Cade scrubbed the towel through his damp hair, tossed it over the door and put his hands on his hips. Jena realised that he didn’t even look out of place here. His well-worn, patchy clothing had looked hipster in the city, but on a farm it just looked sensible.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘You can’t just lie there until she wakes up. Show me around.’
‘Ugh. I don’t think I’m ready.’ Jena forced herself to sit up. She glanced out the window to where the huge cherry blossom tree grew.
Its branches used to be so long they’d scrape her bedroom window, making her shiver and hide beneath her blankets. It had been cut back sometime over the years and now it looked like it was reaching out to her, longing to reconnect after all this time apart.
Not that she needed any more fuel for her nightmares; she had plenty of that already.
Cade crossed the room, his footsteps seeming loud and out of place here, and grabbed her by the arm. He pulled her to her feet and looked her in the eye. ‘We can use it as a chance to figure out how much needs to be done. Come on.’ He kissed her on the forehead. ‘I don’t want to be stuck here forever.’
‘Fine,’ she said with a groan. ‘Let’s go.’ Slipping her hand into his, she followed him onto the landing. His footsteps slowed, and he pulled her to a stop beside the wall of photos.
‘Nope,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘Not yet. Maybe tomorrow, or the day after, just not now. Let’s go outside.’ Jena tugged on Cade’s hand and he started moving again, down the stairs, creaking all the way, and out the front door into the light.
Well, the half-light. The cloud that had loomed over the house earlier was now covering the whole sky, swallowing up the sun. Jena shivered and stepped back inside, grabbing one of the many jackets on the coat rack. There had always been a million jackets, left there over the years, probably from all the way back to when her grandfather Ernest had skipped out on Rose.
She shrugged her arms into somebody else’s coat and closed the door behind her.
‘Is there one in there for me?’ Cade raised an eyebrow.
‘Sorry.’ Jena shook her head. ‘I wasn’t even thinking. Old habit. Strange what sticks, isn’t it?’ She opened the door again and found one that would fit Cade, and then they set out, hand in hand.
Jena led them in the opposite direction to the barn. The gardens had run a bit wild, but overall shouldn’t be too much trouble to tame. Some of the paint on the house was peeling, but she didn’t think that would be too challenging either, though there were a few window sills with rot in them. Someone had been keeping the place tidy at least, which meant there wasn’t going to be too much work to do.
Jena wasn’t sure if she was pleased about that. She needed time to convince Rose to tell her the truth, but already she was on edge from being back here. She’d never known it was possible to simultaneously want to run away and stay right where you were. Kind of like the helicopter ornament that used to be on the fence, its rotor blades spinning endlessly while it stayed stuck in place, never lifting off or breaking free.
She wanted to be free.
‘Do you think we should check in the barn for paint and stuff?’ Cade asked. They’d made it almost all the way around the house and it was looming off to the side.
‘No.’ Jena snapped the word out, tugging him back in the other direction. ‘We’ll ask Will. I bet Rose gave him a list of things we’ll need. She was always really organised, knew exactly what was in the shed and how much, too.’ Jena would put money on that not having changed, despite Rose’s illness. ‘Come on, I want to show you something,’ she said, wracking her brain for an offering, a snapshot into her past that she could share to distract him from the barn.
‘About time we got to the good stuff,’ he said with a laugh. ‘Shame you weren’t here as a teen, I bet there would be juicier stories to tell if you were.’
Jena shook her head and rolled her eyes. ‘Well you’re shit out of luck, Mister. There’s nothing juicy to see here. But if you want to hear a spooky story ….’
‘Spooky works.’ He squeezed her hand and she caught the look of surprise on his face. It took a few seconds for her to realise that for most people the fire was probably scarier than anything else, but that wasn’t what she was thinking about.
Jena led him back to the front of the house, towards the tallest tree on the front lawn. There had been rose bushes here once; she’d seen them in photos from when her mother and Pat were really little. At some point before Jena was born, they’d been replaced by a bed of peonies, which she always thought of as Rose’s favourites. Though she couldn’t say why. Their pink heads would wave around in the wind; the sight had been hypnotic to her as a child.
The flowers weren’t blooming now; it was the wrong time of the year. Jena was surprised by the pang of sorrow that washed over her. She might never get a chance to see them again.
