2

Luc would have finished the row he was on if the sky hadn’t opened up and pissed down on him, the rain close enough to freezing to be dangerous. It had been on this sort of evening that he’d lopped off his finger. He’d been seventeen when it happened, thanks to the combination of cold and the brand-new battery-powered secateurs his half brother had forced on him. In the name of efficiency, Olivier had claimed. Always more, faster.

Luc had pruned the vine with that thousand-euro tool—and his ring finger along with it. Christ, that wasn’t something he felt like doing again. Grandpère had been off on a sales trip, and Luc would never forget how he’d had to find the finger and bring it to Maman and Olivier. How unmoved they’d been. The trip to the hospital, his hand, his life, changed forever. That was the day he’d decided to get the hell out of there, his determination a secret thing he’d nurtured and fed until it became him.

The very next day, Luc had gone back out there, cutting vines the old-fashioned way, electric pruners relegated to the back of the toolshed until some other poor ass decided to give them a whirl. From that day on, he’d had something to work toward. It was brutal, but he’d pushed himself. Worked and learned everything he could, mostly from Grandpère. But after the old man died… Well, if Luc couldn’t be in charge of the vineyard—if they wouldn’t do things his way, the right way—he’d leave. And he had, the moment he’d saved up enough money.

As grumpy as the chickens in their coop, he stomped inside and took a quick, hot shower. Once dressed, he grabbed his keys and wallet before heading out to his truck. Since pruning wasn’t possible, he’d get his weekly shopping over and done with. It was always better at night, when the store was empty.

As he drove past his last row of vines, he breathed in deeply, resisting the urge to tap the steering wheel twice and kiss his fist. He’d left so much superstitious shit back in France. Things like always pruning from east to west, or the same unwashed beret his grandfather had worn for every one of his sixty-eight harvests.

He headed down the steep part of the drive, through the wooded section, and back out into the open. The crunch and pop of gravel under his tires announced his arrival as he downshifted into the last steep curve before the neighbors’ land. Camp Jesus they called it in town, although he hadn’t seen much actual worship on the other side of this fence.

He took one deep breath in, to prepare for the sight that greeted him here most days—the blood and gore of a… Merde, he couldn’t remember the word. It was abattoir in French, but what the hell was it in English? Weird how some words escaped him in one language or the other. Funny how he felt so French in this place, but in France, he’d been too American.

Today, no carcasses greeted him as he passed their open air…killing shack. What was the stupid word? Nothing there, except—

What the hell? He skidded to a halt, the gravel taking a few seconds longer than the tires to still. In the middle of the drive in front of him stood an animal, its eyes two bright dots in the night. He waited for his lungs to crawl out of his throat and let some oxygen into his brain.

It didn’t appear confident enough to be a wolf. Was it a coyote? Did coyotes even live around here? He’d never seen one before, but the way it moved—cautious, low on its haunches—made him think of that. He could picture it feeding off the animal carcasses next door.

After a brief standoff where he thought he’d have to get out and shoo it away, the animal slunk from the fence to disappear into the underbrush and the woods farther beyond. An eerie sound rose up to meet Luc in the quiet.

Ignoring the creature’s howl, he lifted his foot from the brake—although not too far, since the three hairpin turns down the mountain kept him from going fast. Once the road straightened out, he gave in to his desire to pick up speed. It was good to let go, get some distance. He accelerated too fast down the last section of drive and fishtailed dangerously at the bottom before skidding to a halt right where gravel met asphalt. One meter beyond the front of his truck, a car sped by, shocking his nerves with a long blast of the horn.

“Putain,” he cursed. He exhaled hard, his heart trying to push its way out of his chest. “Bordel de merde.” One inconsequential meter from death. All because he’d been spooked by that animal and those religious weirdos next door. After a good thirty seconds spent getting his breath back, he turned left and made his way sedately toward town.

As he approached downtown Blackwood, Luc squinted at the traffic. What the hell was going on? The place was more crowded than usual. People looked frenetic, and the IGA lot was almost full.

He parked, eyes hopping nervously, that familiar shake to his breath. He should go back. Barely controlling the tremor of his hand, he turned the key in the ignition, put the truck into park, and waited.

No. Don’t be an idiot. It’s just a few more people than usual. He’d go into the store, grab a few necessities, and get out of there. In and out. He could do this.

Inside the supermarket, his eyes danced around as he watched people buy gallon jugs of water, milk, dozens of eggs, and beer. He pushed through it, gathering the usual: coffee, bread, butter, milk, pasta, the sauce to go along with it, and frozen vegetables.

