coffee, her grandmother asked her, “Did you ever think to make… repairs work for getting money?”

She frowned at Nana. “You mean, as in creating money?”

“I don’t know, just anything to make it so you’re not always quite so desperate and on the edge of financial problems,” her grandmother pointed out.

“Did I say I was on the edge of having money problems?” she asked.

Her grandmother frowned. “You never tell me anything when it comes to money.”

“Nothing to discuss,” Danica stated, with a chuckle. “I’m okay, and that’s all I care about. Food on the table, dog food for Benji. All kinds of things in life I don’t need but might be nice to have. Yet I don’t choose to worry about it.” She sipped her coffee and then asked, “Do you know the other deputy?”

Her grandmother shook her head. “It may have been Simon’s boy, but I don’t know that for sure.”

“Ah. Simon’s boy.” Danica frowned. “I guess that makes sense.”

“Why?” her grandmother asked. “What about any of that makes sense?”

“Simon has always been scared of us, scared of the gift, believing the superstitions,” she replied, chuckling. “So his boy has probably picked that up from him.”

“Yeah, but that boy is hardly a boy. He’s a man, but he’s a man full of prejudice. Yet where did it come from? They almost always have a source, and, in this case, it would have come from Simon. What’s his son’s name?”

“Aaron introduced him as Trent. Yet, back in the day, I thought everyone called him Casper,” she shared, staring off in the distance. “Maybe it’s a nickname.”

“Casper, like the ghost?” Nana chuckled at that. “Maybe it’s a good name after all, making fun of his superstitions.” Nana studied Danica, watching her facial expressions, awaiting her response.

Danica shrugged. “You just never really know with things like that,” she replied, with a smile. “Don’t worry. I have no intention of talking to him or causing him any pain, unless he continues to show up here.”

“You do know your very existence upsets him.”

“Oh, I know that much,” Danica agreed, with a smile. “I won’t do anything on purpose.”

“Good, glad to hear it. On the other hand, if you would do something nice for people, maybe they would learn to forgive.”

“I’ve done nothing for them to forgive me about,” she declared, looking at her grandmother.

Her grandmother winced and went silent. “I know that,… and I didn’t mean it the way it sounded. Nothing that happened was your fault. Still, I always find myself looking for ways to make amends.”

“We can all make amends,” Danica suggested, “yet you should just give up trying to make amends when the people choose not to see past their own prejudices. So don’t you worry. I won’t cause you trouble. I won’t get anybody else irate over my being here. They seem to do that all on their own. Yet I’m just trying to look after you.”

“Partly why I wanted you to come home was to make peace with your past before I’m gone,” she explained in frustration. “I don’t really want you to go through this nightmare every day of your life. The only way we’ll solve it is if we find out who killed your mother. At least then people will stop thinking it was you.”

“Sure, and what will they find out? Except that Daisy killed herself. You and I both know that, and absolutely no way is anybody else ready to hear that. So, what am I supposed to do?” she asked.

Her grandmother’s shoulders slumped. “You’re right, and I’m sorry. I hadn’t really considered how the rest of the world always looks at you.”

“I’m not looking at them in any other way either. I’m just ignoring them. And, with any luck, people will slowly get used to my being around again.”

“You’ll stay? You won’t let them chase you away?” her grandmother asked, fear and hope intermingled in her facial expression.

Danica reached across the table and picked up the frail, pale, papery-thin hand of her grandmother, then smiled. “I won’t let them chase me away.”

Nana smiled and relaxed. “In that case, we need to go grocery shopping.”

Danica shook her head. “Oh, no—hell no. We just went grocery shopping. I’m not going out for you to parade me around and to tell everybody that I’m home again.”

“It would be good if we did though,” Nana replied cheerfully. “At least let’s go get ice cream this afternoon.”

“Don’t you have ice cream in the freezer?” she asked suspiciously.

“Maybe, but it doesn’t really matter because ice cream from the parlor has a very different taste than ice cream from a store.”

“Maybe it does,” Danica conceded, shaking her head. “However, it looks to me as if you’re just trying to get me back out in public.”

“Would that be so bad?”

“ So bad ? No. But so good? Absolutely not.” And speaking of which, she placed her empty coffee cup on the table. “I didn’t take Benji for his walk.”

“You go do that.” Nana smiled at her granddaughter. “As soon as you return, we’ll eat breakfast and then plan our day.”

“Plan our day?” Danica repeated. “I work, remember?”

Her grandmother’s face fell. “Right, I forgot that.”

But seeing the disappointment on Nana’s face, Danica offered, “I could take maybe the rest of this morning off and work this afternoon.”

