by Sierra Dafoe
Dedication
For Marcy Arbitman, reader, reviewer, fan and friend. Your kindness and enthusiasm touched us all. You are missed, lady.
Chapter One
Nothing ever changes, Annie thought wryly as she drove down Main Street. There was the old Woolworth’s, now something called Paula’s Consignment Emporium, but she could still see the chrome luncheon counter inside the door. Just down the block was the pool hall, with the same flickering Budweiser signs and battered felt tables it had had twenty years ago. Annie smiled briefly, remembering how they’d always schemed, her and Tommy, to get the one halfway-level table every time they’d snuck in there.
Good times, once.
Her smile faded.
Max’s Hardware was where it always had been, with its assorted collection of lawn rakes and wheelbarrows leaning against the brick wall outside. Max himself was propped in the open doorway, his ancient face lined with wrinkles, a toothpick jutting from between his mail-order dentures. He’d popped them out for her once when she was six, making her shriek. Then curiosity had gotten the better of her and she’d reached out gingerly to poke the hard, shiny plastic.
Almost automatically, Annie raised her hand as she drove by—then dropped it as his gaze flicked over her Buick LeSabre with bored disinterest.
Another damned out-of-towner. She could read it in his gaze. Nobody who’s going to stop and drop a dollar in my till.
Unexpected tears stung her eyes at his dismissal. That’s all she was now—a damned out-of-towner, when once she’d known every inch of Melgrove like the back of her hand. Grief twisted inside her, a grief that had only sharpened with the years. You don’t realize at seventeen how much you’re losing, she thought. You don’t understand how much home matters.
But even at seventeen, she’d known you pay for your mistakes in this life—and she had. She’d been paying for them for nearly two decades.
If she was lucky, she was the only one still paying.
She turned right onto Sycamore. Past the A & P. Past the bowling alley. Past the low cinderblock bulk of the “new” high school, now aging right along with the rest of the town.
In her mind, she could almost hear the faded cheers of a long-ago football game. The toots of the marching band. The crunch of young bodies.
She could almost feel the warmth of Judah beside her, his lips hot against hers in the chill autumn air.
“Oh Christ,” she muttered nervously. “What are you doing here, Annie?”
It had been twenty years—surely by now it was okay to sneak back just to take a quick peek? She wanted to know they were all right, that was all. Just one quick look, and she’d be on her way.
Nevertheless, her hands were trembling as she stopped at the junction of Sycamore and Route 32. Flipping on the signal, she turned north and headed up into the hills.
Out here, time seemed to roll back on itself, revealing a landscape that hadn’t changed significantly in a hundred years. The same isolated farmhouses dotted the countryside, tucked into folds between the Montana hills. The same washed-out gullies left fans of sandy scree along the roadside, collecting in the exact same places they had when she was a kid.
For an instant, Annie was half-tempted to close her eyes, see if she could trace the curves of the road by memory—she’d done exactly that once, at Tommy’s dare. But she’d been on her old bike then, a solid, bulky three-speed with a plastic basket on the handlebars, and when she’d run it into the ditch, the only damage had been a bruised behind and a scraped knee.
How old had she been then? Eleven? Twelve? Tommy, of course, had pedaled back to her immediately. Judah, three years older, had looked back in disgust, his long, tanned forearms draped over his handlebars as he waited for them to catch up.
Remembering that dark gaze, Annie felt her trembling worsen, and she clenched the steering wheel tighter, fighting an impulse to turn tail and run.
She had to see if they were okay. She needed to know that the damage she’d done hadn’t been permanent. Maybe then she could finally leave behind the guilt that had dogged her for twenty years.
Maybe then she could finally build a life for herself.
And if it was permanent, Annie? What then?
“Please God, no.” They’d just been kids, all of them. Surely Tommy and Judah had forgotten her long ago.
Even if she’d never managed to forget them.
But they didn’t know that—and they wouldn’t. She’d caused enough harm to the Ambinder boys. She wasn’t going to stay around long enough to risk doing more.
