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Was this when the house had turned from ‘slightly creepy’ to ‘actually haunted’? Was this when Leo had died? In the seventies?

“Anyway,” Bill said. “Then the bank had it, or the county, and then the Bellwethers, but the Bellwethers never lived in it either, and now there’s you. Fixing the shutters, Diane says.”

“Where I can.”

“Huh,” Bill said.

The conversation moved on to different topics after that. There was talk about the roads and somebody’s knee replacement. Someone in town was selling a pick-up that nobody wanted.

Nate stayed for one more coffee because leaving right after getting what he came for seemed rude, and then stood and thanked them.

“Come back when the roof’s done,” Frank the Elder said. “That I’d like to hear about.”

Outside, the evening had gone soft and blue. Walt was on the sidewalk a few steps from the door, lighting a cigarette, coat collar up though it wasn’t cold.

“Night,” Nate said.

“Night.” Walt got the cigarette going and looked at him through the first of the smoke. “Good luck with the house.”

“Thanks.”

Nate crossed to his truck. By the time he’d pulled out, the old man was still standing there, smoking, looking at nothing in particular in the direction of the hills.

In the direction of the house they all agreed was haunted.

But nobody could tell him why.

Chapter

Seventeen

It was full dark by the time Nate’s headlights swept up the drive.

The house stood black against the last blue of the sky, and in one of the second floor windows, something pale moved away from the glass.

Nate parked and carried his supplies in. Leo was in the foyer, arms crossed, examining the staircase as if he’d been down here all evening instead of watching the road from upstairs. “You were gone a long time.”

“Small towns talk slow.” Nate set the bags down and dug out the box of hinges. “I got the stuff to fix your shutters.”

Leo drifted over and inspected the box without touching it. “That seems acceptable.”

“High praise.”

Leo nodded and didn’t say anything else, though Nate could tell he wanted to ask questions about how his trip into town had gone. It seemed he hadn’t worked up the courage to voice them yet.

That was fine with Nate. There would be time for talk in the morning.

He ate a sandwich standing at the counter, brushed his teeth, and got into the sleeping bag.

“Goodnight, Leo.”

In the morning Nate took his coffee and a pair of work gloves out to the front bed. He’d made a promise, and he was going to keep it.

The garden had been fighting alone for a long time and it showed. Weeds shoulder to shoulder, and in the middle of them, the foxgloves, barely hanging on.

Nate knelt in the dirt and started pulling.

Leo came through the front wall of the house only a few moments later, as if he needed to supervise—which he promptly started doing.