Her grandmother’s smile blossomed again. “Now that,” she declared, “would be lovely. Thank you.”

“No promises on how long that’ll last though,” she warned. “I must work in order to keep the money flowing.”

“Got it,” Nana said cheerfully, yet completely ignored her warning. “I still think it’ll all turn out okay.”

“Me too. Otherwise I wouldn’t have come back,” Danica stated. “I didn’t sign up for this without realizing what I was up against.”

“No, maybe not, but you did it for me—” And Nana stopped, as if finding the right words.

“Don’t feel guilty, Nana.”

“What?”

“You heard me. Don’t feel guilty about my coming back and all that went on before. Please do not feel guilty.”

“I don’t want to feel guilty, but, if things don’t go well now and if I’ve ruined your life by bringing you home again,” she shared, “that will be very hard.”

“You haven’t ruined my life at all. This is a choice I made. I’m here, so relax. I’ll take Benji for a walk now.”

“You do that.” Then she suddenly asked, “Pancakes?”

Danica glanced back at her grandmother. While not hungry in any way, but knowing perfectly well that her grandmother needed something to do, Danica nodded. “Sure. Pancakes would be lovely.” And, with that, she escaped out the back door, hearing her grandmother get up and happily bustle around the kitchen behind her. Benji, absolutely delighted, darted around outside, racing toward the creek ahead of her.

She stopped at the edge of the water and smiled. Something was so soothing about the ripple of the water, the beauty of the overall scene, the clear blue stream allowing everything below to be seen. The creek made her heart feel calm and peaceful when she was here. Something to be said for having acreage with a creek on it.

With that thought, she turned and glanced in the direction of Cameron’s property. She had no idea how he felt about her request. She could only hope that he would consider it in good faith because that’s how she had presented it to him, in good faith.

She did want to stay with her grandmother. She didn’t think her grandmother had all that much time left and certainly didn’t need the property in terms of that time frame. Yet it would be something that would put her grandmother at ease, just knowing the land was back together again.

And, if her grandmother did pass away sometime soon, Danica wasn’t sure what she herself would do. How did one plan for that eventuality, when absolutely no one else was in her world? It was just the two of them, and to lose that one connection to another living person who cared about her would hurt, and in a big way.

She could only hope that would be a long time away. However, Danica knew in her heart of hearts a date. A date that was emblazoned in her mind, and it was only a few weeks away.

A few weeks to store up memories of a lifetime, and then her grandmother would be gone, and Danica would be all alone.

She wandered for the next twenty or thirty minutes, trying to find that sense of peace again, that sense of connection to the land. It really was the only reason she would consider staying after Nana was gone. This connection to the land was all she had. Yet, with so much conflict in town, couldn’t she find a better place?

Still, she really didn’t have a choice.

She needed to stay—at least for now.

The more she walked, the more peace soaked into her soul. She found a good spot to stop. She sat down by the creek, picked up a few rocks, and tossed them aimlessly into the water beside her. She worked on finding that inner core, that place of concentration and peacefulness again.

Every time before she worked on a project, she took a few moments to pull back out of the real world and to become something of a creator again, opening up the wells of creativity to allow her to do the work that she did. She was working on all kinds of things at the moment, some personal, some private, some for clients. All of which meant that, when she was on, she needed to be on, and she was on. She needed to focus. Right now, what she needed to do was shut it all down.

The official visit this morning by two deputies had rattled her in a way that she hadn’t expected. She thought for sure that most people would have forgotten about her by now. Yet she always knew that some of the old memories would remain. However, she hadn’t really seen just how bad it could be, not until she saw the reaction of the one deputy. While Aaron’s reaction should have calmed her, his partner’s had just highlighted what she was up against.

Now she realized that her notoriety had grown instead of shrunk, and that wasn’t good. She hadn’t done anything to make people treat her the way they did.

Yet habits died hard, and people, especially those with small-town mentalities, were especially brutal about taking it out on others. So, whether Danica liked it or not, she would deal with this, at least until some of the disgruntlement died down.

She didn’t know what that would take, but she was prepared to let it go because her grandmother was here, and that was all that mattered.

Hearing a crunch beside her, she stiffened and turned to see Cameron walking toward her. Benji raced over to greet him, his small body vibrated with joy at the sight of him. She checked to ensure that she was still on her grandmother’s property and noted she was probably right on the border. “I’m still on Grandma’s property,” she said smoothly.

He looked at her in surprise, glanced back, and nodded even as he crouched down to greet Benji. “It never occurred to me to doubt or to question that,” he replied. “It’s not exactly something I worry about.”

