“Mason?” Annajane snapped her fingers in front of his face. “Anybody home?”

“Sorry,” he said, returning to the here and now. “I haven’t driven the old girl for a few months,” he admitted. “I’ve been pretty busy at work. And Celia hates this car. She refuses to ride in it. So I’ve been keeping it in the garage at the plant.”

“But you used to love this car,” Annajane said. “What’s to hate about a classic convertible?”

“She says it’s a pimp car,” Mason said. “And as she points out, it doesn’t even have air-conditioning.”

“Hmm,” Annajane said. She slung an arm on the open window and leaned back into the headrest. “So, where are we headed?”

“I thought we’d ride out to the farm,” Mason said.

Cherry Hill Farms wasn’t a real farm anymore, and hadn’t been since Sallie’s father, Sam Woodrow, passed away in the 1980s and the family had sold off the last of his cattle and horses. The last Annajane had heard, the old farmhouse was being used as hay storage for the tenant farmer’s cows.

“That sounds nice,” she said.

Mason slid a cassette into the tape deck and “Walk This Way” blasted out of the speakers.

“Mötley Crüe?” Annajane rolled her eyes.

“Aerosmith!” Mason said, chastising her for her rock ignorance. “Root around under the seat there and find something else if you don’t like it,” Mason said, secretly disappointed in her musical taste.

“I like Aerosmith sometimes. Just not tonight. Have you got anything … mellower?”

Mason reached over the backseat and found a battered leather box that he plopped in her lap. “Here. Pick your own damn music.”

Annajane opened the box gingerly. “Okay, let’s see what you’ve got. Wow, this is like a for-real time machine. Led Zeppelin, Santana, Blue Öyster Cult. Were you even born when these guys started playing?”

“Those bands, madam, are rock classics,” he said. “Ageless and timeless.”

She held up a tape with a bright purple case. “John Denver. Really?”

He snatched the tape out of her hand and stowed it safely under his seat. “That’s Sophie’s. I think she saw him on an old Sesame Street rerun.”

Annajane laughed. “I can’t hate her for that. C’mon, give it back. Tonight’s perfect for John Denver cheese. A little ‘Sunshine on My Shoulder’ maybe. Or some ‘Rocky Mountain High’?”

“Nope,” he shook his head. “You’ve hurt my feelings. I’m afraid you’ll have to find your own mood music.”

She leafed idly through the tapes, pausing to look out at the deep green countryside flashing by.

“Maybe later,” she said. She threw her head back and enjoyed the feel of the wind whipping through her hair.

But she couldn’t shake the need to know what had brought about Mason’s unexpected visit. And she desperately wanted to know what had happened between the happy couple. She stole a sideways glance at Mason. He looked as happy and relaxed, as unguarded, as she’d seen him in years. And years.

“What’s going on between you and Celia? Not that it’s any of my business.”

Mason shrugged. “Nothing really. She was annoyed that I ate a late lunch, and then she was annoyed because I broke one of our wedding-present wineglasses. I think I kinda wrecked her plans for our big evening together.”

“Where is she now?”

He laughed. “At my mom’s. Her aunt had some kind of spell, and you know Sallie. She’s not exactly Nurse Nancy. She called and issued a summons, and of course Celia went.”

“Nobody, not even Celia, ignores a summons from Sallie Bayless,” Annajane agreed.

Mason laughed. He’d forgotten how easy Annajane was to be around. Effortless. With Annajane there was no subterfuge, no hidden messages. She was as open and real as … well, he didn’t know. Just easy, that’s all.

How the hell had things gotten so complicated, so quickly, with Celia? He felt like he was treading on broken glass every time they were together lately.

“Let me ask you something,” he said. “Do you think I spoil Sophie?”

Wow, Annajane wondered. Where was this coming from?

“Spoil?” She repeated the question, stalling for time. “I don’t know. I don’t think so, but I’m probably biased. Sophie’s … she’s special, you know? She was so tiny, and so needy, when you first brought her home. I guess maybe some people might say you went a little overboard. But she’s your daughter! And she is the sweetest, smartest, most loving little girl in the world. She doesn’t ask for a lot. And it’s not like she really plays you or manipulates you.”

Mason was nodding thoughtfully as she spoke, so Annajane took a deep breath and asked a question of her own.

“Does Celia think Sophie’s spoiled?”

“She thinks I should be firmer with her,” Mason said. “Sophie was kind of rude to Celia today at the hospital. You know, pulling her covers over her head, not talking to her, that kind of thing. Kid stuff, really. But it really got under Celia’s skin.”

Annajane was tempted to fire off something clever or flippant about evil stepmothers. But something made her hold back.

Sophie’s only five, but she’s no dummy. She could tell Celia was trying to buy her off. And she can spot a phony, even if her clueless daddy can’t. Tread cautiously here. Think before you open your mouth.

“Well,” Annajane said finally. “Discipline and rules and politeness, those are things every child needs. It’s not like Sophie to be rude. Maybe that’s something you and Celia are going to have to work on together.”

Mason nodded. “Yeah, probably you’re right. Guess I shouldn’t be so touchy, huh? Anyway, it’s too nice a night to get into all this heavy stuff. We’ll work it out. Eventually.”

Hope not, Annajane thought.

18

When they got to the turnoff for the farm, Mason swung the car easily into the graveled drive. Lights glowed from within the old white-painted farmhouse, and a battered pickup was parked in the shade of the tin-roofed shed that had once sheltered tractors.

“Somebody’s living here?” Annajane asked.

“You remember Grady Witherspoon? Maybe not. He was a little older than me. Went in the navy right out of high school, and I guess they’ve lived all over the world. He and his wife moved back last year. They’re renting the place. He’s planted one of the old cornfields, gonna be selling organic vegetables to some of the fancy restaurants over at Pinehurst. At least that’s the plan.”

The Chevelle bumped along over the rutted dirt road that skirted an old pasture gone to weeds. Waist-high pine-tree saplings lined the rusty barbed wire fence. More than once, the high-beam headlights caught a deer bounding gracefully across the path, and junebugs and moths seemed to float in the still, cool air. Finally, Mason pulled the car alongside a weathered outbuilding.

“What is this place?” Annajane asked, half-rising from the seat to get a better look. It had been years and years since she’d visited the farm.

“It’s the old corncrib,” Mason said. “It’s about to fall in, along with the rest of the buildings out here. Davis and I used to bring sleeping bags and camp out here back in the days when we deer hunted together. We thought we were Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett.”

He cut the engine and they let the quiet settle over them. It was a country kind of quiet, lush and deep and green, Annajane thought, with cicadas sawing away and the hooting of an owl echoing from a nearby treetop.

“Do you and Davis still hunt together?” Annajane asked, shivering involuntarily at the sound of the owl.

“No,” he said, and she thought she detected a note of regret in his voice. “The only deer he’s chasing these days are the kind spelled d-e-a-r. We actually don’t do much of anything together anymore, except bicker.”

“About the company?”

“That, and other stuff,” Mason said. “Lately, I look at him and have to wonder how we could be so completely different and yet come from the same set of parents.”