Dani knew he wouldn’t buy a non-answer, but she shrugged. She didn’t want to talk about it. “Nothing.”
She stared ahead, but Jonah stared at her.
She felt his appraisal, and she held her breath, knowing he’d continue with his questions. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust him. She was beginning to. It was that she didn’t want to voice the words. Once she did, once she heard them out loud—there was no going back. Half the battle was accepting the haunts, and talking about her dead little sister, who was one ghost she didn’t want to discuss. Not yet, and then an approaching boat interrupted them.
Dani almost leapt to her feet, alongside Jonah as he waved them down. She felt a knot unravel, just a little bit inside of her.
The boat veered toward them. A second later, Dani stood and saw Trenton Galloway grinning back at them, one hand over his eyebrows to help see against the rising sunlight.
“Trenton Galloway works for you?” He was another memory from high school. He’d been in Jonah’s rough group of friends, but also ran for student council. She was pretty sure he was one of the basketball captains, too.
Jonah grasped the boat’s front and climbed inside. “I run the river. Everyone works for me. They just don’t know it.”
“Hey, Dani.” Trenton lifted a hand, already reversing the boat. “Heard you were back.”
“Sure am.”
But her gaze was on Jonah as he helped push off the dock. Grinning at her, he held her look until they turned the boat around and sped back through the lake’s canal. The waves slowly melted, and the lake shone smooth once more. A glass reflection from the blue ocean above.
Good riddance. Dani took a deep breath as she held on to a steel post on the end of her dock. The floorboard creaked and protested as she shifted her feet. She’d never allowed Boone a window into her soul. The shutters were always drawn, but he’d never asked. She’d let Jonah share her bed, hold her hand, and comfort her.
He’d done more than Jake and Boone combined. Well, almost.
Dani shook off the unsettling thoughts and moved back inside. The coffee had been good, but she craved some tea. After a shower, a change, and a quick inventory of the kitchen—she only had enough for that day. She’d have to go back to town again, and as she drove past some fields, a cow was in the ditch on the wrong side of the fence.
It had a black body with a white-tip nose. Dani knew the nearest home belonged to Mrs. Bendsfield. There was a billboard positioned at the end of the driveway. It was supposed to proclaim the owner’s age, and every year she got older, Mrs. Bendsfield bought a cow. The number read fifty-two, but the paint was faded. She wasn’t going to hold her breath that the number was repainted until there was a new owner. Dani glanced at the rest of the cows standing on the right side of the fence, and eyeballed more than fifty-two, but if one could get out, others could follow.
Dani tried finding the hole in the fence, but couldn’t and she ended up turning into the driveway. Rounding a bend in the driveway, the farmhouse came into view and Dani parked just before the garage. A small picket fence closed in a garden, greeting the house’s frontside. Except for a smattering of oil-streaked rags piled on the front porch, the two-story, white house looked clean. It looked like it had recently been painted. Dani never got a tour of the place, at least not at any age she could remember, but she remembered visiting with her mother a few times. She mostly remembered the chocolate chip cookies. After her mother passed, Mrs. Bendsfield was nice, but she’d never been ‘on good terms’ with Aunt Mae. So the visits stopped, and so did the chocolate chip cookies.
Not many of the upstanding citizens of Craigstown acknowledged a friendship with the owner of Mae’s Grill, one of the busiest businesses in Craigstown. It didn’t matter. Her Aunt Mae’s background of boozing and floozing still set the precedence, and so any friendship that might’ve been there would never see daylight.
Aunt Mae never cared. Dani thought she actually preferred it because she could do what she wanted and say what she wanted. Folks would keep coming to Mae’s Grill no matter what. It was too popular among the tourists and locals.
But Mrs. Bendsfield was on the different side of the tracks. She wasn’t one of the upstanding citizens, but she wasn’t one of the ‘other’ citizens like Aunt Mae. Mrs. Bendsfield just lived in her own little world.
Remembering all of that, she wasn’t sure what she was in store for as she knocked on the screen door. “Hello? Mrs. Bendsfield?” It was loose, so it rattled in the doorframe with each knock. Dani was hesitant to knock harder. She didn’t want to bust through the screen on her first adult visit. Not hearing a response, she turned and walked to the backyard. Nothing. Dani checked the garage. Two vehicles were inside. Mrs. Bendsfield’s van, the world’s largest daisy painted on it—Dani saw it had just been given a fresh covering, just like the house—still sat in the same place Dani remembered from her visits. A red Volkswagon was next to it, with a foot thick of dust.
Dani didn’t want to intrude in the house, so she tried the barns next.
The shed was empty, only home to an antique tractor and grain bins.
The main barn was unlocked and Dani stepped inside, finding herself in the milking room with the aroma of drying milk inside. Heading down a small hallway, she opened the door and a bunch of cats scattered in every direction. Expecting to find feeding stalls, she saw instead that half of the interior had been renovated into a pottery studio. The left side still had the stalls where the cows were fed and milked.