She nodded and smiled. “That’s good to know. I wouldn’t trespass on purpose.”

“It’s a minor point,” he noted, “particularly since this is clearly a space that you really love.”

“It is,” she murmured, “but, if it’s a space you love too, then that makes life a little more difficult.”

He chuckled. “How’s your grandmother doing today?”

“In a way, she’s better, I think,” she shared. “The day in the grocery store was a little distressing, but—” She quickly told him about the incident, and he nodded.

“Small towns. It’s one of the reasons I couldn’t wait to get away from here, once I grew up,” Cameron admitted, with a hint of longing in his tone. “I was heading for the big city, you know, the big-time.”

“Why did you come back here?” she asked, looking at him before glancing to make sure that Benji hadn’t wandered too far away but instead he’d stretched out on the ground a few feet away. “When you think about it, I’m sure an awful lot of other places need doctors.”

“There are, no doubt about that,” he agreed, with a smile, “but my father had passed away, and eventually family becomes the bottom line.”

She nodded. “I’m sorry to hear that. That’s why I’m back too. I never really thought I would return,” she conceded, cracking a smile. “And it was all I could do to get away fast enough.”

“Of course, particularly after what you went through.”

She glanced back and nodded. “I presume somebody filled you in on that.”

“I’ve heard a bunch of variations at this point,” he shared, with a smile. “It seems you have grown bigger than a mere local legend.”

“That’s the last thing I ever wanted,” she muttered, with a sigh. “I would much prefer for everything to be calm, peaceful, quiet, and for me to be completely ignored. How’s that sound?”

“I don’t think that’ll happen anytime soon,” he stated, smiling at her. “I suspect that the more you ignore it, the better off it’ll get.”

“That’s my hope,” she said. “I don’t want Nana upset. The deputies were here first thing this morning too, which doesn’t exactly make things calm or quiet.” When he looked at her in surprise, she shrugged. “I knew one of them. I went to school with Aaron. The other one, maybe a new deputy, was Trent, or Casper was his nickname, if Nana’s memory serves,” she shared, with a shrug. “He took one look at me, fell backward several steps, then basically stuttered his way through interrogating me as to why I was home again.”

“Did he really interrogate you?”

She sighed and shook her head. “That’s not fair, I guess. He didn’t directly accuse me of anything, but he did say they were checking around to determine what strangers were in town.”

“That doesn’t sound very normal.”

“No, nothing normal about it,” she declared, “but it’s very typical of what I deal with here.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize it was that bad.”

She shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. Did you think about what I asked you?”

“I haven’t really had much of a chance,” he replied, taken aback. “Sorry, this walk today was just me trying to find a few minutes to destress from work. Part of the problem with moving back home was the fact that I knew it was a small town. I knew that there weren’t very many doctors. It’s another of the reasons I came back, but, with so few providers, I’m working way more than I should, and I just haven’t had five minutes to myself.”

“Aah. That makes sense too. I hear a massive shortage of skilled doctors are everywhere.”

“There are, so any thought about leaving just makes me feel guilty because what will I do? Desert the people who I grew up with, leaving them without a doctor and poor odds of getting another?”

“Yet you can’t be held responsible for everybody,” she pointed out. “If you need to leave for your sake, then you need to leave.”

“I know. I’ve thought about it a couple times—believe me.”

She nodded, liking his quiet admission because it was the truth. She couldn’t imagine trying to deal with everybody here. “Is it the people here or is it just the workload?”

“It’s the workload,” he stated, giving her a smile. “Just no end to it, and I can’t catch a break. I’ve been working seventeen, eighteen, close to twenty days in a row again now,” he replied, “and that’s with overtime too, and still no end is in sight.”

She winced. “Twenty days of overtime without a break? I’m not even sure that’s legal.”

“It probably isn’t, but what else are we to do, when nobody else handles car accidents and the like? Plus, people come to the ER at night, so they can get treated. That says a lot about the town.”

“Several other towns are close by,” she noted. “Surely they could go to one of those.”

“They could, but not if it’s an emergency. Or maybe it’s more convenient because I’m closer.” He smiled and sat down on a tree stump beside her, releasing a big sigh. “It’s really peaceful here, isn’t it?”

“It is,” she agreed. “It’s one of the reasons why I would love to buy that piece of land.” She looked at him intently. “It’s just the place for me.”

“Would you stay though, or would you leave? I would hate to see land like this sold back to the family and then have you turn around and sell the whole thing off again.”

“I’m not even sure what I can do about that,” she admitted. “My grandmother’s land is tied up in all kinds of trusts and things.” She gave a wave of her hand. “I don’t think my mother could ever leave because of that.”

