the old ones that the new guys with their electronics couldn’t handle, and he was just as happy to find someone to chat with on his day off.
“Well, it’s nice of you to help her with lunch,” Tucker said, because that was the sort of thing you were supposed to say to married people.
Josh shrugged. “Well, she promised me that if I could get out of her hair and feed her, we could have afternoon sex, since the kids are all off with their friends. Not only that, but if you’re writing me a check for the truck, we can go out tomorrow night. You know, the things you do to keep the marriage happy!”
Tucker had to laugh because, as far as he knew, nobody had ever been that frank about it. “I really didn’t know,” he said honestly. “But I’m always open for tips and information.”
Josh cocked his head as they were standing in line, the big dolly behind them loaded up with everything from a stepladder to paint rollers. “Why is it that you haven’t found someone?” he asked curiously. “I mean, I know not everybody gets married when they’re twenty, but you’re not a bad-looking guy. You’re bound to get lucky sometime, right?”
Tucker grunted, appreciating his equal-opportunity approach to matching Tucker up with a companion and then wondered how much of a chance to take with him.
“Josh, you know how you didn’t want to tell me about how car electronics short out and die on the east road to my property?”
Josh looked around the hardware store casually, as though wondering who was going to hear. When it appeared nobody was listening, because the clerk was bored shitless ringing up lightbulbs for the person in front of them and everybody else was just too damned hot to give a shit about anything but getting home and doing home improvement—or leaving it until sunset—to actually listen, he nodded.
“Yeah, I know.”
“Well, the reason I don’t have a boyfriend or a girlfriend is something like that.”
Josh laughed. “Does this have anything to do with living in a haunted house?”
“You actually think it is?” Apparently he hadn’t been kidding before—Tucker was a little surprised.
“My oldest boy, Andy, he used to deliver groceries there and take care of the lawns. He kept going on about Ruth’s friend Angel that he never got to see. Gave me the creeps, I’m telling you.”
Tucker blew out a breath. Okay, so you couldn’t really hide a giant haunted mansion in a town with less than two thousand people. That was somewhat reassuring. But he had to answer Josh’s question. “It’s hard to explain. But it’s like that graveyard—whatever’s going on, it doesn’t happen often in nature.”
Josh looked perplexed for a moment; then he grinned. “So you got the magic clap, right? You have sex and your wang shoots green lightning, and the person you’re with turns into a frog.”
Tucker could barely stop laughing to have the clerk ring up his purchases. By the time they emerged from the hardware store, he had a peculiar sense of lightness in his chest.
It wasn’t until after he’d followed Josh’s instructions down past Todd Valley to a decently sized, sprawling, nonsuburban house that he started to get a clue as to why he could breathe.
Josh’s wife stepped out to meet them.
Between the ride through the graveyard and getting the sandwiches, Tucker had heard enough about the Greenaways to feel like he’d known them all his life, and Rae was almost exactly what Tucker expected. She had a broad face and curly hair that escaped rubber band and scrunchy. Her brown eyes looked out at the world with a sort of wry and gentle skepticism that was possibly what happened when you were raising four children.
Josh had told Tucker that their oldest, Andy, was twenty-two, trying to find a way to go to college in Sac, where the rent was appalling and he could only work part-time, and his younger three—Tilda, Murphy, and Coral—seemed to be growing in complementary and completely different directions. To Tucker, it sounded like the couple put a lot of effort into being good parents for a diverse group of kids, and this woman, with her wide hips and her capable hands and a face without makeup, looked like she was strong and whimsical enough to do that.
Rae welcomed them into a house that looked like a hurricane had hit it and sat them down at a cluttered kitchen table without shame. To the left of the table,