Maddie and Wyn (2 page)

Nodding sharply, Ethan pulled a key out of his coat pocket. “Even if we haven’t, it has to be done, and we’re the only ones to do it.”

With that, Ethan unlocked the front door to their Aunt Estelle’s home, the only sibling of their late mother, Jayne Ashworth, who had passed away almost seven years ago. The loss of Jayne, stemming from a second bout with cancer, had hit the brothers and their aunt Estelle hard. But Estelle, who had finally begun to bounce back and rejoin the world, in a devastating twist of fate, had crashed her bike while on a tour all the way across the country, hit her head on a boulder, and died instantly.

With the funeral and burial happening two days ago, today, Wyn and Ethan, their aunt’s only two surviving relatives, had decided not to put off the inevitable. They had to go through her belongings—Estelle had never married, had no children, and had lived in this home for forty years—decide what to keep, what to donate, and what to throw away so they could ready the house for sale.

Streaks of light slipped into the home through slits in the closed curtains, showing a lifeless shell that had once housed the heart of one of the kindest, gentlest women Wyn had ever known. Piles of flattened boxes waiting to be opened and filled lay against walls throughout the home. The sight of them, a physical sign of the finality of a huge part of Wyn’s life, widened the empty pit inside him into a gaping maw.

Wyn’s throat ached, and he murmured, “Where do we even begin?”

Ethan rubbed Wyn across the shoulders, and the connection helped warm the chill in Wyn’s core. The two of them had done this once before, in their mother’s home, but back then they had Aunt Estelle to guide them, and her wonderful stories of the past to keep the group uplifted and moving forward through the toughest parts of packing up another person’s life.

“How about the kitchen?” Ethan answered, a catch in his voice. “There’s a lot of stuff in there we know we can donate, so maybe packing that will gear us up to tackle the more personal spaces.”

“Sounds like a plan to me.” Shaking out of his coat, Wyn hung it on a rack by the door and then grabbed a roll of packing tape and a flat box. “Let’s get to it.”

Ethan did the same, and the brothers got to work.

* * * *

Hours later, now in the process of cleaning out Estelle’s study, Ethan arched his back, raised his arms, and yawned.

Drawn curtains no longer threw the home into shadows; twilight had long settled outside and darkness had taken over the night.

Wyn stretched too. “Ready to call it quits?”

“I think so.” Wiping redness from his eyes, Ethan turned his attention in a circle around the half-packed room. “We made a lot of progress today. And we have all day tomorrow to finish up.” Clouds crossed his sky-blue gaze, and he touched his hand to his chest. “I’m ready to head home.”

To Aidan
, remained unspoken, but it hung in the air as if in neon for Wyn to see. Aidan had offered to rearrange his schedule at the fire station in order to help, but Ethan said he’d told the man this was something the brothers had to do on their own. Wyn had no doubt that the fire chief had worked the schedule so he’d be at home in his and Ethan’s cabin, arms open and waiting, the moment Ethan walked through the door.

Pushing down a sprout of envy breaking free again, Wyn spun and strode across the room to the area behind Estelle’s desk. “Just let me finish this row of shelves.” There were four other rows still full on this wall, but Wyn wouldn’t make Ethan wait that long to get home to his man. “It shouldn’t take more than a few minutes.”

Ethan stepped to his side and grabbed a handful of paperback books. “I’ll help.”

After stuffing another row of books into a box, Wyn dipped down to start the second shelf, and his heart stopped.
Maddie.
Long dark hair, hints of silver in pale gray eyes, ruddy cheeks marring peachy skin on a chilly evening, and a genuine, big smile that could drop the staunchest man to his knees, that was the woman in the photo.
Maddie.
Good Christ, she was beautiful. Wyn’s belly twisted of its own accord.
What are you doing here?
The photo was of Maddie, Estelle, and Wyn together, with Maddie and Wyn each moving in to kiss the pink of Estelle’s wrinkly cheeks. All three of them were full with sparkles of happy light in their eyes.

Just as fast as the sight of the happy trio grabbed at Wyn’s chest, the warm twist in his belly turned into a cold cramp.
Those were different times.
Wyn had rarely entered Estelle’s study when he’d come to visit, and certainly never long enough to poke around in her crowded bookshelves. He’d never seen this photo before. Beyond any conscious command, he reached out and brushed his thumb across the slick glass protecting the picture. He lingered over Madeleine Morgan, who’d once been the cleverest, most open, sharp-tongued friend Wyn had ever had.