Beans and soup seemed like a good idea, so he moved to that aisle—only to find a dozen people crowding it. Hell no—he’d do without. Instead, he cut up the next aisle. Beer and wine. He grabbed a six-pack of Stella and made a move to turn back rather than pass in front of the wine. But his path was blocked by a family with one of those extra-long carts for the kids to drive parked diagonally across the entrance. The clown horns squeaked like a herd of deranged geese. He had to get out of here. He headed through the wine, ignoring the itch in the center of his back and the undeniable urge to read the labels. Don’t do it, his mind screamed as his eyes took in the rows and rows of shitty vintages and—

There it was. His family’s name—although not his, which they’d never let him forget: DeLaurier et fils, emblazoned on a dozen or so bottles. A small, red-and-yellow flag indicated a sale: $9.99 apiece. Christ. Under ten bucks a bottle? He was tempted to take a picture of it to send to his brother. Instead, in a moment of pathetic pique, he took hold of the bottle beside it—another French sellout—and went to check out, calmer than he’d been on the way in.

The cashier, unfazed by the crazed masses, took in his purchases. “Hear they’re calling for a storm?” she asked, voice slow while her hands busily scanned and bagged.

Would this store ever get a self-checkout? he wondered. If there were another store in Blackwood, he’d have gone there just to avoid this weekly exchange.

“No.”

“Saying we might get a good icing.”

Luc didn’t respond, but as usual, his silence had no effect. The woman kept talking.

“You only been here a couple of years, right?” She barely paused, not waiting for a response. “Haven’t seen real weather yet. Wouldn’t be surprised if you got more up on the mountain than we’re gonna get here.”

How the hell did everybody in town know where he lived? He still couldn’t figure that out. He stared at the belt and willed it to roll his items forward faster.

“Won’t make it off the mountain if we get ice,” she added.

He finally engaged with her. “We’re not going to.”

“Weatherman Bob Campbell begs to differ.”

“No snow,” he said with a farmer’s certainty. He knew. He’d feel it in his phantom knuckle if snow were truly coming in.

“Well, I guess you’re right, since we’re getting ice. Not snow.” The cashier smirked, wagging one of those chubby, age-speckled fingers at him.

In France, a woman this old would never have to work. Nor would a cashier help with anything, much less try to converse. The cashier would ignore everyone, sullen and irritable. Maybe throw down a few plastic bags if none were brought—and even those had to be paid for. He’d prefer angry silence to this constant, cheerful prattle. It was exhausting.

“Snow’s one thing, but when the temps go down and every darn thing gets coated in the clear stuff, you won’t be able to leave your place for days. Bet you don’t see stuff like that where you’re from.”

What if she was right? Would there be time to get his vines pruned before it hit? If it hit, which he still wasn’t convinced it would—at least not in the next twenty-four hours.

“When is it supposed to start?” he asked.

“Talking about tomorrow night, but you never know.”

Back outside, the sky was clear, the air cold and crisp in his lungs. No precipitation tonight, at least. The band across Luc’s chest loosened as he headed back, ecstatic to finally be on his own.

God, he was a misanthrope. His chickens more than satisfied his need for company. And yet…

An impression of that woman’s thin, cold hand sandwiched between his own rose up with a warm blush. He’d rubbed her hand, hadn’t he? Trying to chafe some heat into her flesh, he’d thought, but maybe—just maybe—he’d been trying to leach something from her.

Putain, what an idiot. Quel con.

He really should see about getting an Internet connection so he could… What? Develop an online relationship? Connect with some other solitary soul? The idea didn’t interest him nearly as much as the memory of that woman’s pride. Begging for a job with her back as stiff as a rail. Her hand frail-looking, but the bones firm between his, the skin slightly roughened.

He focused on his own misshapen hands. It was a wonder he’d felt the texture of her skin, given the state of his. He tightened and stretched the left hand—stared at that empty space he’d never quite gotten used to. His bones snipped off and discarded like last year’s useless vine. Polish bones, his mother always called them. Just another affectionate insult.

And wasn’t that the crux of everything? Too big for a Frenchman, too thick and rough for smooth seduction. And certainly too ill at ease with the games involved. He shuddered at the memory of dates gone bad.

Halfway up the mountain, Luc was so distracted that he didn’t notice the animal until his truck was nearly on top of it again. Putain, it wasn’t a coyote. It was a damned dog. Probably one of theirs. On the wrong side of the fence.

Or the right side.

From the warm interior of his truck, he waited for it to scuttle away again, but it stayed in the middle of his path. A face-off.

“Casses-toi,” he said under his breath, wishing the dog gone. “Allez, vas-y.” When it didn’t move, he opened his door with a sigh, got out, and stomped toward it. He clicked his teeth in an effort to get it out of the way.

The dog only stood taller, watching him closely. Its ears were plastered to its head, coat hidden beneath a layer of dust and filth.