Then Annie laughed at herself—not a particularly happy laugh, but a laugh just the same. “Gee, Annie, getting a little full of yourself there? You’re thirty-seven, girl. You think anybody’s going to fight over you now?”
Not that she’d been a raging beauty at seventeen, either. If she had been, maybe she could have understood why they hadn’t both simply walked away from her in disgust. Instead it was she who had run away, unable to bear what she’d done to them, what they were doing to each other.
Now all she wanted was to know that they were all right.
Taking a deep breath, she turned onto a dirt track that followed the crest of the hill behind the Ambinder’s ranch. Stones gritted under the tires as she eased the Buick along, wincing at the noise. It wasn’t exactly the sneak approach she’d hoped for—but the thought of driving brazenly past the house and risking being seen was more than she could stomach.
Groups of cattle stood here and there, cropping the grass behind the rusty barbed-wire fencing. They lifted their heads as she drove past, staring at her curiously. Stopping just before the top of the rise, Annie edged the Buick over to the side of the dusty track and got out.
From here, looking east, she could see the roof of her old house, perched on a rise surrounded by cottonwoods. The air was so clear she could even make out traces of the old footpath, winding between boulders and up over the ridge. She knew that path even better than she knew the town, eight miles distant—after all, she’d worn it into the hillside herself.
Cheerful Black-eyed Susans dotted the long slope, nodding here and there amidst the long Montana grass. Annie stared at them, feeling tears prickle, remembering half-wilted flowers clenched in a boy’s grubby fist.
The first bouquet Tommy had ever given her had been Black-eyed Susans.
The memory almost chased her back into her car. Almost. She stood, one hand on the door handle, trying to control the apprehension that shook her.
Christ, what was she doing here? She had no right to intrude back on their lives. They’d forgotten her, they had to have.
If she could have any wish in the world, it would be that none of it had happened.
“Please God, let it be okay.” She whispered the words into the breeze, feeling it toss her hair lightly as she stood, torn by indecision. Feeling foolish, she crouched down like a commando, her heart hammering in her chest as she crept to the crest of the hill. Taking a deep breath, she finally looked over the valley below.
Her hands flew to her mouth, muffling her sudden sob. She stood slowly, staring down, no longer caring who might see her—there was no one to see her. No one but the cattle.
The house below her was abandoned, its windows blank and empty. Two of them were broken, letting the curtains Mrs. Ambinder had always bleached to a blinding whiteness flap like gray ghosts through the glassless frames.
The front porch sagged, its paint chipped and peeling. The picket fence slumped like an exhausted soldier. Over it all hung an air of desolation which convinced her even more than the broken windows that the Ambinder family was gone.
“No. Oh no!” Frantically, Annie skidded down the steep slope, sending a hail of stones and dirt sprayi
ng out around her. The cattle lowed their displeasure, stumbling into a heavy run. Annie ignored them as she careened downward, fetching up hard against the picket fence. Gasping for breath, she pushed off it, ran up the porch steps and threw open the front door.
“Mrs. Ambinder? Tommy?” There was no answer. Stepping into the hall, she called again, hopelessly, “Judah? Mr. Ambinder? It’s me, Annie Parsons!”
Her voice seemed to die almost before it left her mouth, muffled by crumbling plaster and the ever-present dust.
They moved, that’s all, she told herself fiercely. Sold off the ranch and moved into town. Mrs. Ambinder’s old now, she’d be more comfortable in town…
Except her gut didn’t believe it. Judah, at least, would never have sold the ranch.
She moved through the house in a sort of numb shock, opening doors that squealed on their hinges, dropping a shower of dust into her sweaty hair. More dust coated the empty floor of the parlor. The old sofa was gone, along with the pictures.
Seeing the kitchen was even worse. She’d spent half her childhood in there, it seemed, sitting on a stool at the broad oak counter as she helped Mrs. Ambinder chop and slice. Annie walked into the room slowly, staring around at the big farmhouse windows, the slate sink, the empty space where the table had been. She trailed her fingers over the dusty counter as if trying to convince herself it was real.
