Chapter 5

Who needs a boyfriend when your bank account goes down every day?

-Text from Krisney to Hennessy

Krisney

Three months ago

“I don’t understand,” the realtor, Madeline, said. “You have a house.”

I gritted my teeth to keep the angry comment from spewing out.

Instead, I carefully placed my hands in my lap and looked at her.

“I know that my parents had a house,” I said carefully. “And I don’t want to live there. I want to sell it. Then I want to move into that house.”

The realtor looked at the house that was behind her, a look of utter horror on her face.

Madeline was the one and only realtor in the area who consistently made it through the years. She was good at her job, smart, intelligent, and genuinely a pretty good realtor.

As a person, though…well, let’s just say that she left a lot to be desired.

She also had been a good friend of my mother's and that should be understanding enough right there.

She was part of the country club in town. She only wore the best clothes—which was odd in our small, laid back town seeing as nobody dressed up, even the doctors when they went to work. I was fairly sure that the judge wore jeans and a t-shirt under his robes half the time.

But Madeline was stuck up, and she’d always felt the same way that my parents had.

That they were better than everyone else.

Which extended to me, apparently.

“I just don’t understand why you wouldn’t want to live in your parents’ house,” she continued as if I hadn’t even said anything.

I can tell you why, I mused inwardly. Because my brother and mother’s stink permeate that house, and I can’t fucking breathe when I’m inside of it.

I didn’t actually say that, however. Mostly because I wanted the house behind her, and I didn’t want to piss her off before I got it.

“It’s just too hard to live there. I can’t stop thinking about them,” I told her, lying through my teeth, and making her think that it was my parents’ deaths that were the reason I couldn’t live there, and not the real reason.

Though, the statement was partially true.

I couldn’t stay in my room anymore at that house, because the memories of what used to happen in it were enough to choke me. It also reminded me of who I didn’t save from the same fate.

When I’d come back after my parents’ deaths, I’d gone to the house and had placed my belongings in the maids’ quarters.

That was the one room where I didn’t have some sort of bad memory.

“Oh, darling girl,” Madeline cooed. “We can find you someplace. Why this place specifically?”

Because this is the one place, in this whole entire town, that doesn’t remind me of my parents or Jay. It reminds me of Reed.

“I like it,” I answered. “I’m planning on building a new house, and this land is beautiful.”

Partial truth.

The land was beautiful. But I wasn’t going to build a new house. I was going to fix up the two-story farm house that was there and make it my home.

I’d always envisioned myself living there.

The way Reed and I had wanted to paint it a clean white. How we wanted a front porch swing we could sit on every night. How we wanted a large, open, bright kitchen with a massive island where we could both cook dinner together on.

Being gone for ten years, and only coming back for visits, I shouldn’t have any sort of tie to Hostel at all. There was literally nobody but Hennessy here for me.

After arriving last month to deal with my mother and father’s affairs and putting the house on the market, there was nothing left for me here.

Hennessy, though, was my best friend, and forever would be, and she had a husband now. She had other responsibilities and didn’t need me.

I had nothing here. No job. No house. No family.

Nothing.

I could go anywhere in the world. Anywhere.

Yet I was here, looking at this house, because I knew that I wanted it.

That Reed and I had wanted it, way back when I was happy.

Which, if I thought about it, was the only reason I wanted it.

That was the last time I could ever truly say that I was happy.

I was chasing after my happy. Logically, I knew that buying this place wasn’t going to give it to me, but it was a start.

I couldn’t see myself anywhere but here.

Why?

Because, if I was being one hundred percent honest, this was where Reed was.

Not the physical Reed, but my memories of Reed.

Memories of my happy.

And that’s where I wanted to be.

I just wanted to feel something…anything…besides this deep sorrow that felt like it was lodged deep in my chest.

A feeling that never felt like it was going to leave.

God.

I’d do anything to feel something besides sadness again.

Anything.

I could put on a good show, but in the end, I was still just as sad underneath the false laughs as I was when I wasn’t putting on a smile.

“This place has been on the market for ten years,” the realtor said.

I knew that.

“They’re looking for the perfect buyers, to be honest. This place has been looked at by so many people. So many it’s not even funny,” she mentioned. “But they always want to meet with the prospective buyer. They always say no.”

I looked Madeline straight in the face and said, “Ask them.”

Forty-five minutes later, I was watching the old man with surprise.

“You’re the girl that used to sneak up here.”

I knew the minute he saw me that he remembered who I was.

Though, it was hard not to when a couple of teenagers used to be on your property as much as Reed and I had been. We’d swam naked in the man’s pond, and ran these woods like they were our own. Sure, it’d been wrong…but Reed and I hadn’t done anything truly illegal. We’d just spent time here.

I bit my lip. “Yes.”

The man’s smile was genuine.

“That boy still around?”

Something in my face must’ve showed my dismay, because his eyes closed.

“You and him…y’all reminded me so much of my Jossy and me,” he said. “You want it?”

I nodded my head. “Yes, sir.”

His eyes took me in. “You got it.”

Relief like I’d never felt before poured through me.

“You really mean that?”

He grinned, showing me that he didn’t have his teeth in.

I wanted to laugh, but I didn’t.

“Yes, I mean it,” he answered. “But, before you go walking these woods…”

I paused, looking at him. “Yeah?”

“Have someone come out and sweep it for traps…I gotta say, in my younger days once I got back from war, I wasn’t in a good place.” He cleared his throat. “My Jossy saved me from that. But before she came…everything made me jittery. There are a few traps set up throughout the acreage…I don’t want you to get hurt walking out there by yourself.”

I should’ve listened, but I didn’t. Why? Because I thought I knew. I thought, since I’d spent so much time here, and we’d never seen anything like that around, that there couldn’t possibly be anything there.

Oh, how wrong I was.