Suzanne Mcminn - High-Stakes Homecoming

“It is not your farm.”

“Are you crazy?” He was on the verge of losing his temper completely.

But she was so insistent, he could almost believe for a second she was telling the truth—or thought she was telling the truth—and the feeling bugged him. What if she really did have mental issues? She didn’t look crazy. She looked angry and upset and scared. But what did he know—other than that he was going to be a hell of a lot more pissed off if he had to walk six miles back to town in the rain.

“The farm was left to me in the will.”

It took him a full thirty seconds to realize that it wasn’t just he who had said those words, she’d said them at the same time.

Their gazes locked. He felt the shock roping between them.

“You are the crazy one,” she breathed, so raw and soft he couldn’t hear her. But he saw her lips move, knew what she said. She was shaking, visibly now, and white as a sheet. “Get out of here!” She yelled that. There was no missing it.

She tore off suddenly, leaving him stunned just long enough for her to get in the old Ford. The engine rattled to life and, in the light from the dash’s interior, he could see her reach first one way, then the other, slamming down manual door locks.

The truck rammed backward, sliding on gravel in the drive, then reared forward. Was she trying to run over him? He jerked back, almost losing his balance in a dip in the gravel drive, and sidestepped out of the way.

Red taillights disappeared up the hill.

Son of a bitch. He started walking.

The house was pitch black.

“Birdie?”

Willa slammed the side door of the farmhouse as she barreled inside, turned back just as quickly to hit the bolt, then ran for the front door and then the back door, making her way by perfect memory, and bolted those, too. She wouldn’t put it past Penn to come charging in here, since he seemed to think he owned the place.

“Birdie!” she yelled again.

She heard the telltale sound of Flash’s doggy nails padding through the house toward her. A second later, the hound—part basset, part whatever—was pawing at her legs, then dropping down to go check his food dish.

The old house creaked in the wind outside. Had to be a tree down somewhere. Electricity was the first to go out here. Phones next. She fumbled for a phone, checked the line. Dead, as expected.

Cell service was only a fantasy in the country, so the isolation was quick and complete.

If Penn came stomping up here, she’d have no way to call for help. She stood there in the old house, a shiver crawling up her spine.

Creepy, that’s what this house was sometimes in the dark, in the storm, during lonely nights. Yet she loved it, every crumbling inch of its Gothic architecture. She’d moved in the week of the Haven earthquake, and sometimes the town’s collective, overly active imagination about the consequences of that so-called “perfect storm” of low pressure, dense moisture, and geologic instability, niggled at her mind.

She’d seen the bursts of red lights right here on the farm, the same mysterious lights that had been talked about in town and on cable news, when a paranormal detective had been interviewed. Foundational movement for oncoming paranormal activity, the spokesperson for PAI, the Paranormal Activity Institute, had claimed. Nonsense, of course.

Most people had been scared that night, but for some reason, Willa had felt folded in, protected. Nothing on the farm had been damaged. The house, with all its aged faults, had held its ground, while the building in town where she and Birdie had rented an apartment, had crumbled. She had come to this house at just the right time, and the house had saved her. She knew that was fanciful dreaming, not anything supernatural, though. And those moments when she got a little creeped out? That was just the insidious whispers in town about strange happenings getting to her…and the dark, sometimes lonely nights.

The house breathed history, history she didn’t have on her own, and to her, it also breathed the future. It was hers! Penn and his cousins had been treated fairly in the will. They had nothing to complain about.

Where had any of them been during Otto Ramsey’s dying days?

Who had cared for him out of love, not money?

Not a one of his grandchildren. And she had loved the old man, despite his sins. He had been like her own grandfather, the one she’d never had in her own, torn-up, far-flung, dysfunctional family.

She called Birdie again, headed through the dark house for the kitchen, Flash at her heels. Maybe Birdie was sleeping. She needed a flashlight. And she didn’t even want to think about Penn Ramsey, much less how much trouble she was going to be in if she had to come up with the cash to fight for what she’d been given. She didn’t want to think about how awful it had felt right down to her bones to see him, either. What he’d said about the house being left to him in the will…

Total crap.

Maybe he had an old will. Otto Ramsey had written a new one, and left the farm to her. He’d left investment money to his niece Jess, and the same to Penn. Another old family property had gone to his other grandson, Marcus, who’d moved into a house out there years ago and didn’t care about Limberlost any more than Penn and Jess ever had.

What if she was the one with an outdated will, and Penn had a newer one? No, no, she was so not going to think that way. She couldn’t believe Otto Ramsey would do that to her.

Not after what had happened. Not after how he’d promised her to make up for it.

She owned this farm. She and Birdie. He’d promised it to Birdie as much as he’d promised it to her. He’d doted on the girl. He wouldn’t do this to Birdie.

Willa reached the kitchen, called Birdie and held carefully still, listening to the old house breathe. Birdie was a light sleeper. Surely she would wake up as she’d called her. But…

No patter of little socked feet. No, “I’m in here, Mama.” She felt an anxious tightening in her stomach.

What if…?

She dropped the pickup keys on the scarred farmhouse table in the kitchen where she now stood. She pulled open a drawer where another flashlight was kept, then headed for the stairs, ordering herself not to panic. Birdie wouldn’t have gone anywhere….

Would she? She’d told her to stay put. Willa’d looked out the window a few hours ago, seen through the leaf-barren trees in the dusky light that cows were in the road below. By the time she’d rounded up all but the one recalcitrant calf and gotten the fence fixed, it’d been long past dark.

She’d left Birdie watching TV. Birdie always got scared when the lights went out. Storms scared her, too. Birdie was like her. Or like she had been, once: timid, innocent, often shy. She hoped her daughter wouldn’t have to toughen up the way she had. She wanted so much for Birdie, so much more than she’d had.

Willa pushed down the lump that swelled in her throat and took the stairs in bounds. The house was filled with old, original wood paneling that made dark corners everywhere in the dead of night, though it could be beautiful by day. The flashlight bounced gold globes of light as she raced up, Flash right behind her. The wall was lined with old photographs, some in sepia, some in black-and-white. It was a wall of eyes, and sometimes she thought it was the creepiest part of the farmhouse.

Birdie’s room was the first one to the right. Bed, empty. She whirled, ran to her own room to see if Birdie had gone in there.

“Birdie!”

Her bed—empty, too.

She called her daughter’s name again. Flash barked, as if picking up on her distress. No response. Dammit, dammit, dammit! And she’d been down there in the road, worrying about a calf.