By the time Redcreek finally appears through the windshield, my back is numb and my knuckles are white on the steering wheel.
The town rises out of the pines like a bad memory. Sun-bleached storefronts. Tilted porches. A gas station that looks more like a skeletal art installation than a functioning business. I relax my grip, flex my fingers once, then tighten again as my grandmother’s house appears at the end of the road—perched where the last cracked strip of asphalt crumbles into dirt and forest.
Home, a voice in me whispers.
Absolutely not, I answer it.
I roll the car to a stop in front of the house. The porch sags in the middle like it’s given up, the paint peeled down to tired gray boards. The upstairs window on the right is cracked; someone taped cardboard over the missing corner. The willow in the yard has grown wild, branches trailing like fingers against the roof.
“This is a transaction,” I mutter. “Sign papers. Sell. Leave.”
Saying it out loud doesn’t make the air any easier to breathe.
I kill the engine. Silence presses in, thick and expectant. There’s no hum of traffic, just wind moving through pine and the faint creak of the front steps in the breeze. I hear my heart a little too clearly in my ears.
I open the car door. Heat rolls over me—late-summer, resin-scented. The forest that surrounds Redcreek is closer than I remember, trees crowding the town like it’s something they’re holding in place.
The slam of my car door echoes down the empty street.
That’s when I see him.
There’s a black SUV parked beside the house, dust dulling its shine. A man leans against the hood like he’s been there a while. Dark jeans, button-down rolled to his forearms, badge at his belt catching the light. Shoulders relaxed, but there’s a tension under it, coiled and contained.
He watches me like he’s been watching the road for hours.
“Rhea Harper?” he calls, voice low, carrying easily.
My spine straightens. Instinct: don’t let them see they scare you. “Depends who’s asking.”
He pushes off the SUV and closes the distance in a few long strides. He’s tall. Up close, the word seems inadequate. His shadow stretches over the cracked drive, almost touching my boots.
“Grey Maddox,” he says. “Sheriff.”
He waits a beat, like he expects that to mean something to me. It doesn’t. Not consciously, anyway. But his name lands somewhere under my ribs, stirring up dust.
He holds out a hand.
I look at it, then at his face. His features are clean lines and angles—straight nose, sharp cheekbones, mouth set in something that isn’t quite a smile. His eyes are the kind of gray that would usually read as cold, but on him they’re…steady. Assessing. Like storm clouds that chose not to break yet.
I take his hand because not taking it would be more of a statement than I’m willing to make.
His palm is warm, calloused. The contact sends an odd flicker through me, like touching an exposed wire without quite getting shocked.
“Sorry for your loss,” he says.
There it is. The line people rehearse in the mirror.
“Thanks,” I reply, pulling my hand back. “I’m here to meet the lawyer tomorrow, get everything sorted, and then—” I make a vague outward gesture. “I’ll be out of your hair.”