Tommy and Judah’s mother had always been the person she’d gone to when she’d felt troubled, pouring out her adolescent fears and worries over this very counter—all except for the one fear, the one question she could never bring herself to ask.
Now there was no Mrs. Ambinder moving behind the counter. No Mr. Ambinder stomping through the kitchen door, shouting for the boys to come give him a hand.
The boys…
Quickly, Annie went back out into the hall and climbed the stairs.
The upstairs was as empty as the rest of the house. There was no trace of them—no old forgotten photographs. No discolored newspapers. They’d disappeared as completely as she had herself, leaving nothing behind.
Except memories. Standing in the middle of the upstairs hall, she bit the inside of her lip to keep from crying. What did you expect, Annie? That they’d still be here, just like always? Staying put just to reassure you twenty years later that you didn’t ruin their entire lives?
The tears came anyway, blurring her vision. Under their deceptive sheen the hall wavered, letting her imagine she saw the old green velvet wallpaper, the sunlight slanting across smooth, varnished floors. As if in a dream, she moved down the hallway to the third door on the right and pushed it open onto a room she knew as well as her own name.
Seventeen. She is seventeen, and Tommy Ambinder—Tommy who has been her best friend since before they could walk, Tommy who has just turned eighteen, flush with the triumph of taking second place in the junior roping only the weekend before at the Melgrove Rodeo—is touching her breasts, touching them in a way that makes her squirm and ache in places she can’t even bring herself to name without blushing. She reaches down awkwardly, rubbing her hand over the hard, mysterious swell in his jeans, and he hisses, his eyes closing.
“Oh God, did I hurt you?”
“No… No.” He looks at her, his familiar blue eyes full of humor and heat. “Hurt ain’t exactly the word I’d use.”
Warm afternoon sunlight slants across his bed and, emboldened, Annie curves her fingers around the unfamiliar shape of his hard-on. He groans, his mouth closing blindly over hers as he pulls her against him.
Her hand is trapped between them, cupping the hard, insistent length of him as his hips push against hers, and his hands move back beneath her shirt, kneading her breasts through her bra, tugging her tender nipples lightly through the scratchy white fabric.
She is melting. She is on fire, her blood singing in her ears. When he slides one hand downward, she doesn’t protest. In fact, she rocks her body forward, urging him on as his fingers fumble at the snap of her jeans. He swears under his breath, his murmured frustration choked with such need that she laughs, rolling to her back, and shoves her jeans off by herself, pushing the heavy fabric down over thighs that will never again be this smooth, this toned. Tommy rises to his knees as she does so and freezes, staring down at her, his gaze following the line of her legs, tracing the creamy skin up to where it disappears beneath her white panties. His pupils are huge, his lips parted as if he is tasting her as well as seeing her, drinking her in.
She feels beautiful under his gaze, beautiful in a way she has never imagined. She has always thought of herself as plain, with her straight, ash-brown hair and features that are regular rather than eye-catching. But Tommy’s expression makes her feel like a movie star.
She lies silent beneath him, letting him look at her. She trembles as he reaches out, his gentle fingers running caressing her skin, trailing a line of fire up the inside of her thigh. The sound that spills from her throat is half a moan, half a whimper as he brushes across the springy swell of her mound. She spreads her legs wider, panting slightly, and their eyes meet, heavy with hesitation, with hunger, with fear.
His fingers play between her legs, pressing and stroking and sending shockwaves coursing through her. Her panties are soaked, so much so that she almost wants to blush in embarrassment—but one look at Tommy’s face, at the rapt intensity of his expression, and she knows he is every bit as aroused as she is. His eyebrows draw together slightly, his teeth unconsciously catching at his lip as he hooks one finger under the lacy edge of her panties and tugs them aside, exposing her.
She closes her eyes, letting her head drop back, feeling him caress her soft inner folds. His fingers tremble. His breath shortens.