“I didn’t know Aunt Estelle had this,” he murmured, picking up the frame to get a closer look.

Reaching in to tilt the frame, Ethan said, “Oh, yeah. That’s from Christmas the first year after Aidan and I got back together. At the party we had at the cabin.”

Wyn rolled his eyes so hard he was surprised he didn’t strain a muscle. “No shit, Sherlock. I was at the party. Obviously.” He pointed to himself in the photo. “What I was wondering was how Aunt Estelle got it. She wasn’t one to carry a camera around herself much. Did she ask you for it?”

“Yeah.” Ethan got back to piling paperbacks in a box. “I showed her all the pictures that were taken. She asked for this one, among a few others. I made copies for her.”

Still locked on the photo, thinking about how few pictures sat on the mantle at his apartment—almost all of them ones he’d taken when boxing up their mother’s house—a second hole opened up next to the first inside Wyn, slicing into his very being.

Clearing his throat, Wyn wondered, “How come you never made copies for me?”

Ethan whipped around to look at Wyn. “Because you never even asked to look at the photos, let alone expressed an interest in having a few. Why?” The longer Ethan studied Wyn, the more his forehead bunched into a series of pointed V’s. “Do you want one?”

“No,” Wyn replied quickly, and even put the photo back on the shelf. “I was just curious.” Feeling like a dancing monkey on display all of a sudden, Wyn turned away from his brother. “Can you go get me one more box? I think that should be enough to pack away these last few shelves.” He kept his head down and grabbed a candy dish off the shelf, trying to look normal and busy.

A long pause reigned between the men, wherein Wyn was sure Ethan was trying to bore a hole into the back of his head. Eventually, Ethan answered, “Sure. Be right back,” and left the room.

The moment Wyn knew he was alone, he exhaled and slumped forward against the built-in shelves. Knowing that his brother’s too-perceptive gaze wasn’t on him for a few seconds, Wyn studied the picture once more. They’d been happy in that blink of time, him and Estelle and Maddie. Ethan had snapped his camera in exactly the right moment to capture the feeling forever on film. Although Wyn hadn’t known the truth in that forever imprinted moment, he’d later figured out that Maddie hadn’t been smiling because Ethan had prompted her to, but rather because in that second she’d been looking at Wyn and laughing at something he’d said, and her heart had been exposed in her eyes. Wyn’s chest ached again, and he hated himself for the pain that wouldn’t go away.

Maddie would never look at him again the way she had the night of that party. One jackass-like, asshole move on his part four years ago had forever ended any chance of having Maddie Morgan as a friend again, let alone something intimately more.

Idiot.
Wyn turned a snarl inward, on himself.
You might as well be your father.

Unbidden, Wyn picked up the picture and folded it face down in a small pile of Estelle’s items he wanted to keep for himself, not sure if the move was designed to punish himself or take a small gift to help remember the past.

He just knew he needed the picture, as he knew he would never have the real woman in his life again.

Crrrreeaaakkk!

Maddie jerked upright, out of a deep sleep, fully awake in the blink of an eye, and rushed to her bedroom window.

That noise. That heavy yet high screeching sound, Maddie knew what it was. The iron gate entrance to the overgrown formal garden on Corsini land—correction—Maddie’s land.

No fog hovered murky over the garden to use as an excuse, to make her think her mind was tricking her, tonight Maddie leaned out of her open window on the second floor of the Victorian home and spotted the shadowed figure in white dash into the overgrown bramble and flowers and then into the bush-lined maze and disappear.

“Not this time.” Not even pausing to put on slippers, Maddie bolted down the stairs in her T-shirt and cut-off sweats, quickly unlocked and bounded out the front door. “I’m finally going to see you.”

Running across the wide porch and down the steps, Maddie sprinted across thick grass, rounding toward the side of the house, in the direction of the old gated garden. The creaky gate remained fully open, and Maddie rushed through it, shouting, “Where are you? Don’t leave!” as she pursued the nocturnal visitor.

With each churn of her legs, a rough and hard-paver path chilled the soles of her bare feet, but Maddie didn’t slow down. Trees, whose overgrown branches reached out into the path like the gnarled hands of an old witch, had her bobbing and weaving to avoid a switch smacking her in the face.

