“Somebody finally bought it,” Adrian muttered with an unbelieving shake of her head. “I thought they were gonna have to tear it down, the state it’s in.”
“Maybe they’ve got kids,” Kyle said, eyes widening at the possibility. He watched more closely, nose nearly pressed to the glass now, as the movers milled from truck to house with boxes of varying sizes. “Do you see any toys, Mom?”
Adrian, too, watched for a moment, then frowned, dropping back to her heels and straightening. She wondered how many other neighbors were rubbernecking this morning to get a gander at the street’s newest addition. And while, for the most part, rubbernecking was a harmless sport, Adrian knew all too well what it felt like to be the victim of it. “Eat your breakfast,” she said with a pat on Kyle’s shoulder.
“It’d be really cool if there was a guy my age moving in.” Kyle considered as he pushed his cereal around with his spoon, no longer paying Cap’n Crunch much mind. “Then Blaze and I can play two-on-two when Gavin visits in a few weeks.”
“What if they have a girl?” Adrian asked coyly, glancing sideways from the counter just in time to see Kyle wrinkle his nose.
The kid positively moped at the idea. “I guess that would be all right, too.”
Adrian chuckled. Kyle was firmly entrenched in the cootie phase. “It wouldn’t be so bad. You like Harmony, don’t you?”
“Harmony’s a baby,” Kyle told her, referring to their family friends the Savitts’ little girl. “Real girls are mean.”
Adrian hid a snort in her coffee. “Just concentrate on eating. We’ve got to get you to school, mister.”
“Hey, maybe we could send them something to eat,” Kyle suggested, still gazing out at the movers.
“Something to eat?” she asked, brow creased.
“Yeah. Like how we sent the Millers one of Briar’s pies when they moved in. Blaze said it was real good. That’s how we got to be such good friends.”
Adrian smiled as she watched her son’s mind work. With a small business to run and being a single parent, her days were so full she had hardly a moment to stop and breathe. But sometimes when she looked at Kyle her heart ached with how much she loved him and at how fast he had grown. “Good idea. I’ll talk to Briar this afternoon.”
Kyle finally turned his head and grinned at her. In the light spilling in from the open windows around the room, those wild blue eyes shone like stars and the dark freckles across his nose contrasted with his cheeks. “Thanks, Mom.”
She walked to him and touched a kiss to his brow, brushing back the dark hair that was growing over his forehead at a rapid rate. “Take your bowl to the sink. Then get dressed quickly. You don’t want to be late.”
As Kyle slipped by her, Adrian stole one last glance at the house next door. The movers were hauling in what looked like weights and power tools. She frowned at the license plate of the sportster. Out of state, from the looks of it. Though the tall grass was obscuring her view.
She just hoped whoever was moving in got the old eyesore looking somewhat decent again. How they would manage it all, she had no idea.
Only an idiot would buy a house that run-down. Or somebody with some serious ambition. Hoping for the latter, she turned from the windows and went to help Kyle get ready for the day.
* * *
JAMES BRACKENFROWNEDat the cards in his hand. Pocket jacks. He’d always had a knack for knowing what cards were going to show up on the table as well as for reading the people who challenged him to Texas Hold ’Em. Those fine-tuned senses told him that despite the nice, round pile of poker chips between them, his opponent, a scrawny man in a near-to-threadbare work shirt torn at the shoulder, was bluffing.
Scanning the man closely, James wondered when the last time the mover had had a good steak dinner. Not the lean kind of steak. A big, juicy, porterhouse number with fat trimming the edges. He couldn’t have been older than thirty but judging by the deep furrows in his brow and his receding hairline, things like luck and plenty had never been on his side.
After leaving home just shy of eighteen, James had found that the former came far more easily to him than most. For eight years, it had brought him a great deal of the latter. Which was why when the dealer, another mover, this one heavyset around the middle and sweating like a pig in the unaired rooms of James’s new house, flicked the river card onto the table, James took pity on his less fortunate opponent.
Ignoring those smiling pocket jacks, he dropped them facedown onto the siding board laid across two sawhorses to make a makeshift poker table and cursed under his breath. “Nothin’,” he muttered as hope lit in his opponent’s eyes. Reaching for the bottle of water that was sweating as much as their dealer, James lifted a shoulder and leaned back in one of the creaky beach chairs he’d found folded against the wall of the sorry excuse for a two-car garage. “Goddamn, Ripley. The cards love you.”
The dealer—Denning was his name, as James had gathered over the course of the busy morning—barked out a knowing laugh. “Bull. Nothing’s ever loved Ripley. Least of all Texas Hold ’Em.” He reached over to slap Ripley on the shoulder. “Ain’t that right, son?”
Ripley was still blinking in disbelief at the poker chips. He’d gone all-in before he realized he was drawing dead. Carefully setting his cards down, he splayed them on the table and looked up at James. “Denning’s right. I was bluffing the whole time.”
James stared down at the two and the eight. Just as he’d thought. “Hell of a poker face you got there.” It was a lie. James had spotted Ripley’s tell half an hour ago when the lower lid of his left eye twitched after the man wound up with trip nines. It had been his one well-played hand of the game. Ignoring Denning’s answering snort, James pushed the chip pile toward Ripley. “Go on. Count your spoils. I need some air.”
Ripley’s hand paused before it reached for the pot. “You’re gonna finish the game, right?”
James hid a smile by turning to the long line of windows and sliding doors that led out onto the wide deck. This was the reason he’d bought the house. Something about all that glass—smudged and dirty as all get-out at the moment—and that yawning view of the sunbaked deck and the pool and yard beyond it had called to him.
James had always been a sucker for a lost cause. The fact that he’d snatched up this dilapidated house only a short walk from Mobile Bay where he’d grown up was indisputable proof of that. “Sure, I’ll finish the game—after we’ve got all the furniture in.” As nice as the companionship he’d found in Ripley, Denning and the other movers was, James was eager to get a move on—to get started making things right here in Fairhope where he’d left his past and all the ghosts that had chased him away.
The past that had haunted him for eight long years. The past that he’d realized he was desperate to finally make right.
A knock on the door echoed from the entryway and James smoothed over the scowl he saw reflected in the dirty window. Turning back to the others, he said, “That’ll be the pizza. Let’s eat, boys.”
* * *
THEPIEWASCHERRY and it was still warm. With Kyle’s hope for a new neighborhood friend in mind, Adrian had procured it during that morning’s visit to Hanna’s Inn where her friend, innkeeper and adept cook and baker, Briar Savitt, lived and worked alongside her husband, Cole. It wasn’t out of Adrian’s way at all. She owned Flora, the flower shop on the street side of the building next door to Hanna’s, a building that also housed their