My head snapped up. That couldn’t be Connor’s voice, could it? I looked to the back corner of my yard, where a magnolia tree draped over the path to the alley behind my house. A network of alleys ran through most of downtown Adair, though hardly anyone used them these days.
A large brown dog loped into view, tail wagging in excitement, and someone shouted, “Hey, Roxie, no, come on!”
Except it wasn’t just someone. That was definitely Connor’s voice. And then Connor himself emerged out of the shadows into the deepening blue light of the evening.
I was so surprised, I dropped the end of Gretchen’s leash, which wouldn’t have mattered if she’d just been chewing grass like she usually did. But she was focused on the newcomers too, and the minute she felt the leash go slack, she bounded across the yard to meet the dog. I set my wineglass down and sprinted down the steps after her.
“Oh, shit, Roxie. Hey, leave the cat alone. Just let it—Julian?”
I skidded to a stop, adrenaline pumping, in front of the two animals, who were now sniffing each other curiously. Gretchen pawed at the dog’s legs and mrowed. The dog—Roxie, I supposed—nudged Gretchen with her nose. Gretchen jumped back about a foot in surprise, but didn’t go any further.
Then Roxie threw herself on the ground, rolling over onto her back, and Gretchen crept forward again, pawing at her. The dog convulsed in what I could only assume was pleasure, her tongue lolling out of her mouth.
I heaved a sigh of relief. They weren’t going to kill each other. Whether the same could be said about their respective humans was a different question.
“What are you doing here?” Connor asked, his tone identical to last Friday. And maybe it was that tone, maybe it was the anxiety spike over Gretchen’s safety, or maybe it was the wine, but something in me snapped.
“I live here. What are you doing here?”
“I was walking Roxie. I got distracted and she took off down that path.” He shook his head. “I didn’t expect you to be here.”
“In my own yard?”
“Not like that. I just didn’t know you’d moved.”
“Yeah, well, you’d have to talk to me to know that. So.”
Connor rolled his eyes. “Forget it. I’ll go.” He turned, walking back towards the magnolia, and whistled to Roxie. “Come on, girl. Let’s go.”
“No. You know what? I’m not going to forget it.” I walked after him, stopping under the magnolia’s branches as he turned to face me. “You don’t get to say that, when you’re the one who came into my yard—”
“I didn’t know it was your yard.”
“—and for someone who’s supposedly avoiding me, you sure seem to keep showing up in places where you know I’ll be—”
“I told you, I didn’t know!”
“—and your whole tall, dark, and rude thing might work on other people, but screw you if you think you get to pull that with me. Ten years, Connor. It’s been ten years since you disappeared with zero explanation, and then you show up back here and act like I’m the unreasonable one for wanting to know what the hell happened? No way. I don’t care if you never want to talk again. That’s fine. We can pretend to be total strangers. But I want some kind of explanation first. You owe me that much, at least.”
Connor’s gaze hardened. “Look, I get that you’re upset.”
“Upset? You think I’m upset? We are way past upset. Connor, you got arrested for arson, and before I could even tell people that it couldn’t have been you, because you were with me when the fire started, you were out of jail and off the island without so much as a goodbye. And then you avoided me for the next decade. There’s upset, and then there’s insane and it should not be hard for you to figure out which category we’re in.”
His face grew even stonier. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“Something. Anything. Something that would explain why you thought it was okay to just leave without—I mean, did something happen? Did I—” I squeezed my eyes shut, making myself say the words. “Did I do something? Was I the reason you left?”
“No. Christ, Julian, it’s not—it wasn’t you.” Connor took a step back.
“Then what was it?” Frustration bubbled in my chest. “Because I have been asking myself this question for so long, and I cannot find the answer, and I feel like I’m going crazy.”