the outskirts of DC, and it was time to strip the beds and install fall plants. It was a job that took almost a week alone, and they had asked for an upgrade to the front entrance and were willing to pay, but Huck had been unavailable. His fiancée’s dying uncle held precious little water.
“Rink found a shed. Do you remember a shed?” Huck asked her.
“Maybe? There were a lot of outbuildings in the woods. It’s over a thousand acres. It was used as a camp of some kind in the fifties, I think.” Uncle Stuart had told her that one day. She’d forgotten all about it.
But now that he mentioned it, she did remember a shed: a wide-plank door with peeling paint, a single bolted window, a steel slanted roof. She had a quick flash of memory, a sour taste in the back of her throat, and it was gone. She wanted to ask Huck if he’d gone inside, what had been in there, where it was. She wanted to go find it again. It was on the tip of her tongue to reach out, bridge the gap. She could almost imagine herself moving into the crook of his arm. Maybe it was what they needed.
Huck interrupted her thoughts. “Did you hear back from that place? Serenity something?”
A quick stab of irritation. Huck always defaulted back to logistics: who was moving when and where. Nitty-gritty, Hannah called it. In this case the nitty-gritty was a cover for When can we leave? He didn’t exactly care what she was doing with her days. He didn’t see how the remains in the woods could be tied in any way to Julia. He liked facts and figures, tangible evidence he could grip. He’d spent his days at Brackenhill reading—thick nonfiction from Uncle Stuart’s library. Biographies of Johnny Cash, Philip Roth, Muhammad. She’d let him take a handful home with him.
“Serenity Acres?” Hannah made a split-second decision. “No.”
She’d never lied to Huck before. She was doing it so he wouldn’t worry, she thought. So he wouldn’t wonder what she was doing up here, wouldn’t wonder if she was slowly losing her mind. She didn’t tell Huck about Warren or Lila or Ellie. She felt her life fracture into yet another piece. She had her normal life, her life in Brackenhill, and now a secret. A mystery to unravel, connections to make. She felt so close to it. It was possible, even likely, that telling Huck would have helped her. It was also just as possible that Huck would be dismissive.
Still, she stayed silent.
They lay like that, Huck gently cupping her fingertips, until she had almost fallen asleep. When he moved over her, his lips on her hair, then her mouth, his hand sliding up to her breast, her body arched to his on instinct. Her mind stayed blank, and she focused on the feel of his body, his skin beneath her fingertips, so familiar, so warm. They knew each other so well that even when everything else felt murky and lost, their bodies knew the way.
He slid inside her and she felt the pressure build, then explode, his sudden cry into her ear, his hand gripping her hip, and then it was over, that fast.
Later, she’d wonder if she dreamed that too.
“Give me a week, okay? Then if you can’t come home, I’ll come back. I just need to get everything back on track.” Huck stood by their car, his duffel bag hanging in his right hand.
“I’ll be home in a week. I will eventually lose my job. I’m using all my vacation time and sick time as it is.” Hannah had communicated to her boss in text only, keeping her answers vague. She could sense the irritation in her boss’s shortened replies. Oh well. She was only pretending to care for Huck’s sake.
She’d started having elaborate fantasies of living at Brackenhill. Gardening like Aunt Fae, canning in the summer and the fall, tending to the grounds like Uncle Stuart, lazing in the pool under the hot August sun, spinning on the pink tube like Julia. Bringing the pool back to glory, sparkling in the sun. The feel of the cool water against freshly shaved legs.
“I’m not comfortable with this; I’m really not.” Huck looked up the driveway to the castle, only the turrets visible over the small stony driveway knoll.
“That’s silly. Rink is here. Alice is in and out. As soon as Stuart is placed, I’ll come back. Just go hold down