Page 4

chapter

two

Basket Case – Green Day

CAMPBELL

“Bitch,” Campbell growled, slamming the back door behind him. The sound echoed through the quiet house, followed by his muttered curse as he stormed into the kitchen. The redone tiles—violent shades of color that reminded him too much of Celia—made his stomach churn.

Crazy Hellcat’s right about you , his mind taunted as he crossed the dining room, the massive table cluttered with funeral offerings: deviled eggs, hummingbird cakes, ham, fried chicken, every shape and color of casserole.

He scanned the room, searching for any sign of Kit, and jerked his tie loose.

Wrapping the silk strip around his fist, he yanked.

The sound of his footfalls striking heart pine and the tick of his mother’s mantle clock echoed in the tense silence.

Be a decent brother .

Could coming back, awful in its own right, get any worse? Yeah, Camp, it could. How about a temperamental, likely penniless boarder you’ve got to kick out on her shapely ass ?

Shapely, and galaxies from his norm. The only reason he could find for his clumsy proposition was the erection he’d gotten seeing her slender body wrapped up in those oddly inviting overalls.

Because, sad but expected, being back in his hometown always had him reverting to a pattern of puerile behavior, propositioning everything in sight.

Mindless, immature distractions meant to tuck true emotions out of sight.

He unbuttoned his shirt as he moved through the house, a loose button falling with a soft plink to the polished wood before skating beneath his shoe.

He passed the paneled den where his father had died of a heart attack in his Louis VIII chair, past paintings of Celia and Grandmother True, his mother’s portrait presumably relegated to the storage shed.

He got clear to the veranda before he realized that no one was home.

Jamming his hands in his pockets, Campbell dropped his head back, the rebuff bruising his already lacerated emotions.

He wanted to rip something, someone , apart.

If he went up the winding staircase to find Celia had destroyed the darkroom he’d built his junior year of high school, he was going to follow through on the impulse.

Surely Kit knew he was on his way home. Hadn’t John Nelson told him he’d called at least ten times since the accident? Campbell leaned against a fat Georgian column, scanning the yard, every corner of the shadowed veranda framed by the last twist of sunset.

Campbell’s mind drifted back to the beautiful woman living in his mother’s art studio. Quinn. Though he couldn’t recall whether it was her first or last name.

He had news for her. He wasn’t about to argue with someone who believed what most did.

He’d never been indifferent to Kit.

Though he’d always been close to his cousins, having a brother was different.

He could still picture himself outside the hospital nursery the day Kit was born, knuckles pressed to the glass, a dawning sense of wonder hitting him like a blow to the head as he stared at the tiny, flushed, hours-old bundle in the bassinet.

He hadn’t been given many people in this life to love.

Unfortunately, he’d learned—the hard way—how easily a parent could keep you from their child if they wanted to.

Through aching, bloodshot eyes, Campbell watched the sun vanish, the horizon ablaze with crimson and gold, deep blue and violet.

His apologies to Kit, for everything he hadn’t done to make his life better and everything he’d done wrong, were swallowed by the hush of the night.

The chirp of crickets in the azaleas lining the house—a sound he only heard, or perhaps only noticed, when he was home—stirred a hollow sense of recognition.

He longed to snap a shutter, to capture the majestic beauty just beyond his vision, but whether from exhaustion, depression, or the gnawing realization that he truly was the terrible person everyone believed, he couldn’t summon the heart to photograph the Rise.

Barren fields, shallow creeks, and dense pine thickets—fields as familiar to him as his own reflection—left his stomach unsettled.

Once, he had roamed this place with a scrappy mutt at his heels, a knapsack of treasures slung over his shoulder, and stories of his ancestors spinning through his mind.

Land he’d cherished with everything in him. Land he’d worked alongside his grandfather until his hands bled. Land in his family for generations. Blood spilled, tears shed, love taken.

Never, not in his wildest dreams, had he imagined selling it. Not until his father, and later Celia, drove a stake of revulsion and loneliness straight through him.

His attachment to this place had almost buried him.

His great-grandfather had laid the foundation for the veranda he stood on and lost a finger chopping wood out back.

