“Gee, Dad,” Zack said, a broad grin spreading across his features. “That’s not what you called him when we were out fishing last week.”
Joni cocked her head, eyeing her son. “Really? And just what
“A shiftless son of a—” he began, but his mother cut him off.
“That’s enough, Zack!”
“Jeez, Mom,” the boy complained. “I didn’t say anything Dad didn’t say! How come you’re not picking on him?”
“Because he’s not sixteen,” Joni retorted. Her gaze shifted to her husband. “And I suggest you be a little more careful of your language.” Ed Fletcher rolled his eyes, and Joni felt a twinge of anger rise inside her. “If I talked about your sister and brother-in-law the way you talk about mine, you wouldn’t put up with it for a moment.”
“My sister is a nurse, and her husband is a doctor,” Ed shot back. “Which puts them a little further up on the winners’ list than the scullery maid at the rectory and her shiftless drunk of a husband.”
“That’s a very mean thing to say,” Joni said, her anger coalescing into a hard knot in her stomach. She pushed her chair back from the table, suddenly no longer hungry. “If they decide to move to Roundtree and buy the house at Black Creek Crossing, I expect that you’ll keep a civil tongue in your head.” She shifted her attention back to Zack. “And I’ll expect you to take care of your cousin Angel and make sure she meets all your friends.”
Now Zack shoved his chair back and stood up, his face stormy. At six feet tall — a height to which he’d grown seemingly overnight — he loomed over her. “Angel?” he yelled, his handsome features contorting in sudden anger. “Why do I have to take care of her? She’s a—”
“Don’t!” Joni commanded, holding up a hand as if to physically block whatever words Zack had been about to utter. Her eyes darted between her husband and her son. “I think it’s time both of you started getting into the habit of speaking as nicely about other people as you’d like them to speak about you.”
“Aw, Jeez,” Zack groaned. “I’m gonna go get a pizza,” he declared, and started out of the dining room.
Joni rose to her feet. “You have not been excused from this table, young man!” Zack ignored her, and a moment later she heard the front door slam. “Are you just going to let him go?” she demanded, wheeling on her husband.
“Oh, come on, Joni, calm down,” Ed Fletcher said, reaching for the box of Kentucky Fried and helping himself to another piece. “He’ll be back when he cools off.”
“And you’re just going to let him speak to me that way?”
Ed shrugged. “What do you want me to do? Hit him the way my dad always hit me?”
Joni was about to respond, then changed her mind and dropped back onto her chair. “Of course I don’t expect you to hit him,” she replied. “But am I the only one that thinks he’s getting a little big for his britches?”
“Well, you’ve got to admit, he’s got pretty big britches,” Ed drawled, and Joni, caught off guard, found her anger giving way to a laugh.
“I swear to God,” she sighed, “the two of you are going to drive me to an early grave.”
“If your sister really does wind up moving here, the men in this house aren’t the only ones who will have to clean up their language,” Ed observed. “As I recall, Sister Myra doesn’t take kindly to taking the name of the Lord in vain.”
“Don’t call her ‘Sister Myra,’ ” Joni grumbled. “It makes her sound like a nun.”
“No nun would be married to Marty Sullivan. He’d be more likely to drive a woman into a convent than make one leave.” Rising from his chair, Ed came around to Joni’s end of the table, bent over and nuzzled his wife’s neck. “You know, there’s a good chance Zack won’t be back for a couple of hours,” he whispered huskily. “If you’re not still mad at me…” He let his voice trail off suggestively, then nibbled Joni’s ear in the way that always drove her crazy. He felt her resisting, but then a shiver ran through her. “Let’s go upstairs,” he whispered.
An hour later they lay curled in each other’s arms, with Joni’s head resting on Ed’s broad chest. As his fingers idly twisted her hair and stroked her ear just the way she liked it, she said, “You do remember that you promised to give Marty a job if they ever moved here, don’t you?”
“Oh, Christ,” Ed groaned, but it was a far more exaggerated groan than he would have uttered if he was really angry. “That was years ago! You’re not going to hold me to that, are you?”
“A promise is a promise,” Joni said, snuggling closer and running her fingers down her husband’s naked thigh.
“Not fair,” Ed protested. “Not fair at all.” But as she rolled over and kissed him, he knew it didn’t matter if it was fair or not.
Chapter 5
ETH BAKER GAZED AT THE HOUSE THAT HAD STOOD at Black Creek Crossing for more than three hundred years, his eyes fixed on the second story window that had shown up blurred in the photograph he’d taken only a few hours ago. But now, in the fading light of the early evening, it looked perfectly normal; just an ordinary window in a house that, though one of the oldest in Roundtree, didn’t look that much different from any of its neighbors.
Not that it had many neighbors. Even though the actual address was 122 Black Creek Road, there weren’t many other houses this far out. Everyone in town merely called this one the house at Black Creek Crossing because it was supposed to be the house where the man who ran the ferry lived back when the stream was wide enough and deep enough that horses and wagons couldn’t just ford it. An overgrown path behind it still led through the forest to the old crossing spot, and there were even a few rotting timbers near the stream that could have been the remains of an old ferry landing.
Black Creek Road itself was a narrow lane that had never been completely developed, even after more than three centuries, which was one reason it had always been one of Seth Baker’s favorite places. There was natural beauty to the area, with the dense forest and the meandering stream that ran through it. But even more important to Seth was that few people lived in the area and there were no families at all with children his age. When he was playing along the banks of the stream, or exploring the thick undergrowth of the maple forest, he didn’t feel lonely. Ever since kindergarten — maybe even longer — Seth had always felt like he wasn’t part of the crowd, that somehow he was set apart from the rest of the kids.
It hadn’t helped that he’d always been so shy he could barely bring himself to talk to anyone who didn’t speak to him first.
Or that he’d always been small — even most of the girls in his class were taller than he was.
Or that he’d hated sports.
So while the rest of the boys played soccer, softball, football, and hockey, first in the Pee Wee League, then Little League, then on school teams, he had played alone. During the winter months, he lost himself in the books in the old Carnegie Library, which had dominated the north side of the town commons for more than a hundred years; when the weather was good, he’d explore the woods that surrounded the little town.
But no matter how much exploring he did, he always found himself coming back to Black Creek and the Crossing. He knew almost every inch of the area — where the best swimming hole was, in which pools trout were most likely to be lurking, which rocks were the turtles’ favorites for sunning on summer days. He’d caught turtles and frogs and polliwogs, and every variety of fish that lived in the stream, and taken them home to put in aquariums and terrariums. Once, he’d taken an old enamel bowl and put it in the backyard, filled it with stream water and grasses he’d pulled from the stream bed, then stocked it with polliwogs and waited for them to metamorphose into frogs. He hadn’t thought it would take long, since they’d already been sprouting legs when he caught them, but two months later, as summer was fading into fall, they hadn’t changed at all, and deciding the bowl was just too small for them, he took them back to the stream.
Of course, he knew about the murder that had occurred in the old house at the Crossing — everyone in
