The Rascal Read Free Page A

through her again, and she closed the drawer and left the bedroom, photographs in hand. Strangely enough, thoughts of burrowing beetles filled her mind. The creepy crawling nightmares of childhood.
    She found Jeff standing in the kitchen, staring out the back door toward the little red barn. She approached and touched him on the shoulder. The wood floor creaked below her. He didn’t move.
    “Are you okay?” Jeff asked. If his voice held any true concern, Chloe couldn’t hear it. He was detached. Mentally, he was somewhere outside by the barn.
    “I’m fine,” she said. In his arms, if he would ever hold her again, she could shake off the nightmares the ‘feelings’ gave her. “Why don’t we go introduce ourselves to the woman on the hill before we unpack? We’re to be neighbors. It’s best to get off on good footing.”
    Jeff at last turned his attention to her and nodded at the photographs she held to her chest. “Pictures?”
    “Yes. I found them in a drawer. They’re interesting. Whoever lived here before seems to have had an interesting life.”
    Jeff examined them. “Or maybe they were just fans. You can find memorabilia at any swap shop these days.”
    “Maybe…”
    Jeff shrugged. Chloe saw the look of utter disinterest on his face. He might as well have turned to stone. She wanted to scream at him. “Pay attention to me! See me again!” She felt the urge to grab him and shake him. To bait an argument if only to have him look at her with some sort of passion in his eyes. Yes, that was it. That was what she had to do. She was going to do it. This moment . It had been an awful day. A very uncomfortable awful day and she needed some kind of release. A good sparring match might be just the thing. She breathed in deep and—
    Pop pop pop!
    Three shots came from up on the hill. Jeff and Chloe stared at one another for a brief second.
    “Gunshots?” Chloe asked.
    “A rifle,” he said.
    He quickly walked out the front door, obviously expecting her to follow. Chloe stood for a moment, reining in the anger she had let boil. How could this be a home for them? Already she had planted a seed of resentment. She tried to convince herself everything would turn out right in the end. Yet something within her sounded the creeping crawling again. The burrowing. Jeff called to her from the Jeep, and she jumped and looked out the door. He was at the wheel, ready to go.
    The drive to the top of the hill wasn’t a long one, easily climbable, if steep. The big house could be seen the whole way. Chloe was already feeling a wariness toward the intrusive structure. Every morning when they woke up, the big house would be watching over them at the cottage. Like it was waiting for something.
    “It’s going to be a big project, fixing that place up,” Jeff said as they wound the curves of the gravel road along the cliff. “But I’m up for it.”
    “It’s falling apart,” Chloe said, somewhat less enthused.
    “I’m up for it,” he reiterated in a tone of voice that told her to push no further. “The little place has been hit by decades of storms. All she needs is a bit of repair and someone to look after her.”
    “So you’ve got a new gal in your life?” She regretted the statement the moment she said it. Jeff was silent.
    As they neared the big house, a thin figure stood at the bottom of the broad porch steps. She was dressed in black, her hands clasped in one another. The house, rising self-importantly behind and above her, echoed her form. There might have been life there in the big house once, but no more. At least, none present on the outside. It lumbered in its aged regality.
    They had been told that the lady in the house never went down past the cottage. Not even to head into Wicker. She had her groceries and anything she needed brought up from town and left on the porch, where she would retrieve them. They had been told this by Donna Tharp.
    “She’s a strange woman,” Donna Tharp had said. “You