How had this happened? How had things gotten so out of control? They’d just made love. That was all. And yet it had triggered an avalanche of emotions. He hadn’t known that to touch her physically had meant to touch her mentally, pushing an already delicate psyche close to the edge. He knew guilt could wear a person down, could eat at a person’s soul until there was nothing left but fear and bitterness.

She turned and walked away with an air of slow dignity.

“Wait.” He caught a flicker of a shiny object on the floor near the foot of the bed. The ring. He picked it up, surprised at its lightness.

Lying in his palm was a fake gold ring. The kind of ring kids bought from gum machines, the kind whose size could be adjusted simply by squeezing.

Fresh doubt crept in.

Had the past five minutes been nothing but an act too? Had he finally fallen for her bullshit the way everyone else in town had?

He turned to go after Cleo, and his foot came in contact with the cold metal of the broken chain. He snatched it up and ran down the hall toward the living room.

She was gone.

Outside, heavy, icy raindrops hit him in the face, the sidewalk cold and wet under his bare feet.

He stopped and stared down the road. “Cleo!” he shouted into the darkness. “Don’t you want your ring?”

There was no answer. Only emptiness and the lonely patter of raindrops on the leaves above his head. He wouldn’t go after her. She would just elude him, the way she’d eluded him from the beginning. Maybe she did know something none of the rest of them knew. Maybe she could make herself disappear and appear at will.

He heard footsteps coming from the opposite direction and swung around, expecting to see Cleo emerging from the darkness. Instead, Beau appeared, Premonition at his heels, a smile on his face, the blue Tastee Delight cap turned backward. “Daniel!” he said, his voice holding joy at seeing his brother, as if Daniel’s presence were some remarkable treat. “What are you doing out here?”

Daniel curled his fingers around the ring. “Waiting for you,” he told Beau. “Waiting for you.”

Seeing Cleo’s dog-because he could only think of it as Cleo’s dog now-brought a fresh wave of misery to Daniel. Had he taken one of the only things she cared about?

Beau was too wired to sleep, Daniel too confused. Instead of going in the house, they sat in the wicker chairs on the front porch, Premonition at Beau’s feet, and listened to the rain.

Beau told him about all the hamburgers he’d prepared, and all the shakes he’d made, and how Matilda had let him clean out the shake machine after they closed.

Then he hit Daniel with something Daniel had never expected.

“If I had kids, would they be like me?”

Daniel’s heart almost stopped. He wiped a hand across his forehead, thinking fast. “Good-looking?”

Beau didn’t waver. “You know what I mean.”

Daniel did know what he meant.

The great security that came with growing up in a small town meant everybody had accepted Beau. Everybody liked him. Even though Beau knew he wasn’t like other people, Daniel had been thankful it had never seemed to bother him. Oh, there had been the time in second grade when Beau had been held back while his friends and classmates moved on. That had been tough.

In third grade it almost happened again. Instead, by some silent agreement, Beau moved on to the next grade with his new friends. He stayed with that class through middle school and high school, earning a diploma just like everybody else. That never would have been possible in a big city.

“Will they be different, like me?” Beau asked.

When Beau had a question, he wouldn’t let it go until he got a satisfactory answer, an answer he felt was fair. He would settle for nothing less than the truth. “When you were born, your oxygen was cut off for a little while. That changed something in your brain, so you have to work harder to learn things. But what happened wasn’t genetic. It isn’t something you have to worry about passing to your kids.”

That seemed to satisfy Beau.

A little later, when Daniel was lying in bed unable to sleep, his mind jumping from Cleo to Beau and back, a thought came to him. Was Beau thinking about getting married?

Chapter Twenty

Rain pounded the dark street, cooling the asphalt, running down Cleo’s face, plastering her hair to her head. She liked the feel of the cold rain on her skin, liked the way it absolved her of Daniel’s touch, erasing the imprint of his lips, his hands, his body. Why had she gone there?

You wanted him. You know you wanted him.

Yes.

As a child, she’d had urges to jump off high places. She’d wanted to experience the sensation of flight. But even at a young age she’d understood that there were risks involved. She understood that she could break a leg, or both legs. Or worse, die. You don’t jump off a high place just because you want to.

Down the block, a car turned her direction, twin headlight beams cutting through the rain. Cleo stepped behind a tree, hiding until the car passed. When it was gone, she returned to the edge of the road and continued walking in the direction of the motel.

Her feet slipped and squished in her sandals, and her jeans were heavy with the weight of the water. But she wasn’t cold.

At the motel, she dug the key from her bag and stuck it in the lock.

Why had she come back? Why didn’t she just keep walking? Walking until she was out of Egypt, out of Missouri.

You can’t walk away from your nightmares. You can’t walk away from your fears.

There had been a brief moment back there at Daniel’s when she’d forgotten who she was, when she’d forgotten the bad things, forgotten the dreams that haunted her and the guilt that stalked her. There had been a moment when she’d felt alive.

For someone who moved through her days trying not to feel, it had been a little like a rebirth, like being born all over again. Like so many things in life that were good, the feeling had lasted only long enough to leave her with an emptiness, a black, bottomless void that scared her.

She’d pushed him away. She was aware of that. But it was the only way she knew.

She stepped inside, closed the door behind her while flipping on the light switch-and let out a small shriek of alarm.

Dr. Campbell was lying on the bed, one hand behind his head, his feet crossed at the ankles. He wore a crisply pressed white shirt tucked neatly into a pair of belted dark jeans. On his feet were loafers and a pair of patterned socks. The soles of his shoes were barely scuffed.

“You scared me to death,” she said, hand to her heart.

He smiled a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “That makes us even.”

“Excuse me?”

In one smooth motion, he swung his feet to the floor and sat up. “You’ve been scaring me.”

She tried to make sense of his words and failed. The plop-plop of water dripping from her hair and clothes measured out a steady beat, a foundation of confusion, of dreaded anticipation.

He got to his feet. “Don’t you know?”

She shook her head.

He mirrored the motion with a headshake of his own. “I tried to talk Jo out of hiring a psychic, but she wouldn’t listen.”

“I thought you were backing her up. You seemed so interested.”

“When I realized there would be no talking her out of it, I gave her my support. I expected you to spout a bunch of bull, take your money, and leave.”

He was mad because she hadn’t gone out with him. “It’s nothing personal,” she explained. “You’re just not my type.”

He waved her words away. “Then you started talking about barns and digging a hole. What did you see in that hole?” he asked. “Something scared you, didn’t it?”

“Nothing. I didn’t see anything.” She wouldn’t tell him about the pumpkin. She wouldn’t tell anybody about the smashed, broken pumpkin.