Now She's Back (Smoky Mountains, Tennessee 1)

by Anna Adams

  “You don’t need to worry. He’ll find his boundaries, and he’ll stop being afraid of nonaddictive NSAIDs.”

  His gruff tone mystified her. “Okay.”

  “I’ll see you at the festival tomorrow,” he said, stunning her even more.

  He was only being a good neighbor. They were becoming friends.

  Most of all, she didn’t have to analyze Noah Gage ever again.

  “I’m not going,” she said. “Marcy Harrigan called this morning. They have someone else to work the apple-bobbing tub.”

  “She dumped you from apple bobbing?”

  “I get the feeling her family never recovered from my mother’s...intrusion.”

  “Why should you be her target?”

  “I’m just collateral damage.”

  “Maybe if you’d stayed in Bliss, people would have gotten over that whole mess by now.”

  “Thanks. Great advice.”

  Sadly, it might have been, but how would she ever have broken her ties to him? Now that she was back, she kept stumbling over all kinds of emotional tendrils still trying to reach his way, as if she could care for him.

  “Bye, Noah.”

  The next evening Emma ran the lane between her old home and Nan’s house without her father, as he planned to run at their usual time around dusk, when she hoped to see some of Bliss’s goblins come for Trick or Treating on her porch.

  She put on her witch’s dress and pointy hat. She loved the dress that floated around her like a silky black cloud. The hat kept getting knocked askew when she walked down the hall beneath the small, pendant lights.

  She opened the screen door and backed through, carrying bags of candy. She’d already set up her grandmother’s three cauldrons, one beside a bale of hay on the bottom porch step, one beside a pumpkin on the middle step of seven, and the final one beside the rocking chair where Nan had always held court.

  “I wondered if you’d keep the tradition.”

  Emma whirled, almost falling down the stairs. “Noah. What are you doing here?”

  “Like I said, I wondered.”

  “I still don’t understand.”

  “I wanted to come. You’re not staying. Why do you care if I visit or stay away? Whatever I do, you’ve planned your next move.”

  “That’s true.” And she’d die before she admitted she was glad to see him, yet wary of being near him, and that she didn’t want him to leave. “I’m putting candy in the cauldrons. I have more inside.”

  Without speaking, he went inside and came back, his arms full of candy. “I can’t believe there was this much in town.”

  “I hope the children remember that coming all this way is worth it.”

  “Nan was a legend. They’ll remember, or their older siblings will have told them,” he said, ripping open one of the heavy bags with a wide, capable hand. “I hear the scary moaning coming from the speakers, but you forgot the spider webs.”

  Emma laughed. As if she’d forget a single part of the tradition. Running back inside, she scooped several spray cans off the bench in the foyer and ran back. “Web in a can.” She set the cans on the cushion in the rocker. “You finish the candy.”

  She sprayed webs on all Owen’s new cornice work, but she was so intent on making them look real, because her grandmother had possessed that knack, that she was still spraying when Noah finished filling the cauldrons. He picked up one of the cans and sprayed recklessly, but his webs looked more natural.

  “How are you doing that?”

  “You try too hard.” He stopped, looking into the corners.

  “What?”

  “Owen’s work. He’s good. Look at that design.”

  The cornice work doubled back on itself and twisted upward. “It’s a Victorian house.”

  “But it’s not just Victorian excess. They’re beautiful. He has skill.”

  “I was lucky to get him for this place.”

  Headlights poked out of the darkness. She hadn’t heard the car’s engine, but her first child for the night was about to arrive. “Inside,” she said. “Inside. You look like Dr. Gage, who’s scary, but not Halloween scary.”

  She shoved Noah into the house. He was laughing as he caught her hand. She was tempted to cling, but she shut the door firmly between them. Halloween was a night for good men to become goblins and vice versa. She wouldn’t trust a single Halloween change.

  She sprawled on the rocker as the car stopped. Her grandmother had always looked like a witch who enjoyed her job. She might want a kiddy for her oven or she might just fly away with her stash of candy. Emma hoped she’d remembered the pose.

  “Wait,” said a tiny voice. “I have to help you, Tina.”

  Two little heads, topped by sparkly tiaras, appeared on the stairs. The taller of the two girls held her sister’s hand up in the air between them.

  “Where’s your cat?” asked the younger one.

  “Out finding straws for my broom.”

  “You need to have a cat,” the taller sister said.

  “I have candy.”

  “I like it up here.” The younger girl looked out over the town, at lights blinking and mist lit up by the fat moon. “Is this your house? My mommy said she used to trick or treat here.”

  “It was my grandma’s house.” Emma took handfuls of candy out of the pot Noah had filled. She sifted both into the girls’ orange, plastic pails, painted like jack-o’-lanterns. “It’s mine now, but she loved Halloween.”

  “My mommy said it might be scary.”

  “But I’ll take care of Tina,” the older girl said, showing impressive courage.

  “No one’s scary,” Emma said, and she believed that was the truth. Her grandmother’s love still lived in the house at her back and wafted through all the crannies and open spaces on her mountain. That was why she’d stayed tonight, when normally, rejection made her show up and pretend she didn’t care.

