if I wasn’t so hyper aware of Caden, I’d be grilling Gabe ruthlessly.
But I am hyper aware. And that’s the problem. Every question feels like I’m showing my hand.
“But?” Gabe presses, like I suspected he would.
I ask my first direct question. “Why’s he so squirrelly about his past?”
“What do you mean?”
“He refuses to tell me about his past employment.” I play with the stem of my wine glass, running my fingers back and forth over it. “How did you say you knew him again?”
“College.” Gabe runs a hand over his jaw. “We also spent that year in California working for that place out in Napa. We bunked together.”
Okay, that explains the connection between them, and why Gabe felt comfortable sending him my way. But it’s a lot of gaps. “Did you keep in touch?”
My heart beats a little faster in anticipation of the answers I’ve been jonesing for.
Gabe shakes his head. “Lost track of him after that year. I came back home, and he stayed on. Didn’t even have a phone number for the guy.”
“So how did you get in touch with him about the job?”
“That’s the funny thing.” He laughs a little. “I didn’t. He called me out of the blue and asked if I had a line on anyone needing a hand. I asked him what he’d been doing all these years, and it just so happened to match what you needed. Since I knew how desperate you were, I took it as a sign.”
“That’s it?” I ask, resisting the urge to lean forward.
He nods. “That’s it.”
I want to ask about their time in school together, about living together in California all those years ago—but I don’t. The moment feels done.
And the mystery of Caden Landry rages on.
I pull into the gravel drive and shut off the car before leaning back against the bucket seat. The cabin where Caden is staying is dark, but the main house lights are blazing. I marvel at the sheer sight of it.
Growing up, while the bones of greatness might have been there, the house was a dark, shabby place. Even full of people it’d had the stink of something abandoned and unloved. It hadn’t been pretty, but it was ours.
This house and the land surrounding it was the only thing my mom had to her name, and each year, as my father chipped away at the pieces of her, she managed to scrape together enough money to keep the taxes paid that kept the deed in her name. Maybe the plumbing hadn’t worked, the plaster had crumbled around us, and I’d slept on a mattress on the floor curled up in my shabby comforter, but the land was ours. In my parents’ mad, chaotic, destructive love affair, it was the one thing he’d wanted from her that she’d refused to give.
And now look at it.
It’s so pretty it makes my heart hurt, with its big, wraparound porch, columns, and weeping willows framing it like a picture. My mom would be so proud. We made her dreams for the place come true.
It makes all the years Wyatt and I worked tirelessly, all our blood, sweat, and tears restoring the house to its former glory worth it. We hired people when we could afford it, but most of the work we did ourselves, tackling one room at a time, not moving on until we washed all traces of the poverty away.
Weirdly, sometimes I miss those days—the stillness of them, the laser-like focus on nothing but four walls and how to fill them.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful I get to live here now that it’s finished, grateful Wyatt and I saved the only claim to a family legacy we had left.
I can’t imagine living anywhere else on this Earth.
Now the days are filled with breathtaking, endless things to do and people everywhere as far as the eye can see.
But sometimes I miss being alone.
I long to walk into a dark, empty house filled with nothing but silence, to have the freedom to move from room to quiet room.
I squint into the big picture window and see movement in the game room. I’d hoped to slip in unnoticed, but that’s not going to be possible. They’re all probably in there, all their energy and ambition ready to scratch against my skin.
I close my eyes for a second, letting the stillness of the summer air wash over me before blowing out a deep breath. I’ll make a quick getaway.