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"Chris, sweetie!" Lorna Kincaid bustled out the door as her son stepped out of his car. He stretched as he stood, giving his protesting muscles a break after the four-hour ride.
"Hi, Mom," he said with a smile. He gave her a hug and had to bend down to kiss her cheek. Her head didn't quite reach his shoulder.
"How are you?" she asked. She waited while he took a duffel bag out of the back seat, then took his arm as they walked to the house. "How was the ride?"
"Not too bad," he said, looking around. The houses were the same as ever. Sometimes it seemed like the whole town was trapped in time. "I left early enough to miss most of the traffic."
"You didn't stop once, did you?" she asked him, fixing him with a firm glance.
Chris couldn't help averting his eyes. "Um, no." Lorna arched an eyebrow and he hurried on. "I was going to, really, I was. But I just got caught up in driving and listening to music and before I knew it I was almost here." He felt like he was ten years old again. It was all he could do not to scuff his feet.
"Hmmm," she said noncommittally. "Well, as long as you're here safely." He sighed in relief. "Come on, you must be hungry. It's almost lunchtime."
Chris followed her into the little house and took a deep breath. Like the outside, the inside was just as he remembered. A faint scent of lavender floated through most of the house, but lemon dominated the kitchen. The floral curtains were faded but cheery; Chris made a guilty note to himself to send his mother either more money or new curtains.
"Now, sit," she ordered. Chris put his duffel bag on the couch and obediently took a seat at the kitchen table. Lorna ruffled his brown hair as she moved about getting some lunch. "You need a hair cut," she told him.
"I know," he said. "I just keep forgetting."
"I could do it while you're here," she suggested. She laid a plate in front of him with an open-faced turkey sandwich and gravy, then added a glass of water.
"We'll see," he said, suddenly famished. While he ate, he studied his mother. Her dark blond hair was probably half gray, although she wore it well. Her eyes, blue like his own, were sharp and missed nothing. She still moved easily. He was glad to see that the arthritis she feared had yet to set in, and hoped it never did. His mother did so much with her hands -- cooking, cleaning, sewing, knitting -- he knew she'd be lost if she couldn't do those things.
"So, what's new?" he asked after he'd finished.
Lorna sat down and put a piece of cake in front of each of them. It was her own award-winning sour cream pound cake. Chris couldn't recall the last time he'd had a piece of cake as good hers since moving across the state. Probably never, he thought to himself.
"Well, you know how it is around here," Lorna said. "The Peaks had to close their store in town, but that was all right, they wanted to retire anyway. Someone else has bought it already; that's the rumor, at least. The Ruizes painted their house blue and that put their neighbors all in a huff."
"Blue?" Chris repeated, and she nodded. "What kind of blue?" he asked with a roll of his eyes.
She shrugged. "Just blue, but you know how people are. Every other house is white, they want it white. Goodness, the way everyone went on, you would have thought they'd painted it purple and orange and put in searchlights." Chris chuckled at the image.
She told him a few more tidbits and he nodded at each one until one piece of information caught his attention. "Then there was the trouble at the Fordham place a couple of nights ago."
"Trouble? What kind of trouble?" Chris stopped eating.
No one named Fordham had lived in the house for ages, but that was how everyone knew the big colonial at the end of town -- the Fordham place. It was old, with peeling paint that had probably once been white. It had seen a few different owners while Chris was growing up, and more than one had tried repainting and remodeling, but it never stuck. The kids told each other it was haunted and dared the braver ones to sneak close to it on Halloween. Chris had gone once -- alone, and not on Halloween -- and found it just to be an old, empty house.
Lorna sighed in frustration. "The kind there usually is, just a little bit more," she said. "Ethan and Trent started going at it, you know how they do. Just about woke up the neighborhood. Cassie called me and I went out on the porch, I could hear them caterwauling from here."
"What happened, Mom?" Christ asked. He could feel himself tensing up and he wasn't even sure why. He hadn't been near the Fordham place in years; he didn't even know which of the family still lived there.
"They were both drunk, as usual," she said with disdain. "The noise was ridiculous. Yelling at each other, probably throwing things. You could hear the glass breaking; next day I saw half the windows broken. Then the fire started."
"Was it bad?" Chris wanted to know.
"No, the police were right there," she said with a sigh. "The neighbors had called and they showed up, but those two no-goods were so drunk they wouldn't have seen the archangel Gabriel if he'd been there. I heard one of them had a gun and one had a knife, so the police were waiting it out." She gave her son a small smile. "Gossip runs down the grapevine in a town like this, you know how it is."
"I do," he said. "Then what?"
"Well, I heard from Cassie -- you know her Joe's a policeman -- that whoever had the gun shot it, and whoever had the knife used it, and somehow they knocked over a light or a candle and the fire started."
"Was anyone hurt?" He knew she wasn't there anymore, but he thought about the young girl from years ago.
"Property damage, mostly," his mother said, getting up to refill his glass. "The fire didn't get far, with the police right there to call the fire department. Ethan and Trent were both taken to the hospital and then to jail. I don't understand why they never stay there. My God, how they treated Karen and that poor girl." Lorna shook her head as she sat down again. "Everyone knew and no one could prove it."
"I remember," Chris said almost absently. He finished his lunch and told his mother he was going to take a walk to get some exercise after the long ride. She nodded and said nothing, knowing there was a little more to it.
Chris stepped outside and took a deep breath of crisp autumn air. Almost unconsciously, he began walking down the street in the direction of the old Fordham place. He stopped at the corner and leaned against an old oak tree. Scanning the street, his breath caught when he saw her on the opposite corner.
Her hair was a bit longer and her clothes much nicer than the last time he'd seen her. The sun plucked highlights from the auburn hair as she rested her arms on the top of the fence. Still as a statue, she stood there. Chris could only watch and wonder if she remembered him.
x-x-x-x
Fifteen years ago
"See the new people in the Fordham place yet?" Pete asked Chris.
"Saw the trucks," Chris said as they chucked rocks in the pond. "I guess I saw the father. He was pretty big. Looked mean." He threw another rock, watching with satisfaction as it skipped over the surface before sinking about halfway across. He grinned at Pete. "Beat that, man."
Pete laughed. "You cheat, Kincaid. You're taller than I am and your arms are longer. You're a sixteen-year-old gorilla."