  Behind the girls, a woman came into the light. Lisa George, wife of Tony George the librarian, waved. “Hey, Emma.”

  Emma held out more candy. “Do you want some?”

  Lisa shook her head, flashing both palms. “I thought my tricksters might be overstaying their welcome. Good to see you, Emma. You, too, Noah. Not sure why you’re behind the door, but I’m glad to see you both.”

  The little girls ran to their mother while Emma blushed. “Thanks, Lisa. I wondered if anyone would come.”

  “You’re not that frightening.”

  Despite her reputation for throwing drunken abusers downstairs.

  Lisa turned both girls toward the car, and soon, its headlights swept the trees and the mountain, rolling toward Bliss.

  “Was I hiding because I have no costume?” Noah asked, stepping outside.

  Emma turned around. “I wanted to be as much fun as Nan, but they were too small to scare.”

  “Remember that time Nan startled Owen so much he toppled backward down the stairs?” Noah moved to the railing. “You and I towed him down the mountain in your wagon to see Dr. Bragg.”

  To keep his father from finding out. They never knew how Odell might react to even the slightest incident. “And Owen said we ran over all the big rocks on purpose.”

  Emma picked up another bag of candy and poured it into the cauldron beside the rocker.

  “Yeah,” Noah said. “He might have sued Nan or beat up Owen for getting hurt.”

  “More likely beat you up for not keeping Owen from hurting himself.”

  Noah picked up the empty candy bags. “Dr. Bragg didn’t charge me enough for the stitches he put in Owen’s ankle.”

  “He charged you enough to make you believe you were paying for the service instead of taking charity.”

  “I wish I’d realized that back then.” Noa
h’s grin was hollow. “I thought Owen and I were all alone.”

  “Even though I was always with you?”

  “We were children, Emma. Terrified children.” He nodded at the fake spider webs floating in the evening breeze, the hay strewn across Owen’s new planks. “I’m glad you did all this. I want to remember the good things.”

  Emma laughed. “I’m glad you came.” She wouldn’t look at him because she was too tempted to take advantage of his lowered guard and find answers to the questions that still troubled her.

  She went into the house and started toward the kitchen, searching for a task to keep her hands busy and her mind from working. “I have hot chocolate. Nan’s recipe with the cinnamon that you always liked.”

  “Until that day I came to check on Owen, I hadn’t been in this house since my father knocked you down the stairs.”

  Emma nearly spilled the contents of the saucepan she’d just taken off the stove. “Why do you think people believe I pushed him?”

  He threw the candy bags in the recycling bin. “The story was too juicy. Your mom and my dad together in your grandmother’s spare bedroom.”

  “She didn’t know they’d sneaked in.”

  “I’m not saying she did. But after you ended up in the hospital with a concussion—”

  “And your father ran away.”

  “I told you, I left him no choice.”

  For a second, her body tensed. It felt like hope that he had cared for her, that she could trust her instincts. She pushed that hope away with all the mental strength she possessed, while trying to look as if she hadn’t a thought or a care in the world. She set the saucepan on a trivet on the island.

  “How long are you staying?” Noah asked. “Really?”

  “Until my house is repaired. I should get a T-shirt.” In the cupboards, she found tall, heavy mugs and poured cocoa into two of them before she returned the saucepan to the stove. When she turned, she met the question in Noah’s brooding eyes. “Finally, you’re the one who wants to talk, but I don’t want to have the same old arguments. Your place is here. You couldn’t fix your family, so you’re fixing everyone else. My place is where people don’t know who I was here.”

  “I thought you might have changed while you were gone.”

  Who was he to suggest she change? She wasn’t the one so focused on making neighbors respect his family that he couldn’t live his own life.

  “I learned I could be a better person, but every time I hear someone whisper your father’s name or the word ‘stairs’ behind my back, I realize I’m a kinder person away from Bliss. This place leaves me as frustrated and fed up as ever.”

  “People gossip, Emma.”

  “Why do you care?” She handed him a mug. “Are you asking me to stay?” She faced him with anger now. She’d never beg for his attention again.

  He blinked first. “No,” he said, “not that way. Not anymore.”

  She shrugged. “Good. Come out to the porch with me. Let’s sit together and hope a couple of unsuspecting teens show up.”

  “Teens don’t scare these days because a lady in a beautiful black dress waves her hands and comes to life after convincing them she was a mannequin playing dead.”

  “We wanted to be scared,” Emma said. “We pretended those feelings.”

  Not bothering to wait for him, she opened the door just as a small fairy in delicate, ice-blue tulle whacked her Dracula brother with her wand

  “You can’t take all that,” the little girl said. “Just one or two.”

  Fortunately the fairy’s mother had put a marshmallow on the tip, and Dracula just pulled it off and started to eat it.

  Noah came from behind Emma to snatch the dirty, gray candy out of Dracula’s hand and replace it with a pristinely wrapped chocolate. “This will be tastier,” he said.

  “Are you Miss Emma? I’m supposed to ask you how much before I take any,” the girl said. “My brother forgot that.”

  Noah’s smile was like a punch to the stomach to Emma. He was Noah, the way he’d been when they were young. When they were alone.

