Page 197 of Love Me in the Dark

And then I waited.

I took a job at a fast-food restaurant to pass the hours during the day, washed my uncle’s dishes, and watched him grimly in the evenings.

He was a perv. He never did anything, but his eyes tracked my sister with greedy intent when he thought I wasn’t looking. At night, we slept with a chair wedged beneath the doorknob of the bedroom door.

And then I found the farmhouse.

I discovered it by accident one afternoon, as I was jogging down a different route from my usual one. The two-lane road quickly turned into one-lane, bisecting fields on either side and the occasional smattering of farm buildings and homes.

I ran by a For Sale sign, glanced briefly to the side, and ran on. Then I stopped, turned in a circle, and ran back.

The house was barely visible from the road, just a worn red metal roof barely visible from the bottom of a long drive. I hovered, jogging in place, undecided whether to go down the driveway for a better look.

The crunch of tires on asphalt jarred me into jumping over to the side.

A pale blue Chevy pulled alongside me, an ancient man at the wheel. He leaned out the window, peering at me with shrewd eyes the same color as his vehicle. “Hey, there, gal.”

“Hi,” I returned. “I was just looking at this house. Do you happen to know who owns it?”

“I do,” he answered, smiling. “That would be my house.” He stuck a wrinkled hand toward me. “Tom Chester.”

Two first names.I’d always liked people with two last or two first names. They were unique. I wiped my palm on my shorts and shook his. “I’m Jude. Jude Tiernay. Would it be okay if I walked down the driveway and took a look at it?”

“Sure, sure. Hop in, and I’ll take you through it real quick.”

“Are you sure? I don’t want to keep you from anything.”

“Not doing a thing.”

Excitement stirred in my belly. I walked around and climbed into the passenger seat, careful to avoid the cracked vinyl against my thighs, and Tom drove us down the drive to his house.

It was small, with a sagging porch, and a roof that needed repair, and a door that hung crookedly on its hinges. Everything about it was weathered to a dull gray, including the bushes out front that collected dust from the long gravel driveway. The windows were coated with a thick layer of grime, and everything about it screamed “you’re crazy! Run!”

And yet, everything about it also screamedhome.

Inside, there were narrow planks of heart pine flooring beneath years of dirt. The sink was one of those old-fashioned apron kinds I saw on the fixer-upper shows all the time, with a ceramic drainboard. It had been neglected, but it was nothing a little attention wouldn’t take care of. The doorknobs were clear crystal, the ceilings nine-foot, and there was a fireplace in the front living room, flanked by dusty built-in bookcases.

“Does the fireplace work?” I asked Mister Chester, running a finger along the mantel.

“Sure does. I’d make sure the chimney’s clean before you go lighting a fire, though.”

I nodded, my gaze tracking around the room, lighting on small details. “How much are you asking?”

“Well…” He peered at me intently in the gathering dusk and rubbed a fingertip along the side of his mouth. “That depends on you. You see all that land out there?” He swept a hand in the general direction of the window, and I looked through the grime to see acres on acres of field.

“I see it.”

“I have close to five hundred acres.”

“Wow.”

“I want to sell some of it with this house.”

Despair, immediate and crushing, settled over my earlier excitement. I couldn’t afford any land. “Oh. I don’t need any land. I just needed a place?—”

“Well, now, I thought that might be the case. Let’s do some thinking here.” His look measured me, and I tried to keep from fidgeting. “Why don’t we do this. I’ll sell you the house and two acres, with the proviso that you purchase twenty-five additional acres over the next ten years. You can do it on your own timetable, and we’ll lock your price in now, so if property values increase, you won’t be paying additional costs. What do you say?” He named a price I could afford when Jerry finished my trust paperwork.

I shifted uneasily. “Why do you want to sell me twenty-five acres?”