“Couldn’t or wouldn’t?”

“Both. Daisy wanted to. She really wanted to. She was pretty desperate to get away from here. This was not any place for a person like my mother. She was after the nightlife. She wanted to go places, to be places. Yet she was never really stable enough for it. Every time she had a partner or a boyfriend, something would go wrong, or he would be the small-town type and didn’t want to leave. It drove her batty.”

“What about your father?”

She shook her head. “I’m not even sure who he is,” she shared. “I don’t particularly care. He was just another stranger I didn’t know, one more face in a world of faces who didn’t care,… so whatever.” She hoped that she sounded at least a little convincing in that regard. She had thought about her father quite a lot in the last few years, especially as her grandmother had aged. Danica realized where things were heading and how alone she would be at the end of it.

“Are you alone in this world?” Cameron asked.

It was almost as if he had read her thoughts. “After my grandmother?… Yes.” She nodded. “I’m not now, but I will be.”

“Will you search for your father?”

“Who knows who he even is?” she stated, with a shrug. “For all I know, he was a traveling salesman. My mother was unhappy, desperate to get away, desperate to not be associated with my grandmother. Daisy did drugs for a time. She did anything she could,… just to forget, to live, to be somebody. She was always very unstable, so that had an effect, and, over time, the impact was very negative, very damaging,” she murmured.

He nodded but didn’t say anything for a minute or two. “But you, you never went that route?”

“No. Not me.… I love my grandmother, but I didn’t feel as if her second sight affected me. I didn’t feel that it should. What affected me most was being the daughter of my mother,” she clarified, with a sigh. “It’s hard when people saw her almost as the local whore—and honestly I don’t mean that in a bad way, just that she changed boyfriends frequently, to the point that nobody felt safe, and that included married men as well. The local women hated Daisy because of that and wondered if I were the offspring of their husbands, which just made life even more complex.”

“Wow,” Cameron muttered. “That couldn’t have made for an easy childhood. I don’t remember any of that from our school days.”

“No, and, to a certain extent, I thought I had dealt with it. You grow up thinking you’ve got it all locked down, but then things blow up, and you wonder if you understand anything at all in the world. I do get that the world is not kind to people who are different,” she pointed out, then took a moment, as if collecting her thoughts. “The world isn’t kind to anybody with a mental illness or to anybody who is different or has a disability, even if it isn’t readily apparent.”

“Meaning your scar?”

“Meaning my scar,” she agreed.

“And yet you could have it fixed.”

“I could have fixed it, and I still might at some point.”

“Sometimes you find it useful, do you not?” he murmured. When she glanced at him, he smiled and nodded. “I see all kinds of things in my world, remember?”

“How would you think that my scar would be useful?” she asked curiously.

“Because it keeps people away,” he noted. “I’m sure you can count on one hand the number of people who have gotten past that barrier.”

Her lips crooked, as she looked at him. “You’re pretty smart, aren’t you?”

“I am,” he confirmed, with a chuckle. “Also, apart from your scar, some of what I would call the woo-woo stuff going on with Harriet has everybody petrified.”

“I know that, but I’m not sure how much of it is for real and how much is not,” she pointed out. “I guess the jury is still out, in a way.”

“Even with your grandmother?”

“Yeah, even with my grandmother. It’s not the easiest thing having her as my relative either,” she shared, with a smile. “Everybody looked at us like some party joke for a while. Hey, bring Danica to the party, and she can read people and tell us if we will all get our tall, dark, and handsome boyfriends . You know, that sort of thing,” she murmured.

“Did they really do that?” he asked.

“Yeah, they really did,” she confirmed, with a laugh. “Again, desperate to be welcomed and included, I would go and do all kinds of stuff,” she admitted, with a headshake. “I would have been much better off staying home.”

“So, were you ever right?”

“I was right more often than I wasn’t,” she said sadly, “but people don’t want the truth. They want what they want, and sugarcoated at that. Just so they can believe in a happily ever after and not worry about it.”

“Oh, ouch,” Cameron replied. “And I suppose you told them they weren’t getting their happily ever after then?”

“It wasn’t a choice. I didn’t really even think about it,” she admitted. “I just told them the truth, and sometimes that meant telling one of them that her boyfriend was sleeping with her best friend. As you can imagine, that caused all kinds of drama and cemented my reputation and popularity back then.”

“Sounds like a raw deal, if you ask me,” he replied.