  “I don’t blame your brother,” he said. “Miss Emma should know children want as much candy as they see.”

  “Well, he does,” the violent fairy said with disdain.

  Noah directed his smile over the little girl’s head at Emma now, but the difference...well, his smile in the old days had made her happy. It hadn’t made her think she might need a magic wand to whip up some oxygen out of the blue-black sky.

  “Let me help you,” he said when Emma didn’t move. He scooped handfuls of colorful candies out of the cauldrons and into the children’s pillowcases.

  What if they’d managed to stay together?

  Emma looked at the children dancing around him. Would they have had a son or daughter by now?

  * * *

  “I HEAR YOUR girlfriend has been on a mission since she came home.”

  Noah looked up from an X-ray of Bean Murphy’s fractured ankle. “You’ve spent too much time tasting the product from that old still of yours. Better get your facts straight.”

  Bean hunched his shoulders and checked the corners of the treatment room, as if he suspected the police had cameras on the local GP. “Shush, man. I don’t run that still anymore. Since your dad left town...”

  “He’s in Kentucky if you need his business.”

  “You’re cold, man,” Bean said.

  Noah studied him. “Have you forgotten my name?” His dad’s former supplier had always sampled extensively from his own brew. Nothing but the best for such a quality-focused purveyor of moonshine. Plus, he was getting older, and he refused a lot of the tests Noah normally ran for a man his age.

  “What are you talking about?” Bean asked, looking confused.

  “You keep calling me ‘man.’”

  “You making fun of me?”

  Not entirely. Noah tested Bean’s reflexes, then his vision. “Follow my finger.”

  “I didn’t forget your name, Noah Stephenson Gage.”

  Stephenson for his mother’s family. The family who’d never tried to protect her—as a lesson to her for marrying down. “Sorry. Sometimes guys your age find ways to cover up memory loss because it frightens them.”

  “You worry too much. This is either the right profession for you or the totally wrong one. Let’s talk about your girlfriend. You know, she once reported my still to the local sheriff?”

  Noah glanced back into Bean’s watery eyes. “Emma reported you?”

  “She claimed she didn’t, but I saw her and a bunch of you kids back there in the woods one day, and the next week the sheriff came by.”

  “Could’ve been a competitor.”

  “That’s what she said, when I talked to her about reporting a businessman to the authorities.”

  “What?” He meant the question to echo like a shot, and it did.

  “It was back when she was just out of high school,” Bean said, then had the good sense to back off. He rubbed his crew cut and stretched, rustling the paper on the treatment table. “Maybe I was a little forceful. Her dad spoke to me about my talk with her.”

  “I’m sorry he robbed me of that pleasure.”

  “I knew you still cared. I saw you two on the square just before Halloween. My wife will tell you, I see all the secrets a man tries to hide. Makes me a good salesman. You and that girl dance around each other like you don’t care, but you’re both still interested.”

  Noah considered starting his exam over. The man must be suffering some sort of neuropathy. “What’s going on with Emma? What’s her ‘mission’?”

  “She’s staking her claim. She says she plans to leave again, but she helped with the festival. She’s been leaving those flyers about the clinic around town. She used to be kin
d of retiring, you know?”

  “As opposed to?”

  “Letting people know she has a place in this town. She matters like every Candler and her grandma before her. I ask you, if a girl’s leaving town after a visit to get the termites out of her house, why is she reading to my granddaughter Amelia’s kindergarten class?”

  “Good question.” And none of his business. She was planning to leave. “I saw Amelia last week. Your daughter-in-law dropped in to bring her up to date on her inoculations.”

  “I told her dad you said she should take them.” Bean rubbed a hand over his knee, moving gingerly as he reached the lower part of his leg. “What do you think, Doc, a cast?”

  Noah regarded his patient. Might as well face facts. Last time Bean had needed a cast, he’d sawn it off himself when it got in his way, rather than waiting for his arm to heal. “A cast would be best, but we can manage with a boot if you’ll wear it and use crutches. You can take it off for bathing.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  “All I can ask, Bean, all I can ask.”

  * * *

  “NOAH?” EMMA HAD dialed him, sitting in her car on the top of the mountain. “I have a basic website set up with a funding button, so people can donate, and I’ve set up the most popular social media sites. I’m ready to talk with whoever’s taking over.”

  “That was fast,” he said, and Emma hated feeling happy with his approval. “I was thinking my mother could do it,” he went on. “She runs a site and similar media connections for the inn. She’s not going to leave in the middle of the effort.”

  “Like I am?”

  “I don’t expect you to stay.” His silence was somehow...watchful. “But why are you reading to the kindergarten class at the school?”

  She blushed in the confines of her car. “How do you know about that?”

  “One of my patients asked why you’d volunteer at the school if you’re leaving in another month or so.”

  She couldn’t explain. Not fully. “I was going through Nan’s financial records. For the last twelve years of her life, she donated to the K-5 classes a sum of money they could use to expand their in-classroom libraries. I wanted to continue that, and when I dropped by the school, the principal took me around to introduce me to the teachers. The kindergarten class was just gathered on the rug to read, so the teacher asked me if I wanted to do the honors.”