Finally, into the maze Maddie flew, moving on memory through the first half of the puzzle. Through spaces created by growth of the untended bushes, Maddie glanced ahead and to the right and left, searching for that blur of white. Nothing but shadows backlit by the moon and stars existed all around her.

A courtyard with benches, statues, and a fountain sat in the center of the maze, but other than a quick glance around, Maddie didn’t stop. She pushed through the other half of the maze easily, rushed along the matching path and overgrowth to the back end of the garden, stopping just short of a closed gate. She hadn’t expected it to be open; the latch was rusted closed and wouldn’t budge; it had been that way since Maddie moved into the house.

Shoot.
Her elevated heart rate slowing, Maddie circled the entire perimeter of the enclosed garden, following the wrought iron fence line. Nobody was there. Everything appeared as it should be. She supposed it was technically possible for someone to climb the ten-foot fence and get away, but the intricate design had scrolls between the bars and spear-like tips every six inches along the top, making a quick escape for a mortal unlikely.
She got away again.

After closing the front gate and sliding the bolt lock into place, Maddie trudged across the front lawn to the Wedgewood blue home, with its many peaks and balconies and turret. On the other side of the house, a pebbled private road separated the house from the huge open grass field spanning to the garage. Maddie could see the back and one side of Corsini’s from her vantage point. The proper floodlights were on outside; everything appeared quiet and undisturbed, as it should be.

Her mind swirling with a possibility that nobody in her life would believe, Maddie strode across the gray-washed porch, into the house, and locked the door. Common sense dictated that she walk through the house, starting downstairs with the living room, kitchen, study, and myriad of other oddly shaped, sometimes strangely placed rooms. Flipping on a light and checking each space—some of them not touched in the last six months other than for a basic cleaning every once in a while—Maddie checked for signs of activity and life, knowing she wouldn’t find anything. This wasn’t the first time she’d done this ritual in the dead of night since purchasing this house.

After completing a similar check on the second level of the home, Maddie crawled back in bed, stacked her hands behind her head, and settled into the soft mattress covered by a cloudy comforter.

She was pretty sure she couldn’t deny the truth of her situation any longer: this house—no, this land—definitely harbored a ghost.

Amazing.

Maddie drifted to sleep, a soft smile tilting her lips.

* * * *

A day later, Wyn savored the first bite of a hand-tossed mushroom and pepperoni pizza, let the tangy flavor of the sauce meld with the rich cheese and toppings in his mouth, and then groaned at the delicious goodness. Without pausing to take a sip of his drink, he took another huge bite and devoured better than half the slice.

Sitting across the table, his brother-in-law and good friend Devlin Morgan chuckled, pausing with his slice of pizza inches from his lips. “You act like you haven’t eaten in a year.” The moment the words passed his lips Devlin’s face fell and the color leached out of his skin. “Shit. I’m sorry. With you and Ethan dealing with your aunt’s death and estate for the last six months, maybe you don’t eat the way you should.”

A lump filled Wyn’s throat. He had a hard time swallowing his food, barely managing while waving aside Devlin’s concern. “We’re doing all right. The house has been packed up for a while. We put it on the market as a fixer upper for what we thought was a good price. E and I couldn’t see updating it and making choices about kitchen designs and bathroom colors only to have someone come in and say ‘oh, it would have been perfect if you’d only chosen white cabinets for the kitchen instead of gray. I hate gray kitchens.’ But the house hasn’t had any decent offers.” Shrugging, Wyn inhaled the merging scents wafting off his pizza and tried to get his appetite back. “Now we’re having to consider if we want to do some updates or just accept the next lowball offer we get.”

“That’s a tough one,” Devlin answered, in between blowing on his slice of the pie. “All I can offer is that you should both be brutally honest with yourselves and then trust what your guts tell you. You both have good ones.”

“Thanks. It’s one of those six of one, half a dozen of the other choices that once we make we have to live with and hope it’s what Aunt Estelle would have wanted.” Forcing his lips to part and to take another bite, Wyn chewed, allowed the flavors to hit his tongue; his stomach growled back to life. “That’s not the biggest reason why I’m so hungry though. I’m hungry because I’m getting sick of cooking for myself during the week.” In between taking a swig of ice water and another bite, Wyn added, “I didn’t use to have a problem with it, but now I’m to the point where I’d rather just have a bowl of cereal and call it a night.”