“It wasn’t easy at the best of times. As my mother degenerated, and my grandmother got a little bit wilder and looser with her tongue about things happening around her—even stopping people in the streets and telling them they should go home and lock up because they were in danger—only to have an ex-husband come and attack them the following day. It got pretty wild there for a while.” Danica shrugged. “I left as soon as I could, and stayed away as long as possible. Yet I can’t leave Nana on her own at this stage of her life, so it is what it is.”

They sat in companionable silence for a long moment with Benji back to wandering around them, sniffing everything in his sight.

Then Cameron announced, “Since I’m selling the property to you and not to Harriet, I’ll do that.”

She looked at him in delight. “Seriously?”

He nodded. “If nothing else, I can see you need a home.” When she stiffened, he smiled at her. “No, I’m not doing this out of charity. I don’t do charity and certainly not when it comes to my own property and my own home. I’ll figure out just how much of the land I want to sell.”

“It’s one title, and, though you could split it, my preference would be to have as much of it as possible.”

“Since I bought that from your grandmother, I also picked up the land on the other side of me,” he murmured. “That’s why my house is more to that other side than this side,” he explained. “So, in theory, it would be okay if you had this whole piece. I’m just not sure I’m ready to say that yet.”

“No rush,” she murmured, but there was, because she felt joy starting to sing inside her. “I would really, really, really, really love it if you would, though.”

He nodded. “Let me talk to my lawyer about how to make this happen.”

“Of course, and we should still come up with a price we can both agree to,” she pointed out.

“We should, but I’m sure we can reach an agreement on something. You know where property prices are at, I presume?”

“They’re not bad around here right now,” she replied, “though, for a while there, they were pretty scary.”

He laughed. “Depends on what you mean by scary .”

She smiled. “I just know that I’ll never sell my grandmother’s place, unless somebody wants a haunted property as part of his group of properties,” she murmured, “yet it’s still worth something.”

“It is. I’ll get an idea of what a fair assessment is on the land parcel, and then I’ll get back to you. How’s that?”

“Thank you.” Danica smiled with delight. She gave him the first real and honest smile from her and beamed at him. He froze, staring at her for a long moment, as if transfixed, then she slowly let her smile drop away. “Is something wrong?” she asked, as she got up stiffly, wondering what she’d done.

“No. Nothing’s wrong at all. It’s just… I saw you really smile and it,… it was really beautiful.”

She stared at him in surprise, then shook her head. “Nobody else would agree with you.”

“I don’t give a shit what anybody else thinks,” he said, with a chuckle. “I just know that was one of the most beautiful, natural smiles I’ve ever seen in my life.” He grinned. “And it was really nice to see.” At that, he got up. “Now that I’ve made you uncomfortable, I’ll head home and grab some breakfast.”

She laughed. “Sounds good.”

“Maybe you’ll come over and have breakfast with me one day.”

She looked at him in surprise, and it was obvious, no matter how she tried to disguise it, that she was shocked by the invitation.

He stopped, frowning at her. “You really don’t have any friends, do you?”

She slowly shook her head. “No, I sure don’t. People are too scared of me to be close to me.”

He nodded. “Maybe so. I prefer to make my own decisions. So, as far as I’m concerned, it’s all good. If you want to come for breakfast one morning, that would be nice. If you would rather not, that’s okay too. Whatever. I’m happy either way.” And, with that, he turned and strode off.

She was left, staring at him in consternation. She wasn’t even sure what she was supposed to say, but somewhat belatedly she yelled back, “One time, that would be nice.”

He raised a hand in acknowledgment, without breaking his stride, and continued back toward his house.

Smiling, she glanced back again, and the doctor had gone from sight. The location of his house made more sense now, something she’d never understood before, when he had all this land over here. She’d been grateful for it because it left her grandmother’s place mostly quiet. Now that Danica had heard how he had the property on the other side as well, that additional purchase probably made selling Nana’s property to Danica a bit easier to let go of. As she thought about it, she recalled a big meadow over there, which was quite pretty, peaceful even. It all made far more sense to her now. It made sense that he would choose that space.

But she preferred the wild spaces.

She preferred the alone spaces.

She preferred her own home ancestry, and that was really what this was all about.

Now, with a buoyant bounce in her step, she headed back to tell her grandmother the good news. As she walked into the kitchen, she saw no sign of Nana.

She called out to her. Seeing that the stove was still on, with pancakes burning, she quickly shut off the burner, removed the pan, and raced around the rooms, calling out for Nana, heading to the bathroom first and finding nothing. Stepping out to the front yard, she heard Benji barking like crazy. As soon as Danica rounded the corner of the front porch, she saw her grandmother, lying in a garden bed, unconscious.