“Comment t’es sorti, toi? Hein?” he asked, wondering how the dog had gotten out from behind the fence.

Its ears lifted, head cocked to the side. Listening.

“T’as faim?”

Nothing.

“Don’t speak French, I guess.”

It was apparently hungry enough to take another step closer, before cowering back. Did those nuts beat their animals? Weren’t these religious people supposed to be peaceful and kind, with their faith and old-fashioned demeanors? He couldn’t picture the woman from today—Abby—hitting a dog.

“Allez, dégages. Go, go on.” He tried to shoo it one last time, with no luck at all. The dog was a mess. Could it even move?

Its head tilted, ears lifting higher, looking hopeful. For a brief second, Luc recalled the expression on Abby Merkley’s face when she’d offered her hand to shake.

“My God,” he whispered, and the dog, with that sixth sense these creatures had, moved toward him, its steps halting. On a clean wave of anger, Luc wondered if the creature needed to be put down.

He picked it up. Pure skin and bones. Just like the woman they’d sent over to him. What the hell was wrong with those people?

He considered putting it into the truck bed, but something about the animal’s frail legs and mangy fur, the way it trembled in his arms, made him shove his bags into the footwell and lay it down carefully on the front seat.

He stopped and cocked his head. What was that? A sound in the deathly quiet? A dip in temperature? A crackling in the cloud-muffled night? Luc sniffed, expecting the smell of smoke, not the stench of death that followed it on the air.

This dog was theirs. The neighbors’. He was sure of it. First, they sent a woman to him—looking for work, no less—and now a dog, left out to starve in the middle of winter? Well, he’d had enough. Enough.

Flying in the face of every one of Grandpère’s expressions about good neighbors, he turned the truck around and accelerated back down the drive toward the neighbors’ place, ignoring the itch of premonition that skimmed his nape like an icy finger.

* * *

Abby pushed opened the door to Hamish’s cabin.

My cabin, she thought with a sudden, futile spasm of ownership.

It was dark inside—the kind of pitch-black she imagined modern women never experienced, with their cell phones glued to their hands and purses probably equipped with flashlights. They were so practical, those women, with their bare heads, jeans, and easy cotton shirts.

She scrabbled on a side table for matches, lit the first lantern, and turned to see a silhouette. She dropped the matchbox with a strangled sound. Hamish? The fear and shock quickly morphed into relief as the shape came into focus.

Just Sammy.

“Hi, Abby” came his voice, slow and a bit high.

“Goodness, you almost killed me.”

“I did?”

“No. I mean, not really. You just scared me, standing here in the dark, is all.”

“You said to come, Abby. I’m sorry.” He sounded crestfallen.

She immediately went to him, put one arm around his narrow shoulders, and led him to one of the straight chairs in the kitchen area. “Don’t be, Sammy. Don’t be. I meant it. I was just… It was just a little fright, but I’m happy that you’re here. What’s a little fright compared to that, huh?”

“Yeah?” His smile lit up those sweet features, the tiny nose and high forehead that made him different from everyone else and made her love him all the more.

“No room at your parents’?” she asked.

“No. Denny and Angie wanted to be alone. So I went to see Benji and Brigid, but he…he tole me to go, too.”

Abby knew exactly why the Cruddups had kicked him out. Well, at least one of the reasons. They might be his birth parents, but his differences made him a failure in their eyes—in the eyes of the Church—and they needed to make up for it by coupling and giving the Almighty more babies, despite their advanced years. It was their responsibility as God-fearing members of the Church, and tonight, apparently, they were fulfilling their spousal duty. It sickened her, the idea that they’d rather do that than care for Sammy, already here and alive. A son who especially needed them.

“Did you get dinner?”

At his shake of the head, she grew angrier still. It didn’t matter that he looked different from everyone else or that he’d taken longer to learn to tie his shoes. Denying his needs was simply not Christian.

The familiar wave of frustration welled up, only this time it extended past the people of the Church and the fence line to include the man who’d refused to give her a job today.

She had to consciously loosen her jaw before speaking. “Let’s get you something, pumpkin.” Knowing how little she’d find, she tried the larder—two jars of pickled beets from last summer; the loaf of bread she’d been rationed this week, already moldy; and the butter in the crock, probably turned sour. This was what happened during the limbo between marriages. She’d practically been a child when Hamish had taken her. Children were fed in the refectory, but adult women were left to their own devices. She cut the mold off the bread, sniffed at the butter, and opened another precious jar.

I’m nothing, exactly like you, she thought, handing Sammy a cobbled-together meal you’d have to be starving to consider eating. And she’d been at her mama’s, eating chicken pot pie and beans.

He dug in with relish, and Abby’s anger inched up a notch.