Grandmother True had given birth to four healthy babies and two stillborns in the bedroom at the top of the stairs.

His father had claimed the house, the land, the entire town, when he returned from Korea, a decided limp of authority forever echoing off heart pine planks.

And young Campbell? He had claimed it, too. Deep inside, though never by act or declaration. His was not a ringing endorsement. Not after he understood what it meant to his father.

Not after he realized his acceptance, his rejection , held power.

Shirttail dangling mid-thigh, Campbell surveyed his birthright, the wind against his chest soothing him as only the sight through a camera’s viewfinder could.

He almost hated how much it felt like home.

The Rise. That’s what the townsfolk had named it.

The smartest piece of property to be had in South Carolina’s upstate the newspaper claimed the day after Campbell’s great-grandfather galloped away from Andersonville on a half-starved horse, the war behind him.

Deck W. True had read that article while sitting in the charred remains of a barn, drinking bitter chicory and smoking moldy tobacco.

The next day, he rode into Promise, bought the land, and built a Greek Revival mansion fit for a king, as if guided by the great Almighty himself.

Or so he said years later.

From that point on, it was called the Rise.

Campbell knew every word of every story; they flowed through his heart in velvet whispers and came to him, vividly, in his dreams. Sitting on John Nelson’s bony knee, he’d listened, memorizing his grandfather’s tales, intending to pass them down to his children one day.

He’d once had everything planned.

Fuck , he thought, jamming the heels of his hands into his eyes.

Now the kitchen looked like a wealthy socialite had done the decorating—which was totally on the mark.

The chip in the dining room floor from his roller-skates?

Filled in and glossed over. The tree in the back where his tire swing had once hung?

Chopped down the day he left for Duke. Celia had allowed a painting of his grandmother, done by a local artist, and his damn baseball trophies to remain simply because visitors would ask about them if she didn’t.

Every other piece of soul in the house had withered and died under a vengeful woman’s tutelage, no longer even worthy of a photograph.

But the land? The land she hadn’t dared to master.

The shadows at Campbell’s feet quivered and settled.

The streetlight at the end of the oak-lined drive flickered, then held steady.

A bat took flight above the trees, soaring in wild, erratic loops through the darkness.

Listening for his family’s return, he battled disappointment and fatigue but heard only the sounds of the night.

The solitary rustle of leaves against a picket fence, the distinctive screech of a barn owl, branches cracking in the wind.

A healthy insomniac for the past five years due to an insane schedule across multiple time zones, you’d think exhaustion would be second nature by now.

Feeling one part kin and two parts interloper, Campbell reentered the lumbering house atop the Rise, the weight of three generations’ expectations settling heavily on his shoulders.

FONTANA

“Bastard,” Fontana whispered, trembling beneath grass-stained denim she wished she’d had the foresight to wash the night before.

As the black bullet of a car blended into the glare of the setting sun, she stumbled backward, sinking between two archaic gas pumps.

Hidden in the shade of a rusted tin awning, tears coursed down her face as she fought to suppress them.

Furious and humiliated, she balled her hands into fists and rubbed her cheeks until they stung.

If Tim Prescott found her like this, she would strangle Campbell True with her bare hands.

In the years since she’d moved to the south, she’d gotten used to humidity so thick it was like breathing mud and tea that wasn’t called sweet for nothing.

Used to pinecones in her garden and straw littering the drive in the fall.

Used to nuts boiled in the shell and the way her name often came out sounding like Fontan er .

Used to chit-chat in the grocery line and waving, even when you didn’t actually know someone.

What she’d really gotten used to was belonging —as much as she’d ever allowed herself to.

Perhaps for the first time in twenty-seven years.

Rummy trotted over and slumped between her splayed legs, his tail thumping her dirty boot.

She tugged at the frayed laces, wishing money was plentiful enough to buy new ones.

Only, her sister had bought books for fall semester last month— two hundred and forty dollars worth.

Fontana wasn’t complaining about anything she spent on Hannah. Cash just got so tight.

Then the nightmares returned.

Her father all over them.