“Annie…”
She opens her eyes, and whatever he sees in them makes his own darken further, full of a need that echoes and inflames her own. Holding her gaze, he reaches down to his jeans with his left hand, his right still stroking and probing and sliding slickly through her juices…
She couldn’t take anymore. Turning, Annie stumbled from the room, fleeing blindly down the stairs and through the open front door—and straight into the hard, strong shape of Judah Ambinder.
Chapter Two
Judah froze in shock as Annie buried her face against his chest, her arms wrapped around him so tight he could feel her heart thudding. “Oh God, Judah!” Tears were streaming down her face as she babbled, “I thought you were gone, I didn’t know what happened, the house was all empty and I didn’t know where you were!”
She looked up at him finally, a frantic sort of happiness shining in her eyes. “How are you? How’s Tommy? Is he okay? God, I’ve missed you!”
He wanted to shake her. He wanted to hit her, almost. For twenty years she’d been gone, vanished off the face of the earth, and now here she was smiling at him, telling him she’d missed him?
How in twenty years could she have changed so little? She was still as impulsive, still as heedless of consequences, blissfully unaware of how her actions affected others.
He wanted to kiss her so badly he almost couldn’t breathe.
He held himself rigid, not returning her embrace. Uncertainty bloomed like a shadow in the hazel depths of her eyes, and she dropped her arms, looking away.
Judah felt his heart lurch back into motion as her gaze released him, the sudden rush of blood making his head spin.
Annie Parsons. If she’d changed at all in twenty years, he couldn’t see it. Oh sure, there were a few wrinkles at the corners of her eyes, and the lustrous brown hair which her mother had always kept neatly trimmed now hung in a careless shag cut he wasn’t sure he liked. Unthinkingly, he started to reach out and brush the dust from her hair—then Judah stopped himself, fisting his hand at his side.
What in hell did he think he was doing?
Gritting his jaw, he jerked his chin at the hillside. “Came over to see what spooked the livestock. What are you doing here, Annie?”
She gave him a quick, almost gui
lty sidelong glance, then shrugged, her gaze tracing the low, weathered hills. “I just…wanted to see how you were, I guess. I’m sorry I panicked. When I saw the house…”
He nodded to himself. He knew that panic. It had flared in his own gut the day she’d disappeared, making him push past her crying mother and storm up the stairs, determined to see for himself.
Her abandoned room, her empty closet, had hit him like a hard punch straight to the stomach. Even now, the memory could still rock him if he wasn’t careful.
“It just got to be too much to keep up, after Dad died.” His terse explanation didn’t begin to carry the weight of grief of those days, the way everything had seemed to fall apart all at once. Even her parents had moved away shortly thereafter.
But Annie must’ve caught an echo of his emotion anyway—she looked at him, soft concern showing in her hazel eyes. “When did it happen?”
It was his turn to shrug, looking out over the pastures. “Fifteen years ago.” Five years after you left. Where did you go, Annie? He kicked at a clump of dried leaves clotting the porch, making them rustle. “It’s amazing how quick things go to pieces out here.”
She was still watching him, her gaze seeming to cut straight through the wall he was trying so hard to keep between them. The warm compassion in her eyes stroked him in a way that both angered and soothed him.
Damn it, Annie, stop looking at me like that.
“I’m sorry, Judah.”
“Yeah, well…” He nodded briefly, pushing away her sympathy. “Ma’s doing all right. She’s sixty-three now, can you believe it? Sixty-three and still gets up at five a.m. to feed the chickens.”
“And Tommy? How is he?”
Judah froze at the question. Annie’s eyes were wide, direct, the concern shading their hazel depths not only for him now. Her voice was so gentle, damn it, asking about Tommy. As if she still loved him. As if she still cared.
Anger flared inside him, along with the old, twisted jealousy. If she’d ever truly loved Tommy, if she’d cared about him at all, she would never have let Judah kiss her beneath the bleachers. Never would have let him touch her as he’d dreamed of doing. Never would have run to his arms in the night…
