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Four
Max turnedoff the car and looked through the windshield at the decrepit house. He could hardly see the structure through the vines climbing over the chipped stucco, the dead brush that was encroaching from the surroundingdesert.
This suddenly felt like a badidea.
He was still sitting there when a man, skinny as a stovepipe and wearing a bright purple jacket in spite of the lingering summer heat, appeared in thedriveway.
Max stepped from the car. “Zach.”
“Hey, there! Are you ready to do this? It’s soexciting!”
Max wondered if realtors were trained in the singsong voices that seemed to be a requirement of the job or if people who talked that way were drawn to the business for some reason. He’d met with Zach Bonner countless times over the past two months, had traversed properties from one end of the city to the other — and more than a few outside of it — and he still had to brace himself for the man’s gratingperkiness.
Max approached the house, forcing himself to look at it with fresh eyes. When he’d first seen it two weeks before, it had felt perfect, almostmagical.
Now it just looked like amess.
He cursed under hisbreath.
“Everything all right?” Zach asked, trailing him nervously toward the front of thehouse.
"Give me a few minuteshere.”
“Absolutely! I’ll just get the paperwork ready,” Zachsaid.
Max looked up as he walked across the front of the house. It had been built in the 1960s but had been unoccupied for nearly five years. Max hadn’t been surprised to hear it in theleast.
The place was anightmare.
It had been beautiful once, that was plain to see. The roofline was varied — steep in some places, flat in others — the traditional red tiles mostly broken or missing. The Spanish-revival style architecture even featured a low turret that offered a soaring ceiling inside thehouse.
The porch was open, the steps wide and crumbling. A weathered ring hung from a massive wooden door that Max pegged as original to the house. It was one of the things he’d liked about it — the fact that it hadn’t been updated, that so many of the original features were still intact. He could imagine Abby exclaiming over the details, could see her restoring the place to its formerglory.
But that had beenbefore.
He walked around the side of the house and looked up as he made his way to the back. The stucco was probably a lost cause. Too much of it had given way under the weight of the climbing vines. And while the house wasn’t exactly small, neither was it big enough for the family he hoped he and Abby would have. Max had already started researching architects, had planned to hand the decisions over to Abby, to give her a blank check and all the resources she would need to build a house worthy of their story, of their happyending.
He spilled out onto the back of the property. He’d forgotten how expansive it was. How quiet. Situated ten miles outside the city, it sat on nearly a hundred acres of desert terrain that featured hills for hiking and several streams. It was the perfect location — not another house in sight, the glow of their city at night still visible in thedistance.
It had been easy to imagine the broken windows newly replaced, soft yellow light glowing from the other side. In his vision, all the dead brush was cleared away, bougainvillea climbing in bursts of color on trellises around the house. He could hear a fountain bubbling somewhere in the courtyard, a backdrop to the laughter ofchildren.
In his mind’s eye, the house had been filled with old furniture, the wood glowing in the sunlight slanting in through soaring windows, and the massive fireplace in the living room had been restored, warming the cold desert night, the house filled with laughter and love andlife.
He cursed, turning away from the house and scanning the back of the property, the trails leading through brush toward the mountains in the distance. They were far enough outside the city that he caught the scent of sage and eucalyptus in the hot, still air, smelled the hint of all the wild things in the desert beyond the property. It would be October soon, and he could already see the land shining with the uniquely golden light ofautumn.
The property had nothing to do with his suddenreluctance.
That was allJason.
Abby was devastated by the loss of her little house, but she’d barely been able to go back long enough to pick through the rubble, searching for old photos and mementos, for anything that could be salvaged. Max had breached the subject of rebuilding it several times, but Abby hadn’t wanted to talk about it. They were both still learning to talk about the darkness that lurked in their souls, but he had a feeling this particular refusal had something to do with the taint ofJason.
The house had been her refuge. It had been shabby and outdated when she’d bought it — a folly, Max had thought at the time. But little by little, she’d stripped off all the ugliest parts of its past, restoring it to its originalshine.
She’d come back to life renovating that house, had come into her own, grown stronger and more confident with every day spent hauling debris to the dumpster that had taken up residence in her driveway for an entire month, with every bruise and scratch earned during the work she learned to do by reading articles and watching videosonline.
It had been all hers until the day Jason had sent Bruce Frazier to light it onfire.
And the fire was the least of Jason’s violations. It was the fact that Frazier had been in Abby’s house, in her domain, in the moments before he’d lit the match to the gasoline he’d poured in the kitchen and living room while Abby had beenupstairs.