“You feeling all right?” she asked, ignoring the urge to reach out and stroke his hair. Physical affection was another no-no. She remembered wanting it from Mama, even from Hamish at first. With a hot blush, she recalled the summer she and Benji had discovered touch. Noticing the look on Sammy’s face, she shut it down. “No?”

“Happened again.”

She stilled. “Another one of your fits?”

“Yeah.” He polished off the bread. Too fast. He needed more to eat and she was running low, and rations weren’t passed around for another two days.

“Tell me.”

“Out lookin’ for parts for Dinwiddy’s car. Din’t feel so good. Sat on the scraggly rock, you know, over by the old crash where I found that rusted-out bolt that time?” She nodded, knowing exactly where he meant. She and Benji’d done things on that rock. Things that had felt so good and been so wrong and, in the end, led to her marriage to Hamish, among other things. Sammy went there all the time, looking for parts in his constant quest to fix things. “Well, I got it again…that feeling like I was there and not. And then…” He stood abruptly, pushing back his chair so fast that it tilted before landing back on all four legs with a clatter. He came to squat in front of her, tilted his head to the side, and, grabbing her hand, put it to his head.

Oh, heavens, it was matted with blood.

“Sit down,” she ordered, rushing to grab the lamp and hold it closer. “You hurt yourself, honey.”

“Yeah. Hurts.”

“I know, Sammy.” She patted his shoulder. “All right. Let’s…” She looked around. Another few minutes wouldn’t change a thing, she supposed, but worrying him would serve no purpose. “Finish your dinner first. We’ll take a look at your cut after.”

“’Kay.”

It wasn’t until she’d gotten him cleaned up and snug in her bed, covered in her patchwork quilt, that Abby considered what would happen next. She folded herself into the chair beside the woodstove.

So much energy and expectation had gone into that man—the one she’d barely let herself think of since she’d crawled back through the hole in the fence—and now…nothing had changed.

Staring into the flames, she racked her brain for some other solution, another way out. But no matter how hard she tried, she came up with nothing.

Nothing besides him, the grape farmer with the rolling accent and stern brow, the chilly eyes and hot, hot hands.

That meant one thing, no matter that she didn’t like it or that he most certainly wouldn’t either: she’d go back to him tomorrow. And this time, she wouldn’t leave without a job.

* * *

Luc had driven this far up the county road only once, and that had been the day he’d made the offer on the vineyard. As part of his due diligence, he’d investigated the entire area, in search of hidden nuclear power plants the real estate agent might have forgotten to mention. Well, and to scope out the neighbors. As his grandfather had drilled into his brain as a boy, your crop is only as good as your neighbor’s.

Turning into the sect’s drive, his first impression had been mixed: the sunny-yellow sign such a contrast to its words of imminent apocalypse, paint worn and fraying at the edges. Now, in the dark, his headlights found it. Just beyond was the gate, closed like so many others in the area—ostensibly to keep livestock in. He’d wondered about these people. Because who the hell needed a two-meter-high chain-link fence around a property this size? Even goats did fine with one meter of chicken wire.

No, that fence was strange. But good neighbors didn’t pry. Another one of Grandpère’s rules. So after his initial meeting with the group’s leader—a strange man with a strange name—he’d established that they didn’t use harsh chemicals on their crops, and he’d taken off. Relieved to get away and, to be honest, relieved that they were so private. Both parties had made it clear during that single meeting that they weren’t interested in each other’s business. It had seemed perfect.

Which was another reason he was so irritated with that woman. How dare she ignore their unspoken agreement and invade his privacy like that?

Well, to hell with it. As he opened the truck door, the dog raised its head and made a noise not strong enough to be a whine. Luc hesitated, eye on the animal. Its paw shifted to nudge Luc’s leg. Although there was no strength behind it, there was something else.

“You don’t want to go there?” he asked.

The dog gave a low, rumbling response, which he could have sworn was assent—or a warning.

“I can’t keep you if you belong to them,” he argued, one leg out of the truck.

Slowly, painfully, the creature rose. Each step looked like torture as it made its way to his lap, where it collapsed heavily with a moan.

Luc opened his mouth to protest again, but the dog cut him off with a sigh, more eloquent than a howl.

It didn’t want to go back, and Luc wouldn’t force it. Christ, what was wrong with those people that they wouldn’t even take proper care of an animal? He pushed away the mental image of that woman again, settled both legs back in the vehicle, and reached out to slam the truck door shut.

Okay. So they’d take a trip to the SPCA tomorrow. Or the vet. But first, he needed to give it something to eat. The dog, which weighed nothing, was more skeleton than muscle, its spine a series of fragile, pointed knobs under his hand.

Sliding one hand into the animal’s matted fur, he put the truck into gear and reversed quickly, not letting himself think of the woman he’d turned away just a few hours before.