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This couldn’t be possible. The photo was a hundred years old, for goodness’ sake. Anders wasn’t over forty, at the oldest. But this man could be his twin.
The man who looked like Anders—or did Anders look like him?—stood in front of the old general store. The building had been demolished when she was a child. A hotel for summer visitors was more important than town history.
Mere turned the photo over. In neat but faded handwriting, the caption on the back read, “Mr. Leonard Reed, General Store proprietor, 1920.”
Reed? Did she know any Reeds? She racked her brain. Hadn’t there been a Jason Reed in her high school class? Maybe. It had been almost fifteen years since she graduated, and even then she was shy. She had her best friend, and a couple other trusted people to hang out with, and that was about it.
Maybe Anders was a long-lost relative. What were the other options? Vampire? Immortal? She wasn’t living in some gothic novel. It was a coincidence, not a conspiracy. But Mere still slipped the photo into her cardigan pocket. She shouldn’t have. It was against the rules. But her parents expected her for dinner at six, and she barely had enough time to get there if she left now. Otherwise, she would have to answer all sorts of questions.
Her parents worried. It made them good parents, she guessed, but she avoided answering their probing questions whenever possible. She worked tomorrow, and hopefully could find some spare minutes to research this Leonard Reed.
She shoved the box on its shelf and hurried up the stairs. The usually pleasant basement took on a more sinister air after discovering the possibility of an immortal being living in her town. Mere pushed away the flight of fancy. There was a logical explanation, she just had to find it. Vampires weren’t real. And Highlander was only an old movie and TV show. No stranger was going to come looking for Anders Haynes’s head.
Nevertheless, she hurried to her car and locked the doors as soon as she closed them. It had been a few years since she’d felt unsafe. Strawberry Creek was her home, and though she had only a few close friends, pretty much everyone in town knew her dad. It wasn’t high tourist season, with more strangers than usual. Things were quiet, yet this situation spooked her.
Mere drove the speed limit, but she was on autopilot. Of course she was spooked. It wasn’t normal to find a photo of a man long-dead who looked exactly the same as the living one she’d been helping over the past month. And fantasizing about, if she were being honest with herself.
She told Dee she hadn’t noticed Anders. That was a flat-out lie. She couldn’t help but notice him. He invaded her thoughts during the day, her fantasies at night. Mere was good at hiding her attraction, but this discovery disturbed her.
Pulling up in front of her parents’ house, she killed the engine, took a deep breath, and prepared to enter. She loved her parents, she really did, but they knew and loved her, too. Both excelled at picking out subtle clues something was wrong. They’d had a hell of a lot of practice when she was in high school, and the past few years had only reinforced it.
She put on her game face and got out of the car. The long-standing rule was family never knocked. Mere walked through the kitchen door to her parents sharing a passionate kiss.
“Ew.”
“Well, how do you think you got here?” her mother asked with a laugh in her dark brown eyes.
Mere shared her mother’s body type, but not much else. She inherited ash-blond hair from somewhere, but her dad had medium brown and her mother’s was almost black. Her dad swears Aunt Nadine used to be blond, but Mere only knew her as a white-haired old lady (her words, not Mere’s).
“I don’t want the reminder.”
She was mostly kidding. Her parents were sweet, and she once hoped to share what they had with someone special. She had even found that person. Or so she assumed. Turned out she was wrong, terribly, horribly wrong.
“Have a seat, sweetheart. Dinner’s ready.”
“Smells great.”
She dropped her purse next to the kitchen door and sat at the dining room table. Looked like pasta salad and fruit for dinner tonight. Suited her just fine. She’d enjoyed these dinners since returning to Strawberry Creek, and her parents loved having her around. Her dad’s cooking was great, and her mother made wonderful salads with a knack for picking out the best produce.
“So…what’s up, hon?” her father asked halfway through dinner, peering at her with his hazel eyes. Hers were smack dab in between her parents, a hue best described by the tiger’s eye gemstone.
“What do you mean?”
“You are an open book, Mere. Something’s bothering you,” her mother said.
Here they go.
In truth, she couldn’t blame them. She’d been a mess when she first returned to town over five years ago. It had been six months before she started looking for work. And another year before she moved out. Mere still had her moments, but today it wasn’t her past bothering her. It was her present.
She couldn’t deny something was wrong. Her mother, the social worker, would scent the lie like a shark with blood in the water. And her father, the high school principal, was only slightly less astute. But she could tell a partial truth.
“Don’t tell me you-know-who tried contacting you again.” Her father’s usually genial face grew stern, and she knew why all the kids at the high school spilled their guts to him the moment things went pear-shaped.
“No, I haven’t heard from him in ages.” Oddly, though, it still hurt to say his name. Or hear it. Or think it. She shoved it aside. Betrayal was never easy, but she had come to terms with it. “Just distracted by work.”
“Work? I thought you loved it there.” Her mother studied her, searching for signs of God knew what.
“I do, Mom. But every job has its stresses. Today was slightly more stressful than most.” Which was putting it mildly, but until Mere had answers, she wasn’t going to mention the mysterious Mr. Haynes to her parents. They’d take it all wrong.