And that was when it hit her – that while she might have come here looking for answers, she also needed to say goodbye. Once she left, she was never coming back.
There would be nothing to come back to. This was the end of the line for their family on this property, and she couldn’t understand why that stung so much. But it did.
‘So, what’s this story?’ Cade prompted her. They’d walked past the garden and were now under the canopy of the tree. Jena approached it, running her fingers over the rough bark, remembering the times they had tried to climb this one, never getting very far because it was just too big. Her mother had always rejected the idea that they nail rungs into its trunk; maybe, if they’d all lived longer, they’d have been able to persuade her.
‘Living in the country is wonderful, but you also know this deep sense of isolation – no one is going to hear you screaming from next door. You can’t call for help and expect to be heard. Anything could happen and no one would know about it.’ She looked over her shoulder at Cade, capturing his gaze with hers. She could see the flash of fire in her mind, because of course, they didn’t hear the screams, but so many had seen those flames against the dark sky. ‘Rose always used to tell us the story of the Dark Man.’
‘Dark Man? Like, an actual man?’ Cade raised an eyebrow.
Jena shrugged, then shook her head as she turned to face him. ‘I don’t know if he was an actual man, but he was our bogeyman. He lived out here, in all the places we weren’t really meant to go. Like in the gardens.’ She grinned. ‘Rose would tell us that if we walked through her flowers, he’d come for us. That if we weren’t good, if we weren’t careful, the Dark Man would steal our souls.’
‘Well that’s cheery,’ Cade said with a laugh. ‘And were you a very good girl?’
‘Actually, I was.’ She leaned back against the tree as he stepped towards her.
‘That was a long time ago though, wasn’t it,’ he murmured, leaning in to nuzzle her neck.
Jena giggled, the soft brush of his lips tickling before he kissed her clavicle, his body pressing against hers, a delicious crush with the roughness of the tree at her back.
‘Mmm, can’t say I’ve ever done that here,’ she said, gasping when he nibbled her skin.
‘I bet there are a lot of things you haven’t. We can fix that.’ He moved up, capturing her lips and kissing her deeply.
Jena let herself get lost in the sensation. This was something Cade was always good for, helping her forget anything but the here and now, the feel of his skin against hers.
He drew back with a grin. ‘Where could we go?’ he asked, eyes full of lust.
Jena heard something – the scrape of a shoe? The call of the Dark Man? She glanced over Cade’s shoulder and tensed up. Will stood at the top of the steps. It didn’t look like he’d spotted them yet and she was tempted to duck behind the tree and hide, the same way she and Joel had when they were kids.
Except that maybe Rose was awake. Maybe it was time.
She pushed Cade back a bit and the movement caught Will’s eye. He called out, but she couldn’t hear what he said, his beckon enough to get her moving.
‘Looks like she might be awake,’ Jena said. She bit her lip, torn between the urge to move forward and the urge to run away. She wasn’t ready. Yet she’d been waiting for this for years.
Cade let out a frustrated sigh, but slipped his hand into hers. ‘He’s a real killjoy, that one.’
‘Yeah, yeah he is,’ she said absently. And then they were walking across the lawn, past the peonies and onto the driveway.
Will met them at the bottom of the steps, his face a blank canvas.
‘Is she awake?’ Jena asked, gripping the railing.
He shook his head. ‘She is, but she’s not up for visitors. She’s in a lot of pain today.’ He frowned. ‘I’m sorry, I know how much you wanted to talk to her.’
‘I can’t even see her?’ Jena took the first step, but Will moved to block her way.
‘Jena, please. Don’t make me have to intervene. I will if I have to, but I don’t want to.’
‘Don’t worry, you don’t need to get involved this time,’ she said, pushing past him. ‘Come on, Cade, let’s go for a drive.’
‘But we only—’
‘Cade!’ She didn’t wait for him to respond, just moved into the house, stripping off the borrowed jacket and hanging it on the hook.
‘Right.’ He followed her in, mimicking her motions. ‘Are you sure about this?’ he whispered.
‘Yeah, let’s get some fish and chips. We can get a few supplies while we’re out. I just ….’ She slumped then, shoulders curving over.
‘It’s okay. Come on,’ he said, tugging her up the stairs so they could get their wallets.