LITMIR.BIZ

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than the downstairs parlor. For the first twelve years of his life, this old house had been home. And for the next six years, it had been hell.

      Could he actually live here again? Even if he got rid of everything that reminded him of his stepfather, he couldn’t erase the memories.

      He hated the cold, austere gray color Nolan had insisted the house be painted. Mama had wept quietly when the drab gray and white covered the beautiful green, cream and rose that the house had been for generations, colors true to the time period. If he actually moved into the house, the first thing he would do was hire painters to take the Victorian back to her colorful roots. He would have the house repainted—for his mother.

      “God knows I’ll never move back to Dunmore, but if I did, I wouldn’t live in that house,” Maleah had told him. “As far as I’m concerned, the house is yours if you want it.”

      But that was the million-dollar question: Did he want it?

      Maybe. He didn’t have to decide right away. He could stay here a few weeks and see how it went. It was either that or rent a motel room by the week. Not a pleasant prospect. Besides, if his new job didn’t work out, it would be easier to move on if he hadn’t leased an apartment or a house.

      He had been at loose ends when Mike Birkett phoned and offered him the job. Otherwise, he probably wouldn’t have considered coming back to Alabama. He had been honorably discharged from the army last year, after four months in the hospital recuperating from a bomb explosion that had nearly killed him. The surgeons had reconstructed the left side of his face, neck and shoulder and had done a damn good job. Only those who had known him before the reconstruction would suspect that he’d been put back together piece by piece.

      “Hey, the job is yours if you want it,” Mike had told him. “The pay isn’t much, but it’s in line with the low cost of living in Dunmore.”

      “Let me think about it.”

      “Come home. Take the job. Let’s get reacquainted. If after a few months you hate it, you can always quit.”

      In the end, Mike had convinced him to give it a try. He’d known his old buddy had pulled a few strings to get him okayed for the position. Even though he was in really good physical shape now, he’d never be 100 percent ever again. Jack wasn’t sure he’d make a good deputy just because he’d been a top-notch soldier, but God knew he needed something to do, something to keep him sane.

      He stepped up on the porch, faced the front door and paused. After taking a deep breath, he removed the house key from his pocket. He unlocked and opened the door, then walked inside. A whiff of muskiness hit him the moment he entered the foyer. The house needed airing out after being closed up for so many months. First thing in the morning, he’d open every window in the place. Since it was spring and the temps were in the seventies, it was the perfect time.

      As if his feet were planted in cement, he found it impossible to move beyond where he stood just over the threshold. Glancing in every direction—left, right, up and down—he clenched his teeth together tightly. He could feel Nolan’s presence, could even smell a hint of the pipe tobacco his stepfather had used. Maybe this was a huge mistake. Maybe he’d been wrong to think that he could live here. It wasn’t too late to turn around, walk away from the house and rent a room for tonight.

      God damn it, no! He wouldn’t let Nolan run him off, not the way he had when Jack was eighteen. Nolan was dead. Jack was thirty-seven, a decorated war hero, and this house was his now, his and Maleah’s, as it had once been their mother’s. If it was the last thing he ever did, he intended to erase Nolan Reaves from their ancestral home, starting with the old carriage house where their stepfather had doled out his own unique brand of punishment.

      Catherine Cantrell had asked her best friend, Lorie Hammonds, to drive her by her old home, just outside the city limits. She and Mark had lived there for nearly six years before his death eighteen months ago.

      “Are you sure you want to do this?” Lorie asked.

      “I’m sure. I have to face the past sooner or later.”

      “But does it have to be today?”

      Cathy sighed. Yes, it had to be today. One of the many things her therapist at Haven Home had taught her was that putting off unpleasant things didn’t make them go away. The sooner she faced it, whatever “it” was, and dealt with it, the sooner it ceased to be a monster hidden in a dark closet ready to pounce on her when she least expected it.

      Lorie got out of her Ford Edge, went around the hood and met Cathy as she stood at the border of the street, her gaze scanning the porch. This was where Mark had been doused with gasoline and set on fire. This was where she had waited with him, praying with every breath, until the ambulance arrived. This was where her safe, contented life had ended. Eighteen months, three weeks and five days ago.

      Every nerve in her body shivered; every muscle tensed. With her eyes wide open, she could see Mark as he had been that horrible day, his flesh charred, melted, his life draining from his body. She could hear his agonized screams and then the deadly silence that had followed.

      She closed her eyes and took a deep, fortifying breath.

      Lorie put her arm around Cathy’s quivering shoulders and gave her a reassuring squeeze. “Come on. Let’s go.”

      Cathy opened her eyes and shook her head. “Not yet.”

      “Don’t do this to yourself. Enough’s enough.”

      “I imagine the new minister’s wife redecorated,” Cathy said. “No woman wants to live in a house decorated by a former owner.”

      “The new minister is a widower with a teenage daughter. No wife.”

      “All the same, this isn’t my house any longer. My things aren’t here. The home I created with Mark is gone.”

      “Your furniture and other things are in storage,” Lorie reminded her. “When you buy a new place, you can—”

      She turned quickly and faced her oldest and dearest friend. “Thank you for letting me stay with you until I find a place.” Lorie and she were BFF—best friends forever—their friendship going back to when they wore diapers. Their parents had been good friends, and they had lived only blocks apart when they were growing up.

      “Your mother wants you to stay with her, you know.”

      “What my mother wants isn’t as important to me as what I want.”

      Lorie let out a loud, low whistle. “I don’t know what they did to you at Haven Home, but I like it. The old Cathy would never have said something like that and meant it.”

      “The old Cathy no longer exists. I think she began dying the day Mark died.” She looked directly at Lorie. “I couldn’t say this to just anyone, because they wouldn’t understand, they’d take it the wrong way…but it took something as traumatic as Mark’s gruesome murder to finally give me the courage to become my own person.”

       Mark’s death and a year of therapy.

      Cathy took one final look at the porch and then ran her gaze over the neatly manicured lawn. “I’m ready to go now.”

      She followed Lorie back to the SUV. She had faced one of many demons that she had left behind a year ago when she had checked herself in at Haven Home, a mental-rehabilitation center outside of Birmingham. After the first six months, she had become an outpatient but had stayed on as a part-time employee in the cafeteria. Her mother and Mark’s parents had visited her several times and had brought Seth with them. She had missed her son unbearably, but she had known living with his grandparents had been the best thing for him until she was able to provide him with a mentally stable mother.

      Mark’s death had almost destroyed her, and only with Dr. Milton’s help had she been able to fully recover. She had gone into the intensive therapy blaming herself for Mark’s death and believing that his parents and Seth blamed her for not being able to save him. But Dr. Milton had worked with

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