John Saul: Black Creek Crossing

The cat mewed softly.

Margie went through the house one more time, but knew she’d already made up her mind. Yet as she started back to the car, she paused to look back at the house once again.

Her eyes came to rest on the window of the small bedroom on the second floor. And for an instant — a moment so brief she wasn’t sure it had happened at all — she thought she saw two faces looking back at her.

A girl and a boy, in their mid-teens.

The images vanished so quickly that Margie assumed she’d imagined them. Squinting in the bright sunlight, she peered once more up at the window.

The cat was looking back at her.

Nothing else — just the cat.

And it was a cat that seemed to like her, and had mewed happily at the suggestion that it was going to have to share the house. So that was all she’d seen — not two barely visible faces, but just a cat that was not only completely visible, but very real, and wanted her there as much as she wanted to be there. Her fleeting doubt dispelled, Margie Flint pulled out her checkbook as soon as she was back in the car. “How much earnest money will you need?” she asked.

Joni Fletcher stared at her in disbelief. “You’re not seriously going to—” she began, but Margie Flint didn’t let her finish.

“I am very serious. The house is perfect, and I have no interest whatever in what might have happened here in the past. Just tell me how much the bank wants to hold it until we can get the deal settled.”

“I–I’m sure a thousand dollars will be fine,” she began. “But—”

But Marge Flint was already writing the check, and finally Joni Fletcher started her car and headed back to the office.

“This is so wonderful,” Margie said as they drove back into the heart of the little town a few minutes later. “It’s almost like I’m coming home again!”

Joni Fletcher glanced at her as she pulled into a spot in front of her office. “Are you from around here?”

Margie Flint shook her head. “Not me — I grew up in Colorado. But my father said his family used to live around here.”

“Really?” Joni asked. “What was their name?”

“Wynton,” Margie said. “That was my maiden name. Margaret Wynton.”

Joni Fletcher felt an icy chill close around her soul. The house at Black Creek Crossing, she knew, would never burn.

It would, in fact, be there forever…