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1
Rain
Jon Rayburn was kryptonite on a cracker, and I was still that insecure little sixteen-year-old girl in the back seat of his Barracuda. I’d managed to avoid him for sixteen years and yet, there he was, his shirtless muscles glistening with sweat as he stood in my grandmother’s front yard to greet me.
The call had come only yesterday, and I’d hopped on the first plane “home”—Muskrat Creek, Georgia, with a population of just over six hundred people, more if you included all the folks that lived on the fringe. It had been nearly a year since I’d been here last, but nothing had changed. Well, other than I wouldn’t be afforded the luxury of avoiding Jon on this trip and my grandmother wouldn’t be making me any peach pies.
“I’m sorry about your grandmother, Rain,” he said as I stepped out of my rented white Ford Escort. It was the best car the regional airport that serviced my hometown had to offer, but a necessity as it was still more than an hour’s drive to get from the airport. It felt like it took an eternity to get there while trying to maintain a top speed of sixty-eight along the interstate without hitting the seventy miles per hour that sent it into a shaking fit of rebellion.
“Thank you,” I replied. “Beau said you’d have the keys for me.”
“Sure,” he said, sticking one hand into a pair of extremely well-fitting jeans and fishing out a small ring with two keys on it. His short, dark hair and deep tan made his pale blue eyes all the more piercing as he looked down at me, his six-foot-two frame towering over mine. “Bigger one fits front and back doors. Smaller one fits the garage door, inside and out.”
I nodded and took them from him. “Thanks again,” I said, relieved when he simply nodded and made his way back to the house next door. I was already putting as much distance between us as I could. I was grieving, but his effect on me was as strong as it had been when I was sixteen and he was seventeen. He had been my first love. He had been my first everything. Mostly, he had been the first to break my heart in a way that had never quite healed. I had moved on, sure, but his mark was there like rot on a watermelon stem, tainting everything that made contact.
My heart raced as I approached the front door, whether it was a result of my previous proximity to my old love or the anticipation of what was to come was uncertain. I took a deep breath and unlocked the door, stepping inside a place that now felt foreign to me, despite the familiar surroundings. I could still smell her here, a combination of Aquanet and the perfumed talc she used to keep dry in the summer heat of the humid south. The house was surprisingly cool. My grandmother almost never ran the central air, only fans, like she was used to from her childhood. This was Jon’s work, no doubt. I should thank him, but I knew I probably wouldn’t. That would mean more interaction, and that was the last thing I wanted.
I stepped out the door leading from the kitchen to the garage and noted her Volvo in its usual place. I had driven it numerous times as a teen. My friends had nicknamed it “The Land Yacht” but were grateful that one of us even had access to a car. I had good memories of it, most of them involving traveling places with Grandma. I considered returning my rental, but then dismissed the idea. I couldn’t bring myself to drive her car without her in the seat beside me.
After a quick look around, I returned to the rental car to fetch my luggage. I hadn’t packed much, not intending to be here long. I pulled the suitcase from the trunk and rolled it toward the house, all the time avoiding even a glance in the direction of the house next door. I knew from discussions with my grandmother, which she was forever trying to steer toward Jon, that he had moved back into town and started a house-flipping business.
The old Tennison place next door was his most recent project and though it wasn’t his primary abode, he spent a great deal of time there while he was working on getting it back up to par. Old man Tennison had been widowed and disabled, leaving the place in a state of disrepair. According to my grandmother, there was quite a bit of work to be done.
A glance at my watch told me it was time to get going. Beau Johnson, my grandmother’s lawyer, would be expecting me in less than twenty minutes, but it would only take me half that time to get there. Grandma’s place was just on the outskirts of the tiny town. I changed into a clean pair of dark blue linen pants and a white linen shirt—still casual, but not so much as the shorts and T-shirt I had arrived from California wearing. Exchanging my TSA-approved slip-on tennis shoes for a pair of suede sandals, I hurried out the door and made my way toward the law offices of Johnson, Johnson, and Peele.
