Return To Me. Shannon McKenna

had been a time when not thinking about Simon had amounted to a full-time occupation. Now she was an old pro. Now it was no big deal. She was halfway through the crosswalk before she realized that she’d walked past her own truck.

      She marched the half block back to it, tight-lipped, and packed her perishables into the cooler. When Simon’s uncle Gus Riley had shot himself a few months back, the shock had briefly revived old gossip. People had wondered out loud about what happened to that wild boy who’d run off so long ago. Some speculated that he’d gone to the bad and was leading a life of crime in some big, nasty city.

      Not Ellen Kent. Been there, done that. She had better things to worry about. She shoved plastic ice packs around the food, sealed the cooler and climbed into the truck. She wasn’t picturing Simon Riley, all big and dirty and sweaty in black riding leathers, his black hair blowing wild and loose all the way down to here. Huh uh.

      She’d moved on.

      The motorcycle bumped and jolted over the rutted logging road that snaked along the McNary Creek Canyon. Simon had braced himself in every way he could. He’d eaten a meal, he’d drunk strong coffee, he’d washed his clothes, he’d scrubbed himself in the waterfall’s icy pool. He could think of no other excuse not to face up to Gus’s house, other than the fact that the prospect made him feel sick and faint.

      He cut the motor and coasted down towards the house. It was smaller and shabbier than he remembered, and it had been plenty shabby seventeen years ago. The paint had peeled away, and the house had taken on the eerie silver shade of a prairie ghost town. Everywhere he looked, time collapsed. He felt younger, angrier. Scared and confused. Fucking up every time he turned around.

      He wasn’t a fuckup anymore, he reminded himself. Not at his work, at least. He was a seasoned professional, excellent at what he did. He’d achieved a certain amount of fame in the journalism world for his brazen fearlessness. More balls than brains, his colleagues said, but that was what sold, and everyone knew it.

      A golden eagle swooped low, checking him out. The shadow of its huge wingspan brushed over him. A swift, quiet benediction.

      He took courage from that and approached the house. The rotten porch boards sagged beneath his weight. The unlocked door creaked open. The smell of dust and mold filled his nose as his eyes adjusted.

      Gus had never been much of a housekeeper in the best of times, and it was evident that these had been far from the best of times. Dishes were heaped in the sink, encrusted with dried, molded food. A cast-iron skillet thick with grease sat on the filthy propane stove top. Empty bourbon bottles covered the counter, crowded the floor. The pattern of the peeling linoleum was barely visible beneath the dirt.

      He walked into the kitchen. A clutter of miscellany covered the tables. Dishes, silverware, paper, and, incongruously, a laptop computer. No electric lamps or appliances. Gus must have hooked the computer to his gas generator. It was connected to a phone jack, but he saw no phone. Gus had gotten a phone line just for the Internet.

      He walked slowly through the broken-down house. Dirt and junk and cobwebs. Dead flies and liquor bottles. The desolation made his throat tighten. No guilt, he reminded himself. Gus had brought his loneliness on himself. Simon would have been glad to love his uncle.

      Gus had driven his nephew away with his fists.

      It made him sick. He wanted to fling something against the discolored wall, just to hear it shatter. One of those bourbon bottles would do just fine. He breathed deeply and let the impulse pass.

      That was the past Simon, young and dumb and full of come. He had a handle on his temper now, and he hung onto it with both hands, but it was time to get out in the open where he could breathe.

      Hank’s letter had said they had found Gus in front of the house. He waded out into the meadow. The grass was thick and high, a waving blaze of gold so deep the rusted cars seemed nearly drowned in it.

      He couldn’t say goodbye to Gus like this, with his mind shut up tight against grief and memories. He closed his eyes, unclenched his fists, and let the tension relax. He opened his mind as if he were about to take photographs. Softening, widening, until he merged with what he was observing, until he and it were one.

      He reached down deep, for his best memories of Gus.

      The image blindsided him the moment his guard went down. Fire roaring up, just like his dreams. Greedy, raging, consuming violence. For an instant, the waving grass seemed an inferno of licking flames.

      Just as suddenly, the perception was gone. He stood in a fragrant meadow humming and buzzing with life under the blazing August sun. Doubled over and shaking, his forehead wet with cold sweat.

      He pressed his hand against his belly and willed the queasiness to pass. He knew this feeling all too well. A premonition of disaster.

      He knew the impulse that followed it, too. The only thing in the whole world that would make him feel better.

      He had to find El.

      Ellen pulled into the Kent House driveway and parked in her own spot under the maples. She ran a practiced eye over the cars of the guests in residence in the small parking lot below the house.

      The Phillips family’s Rover, Phil Endicott’s silver Lexus, Chuck and Suzie’s Jeep, bristling with sports equipment, Mr. Hempstead’s massive baby blue Chrysler. Everyone here for tea today. Then her eye fell on an unfamiliar silver Volvo sedan. A new guest, she hoped. She’d had an unexpected cancellation this morning, so she had a free room. She hoped that Missy, her part-time help, had mustered up the nerve to check the new guests in. She was trying to teach the girl to be less timid, but it was uphill work.

      A gust of hot wind bent back the lilacs that separated her lawn from the scrub oak and meadow grass that led down to Gus’s moldering car graveyard. The Riley house had once been the carriage house of the Kent mansion. A crafty young Irishman named Seamus Riley had plied her great-grandfather Ewan with homemade white lightning until he lost his wits—and the house—in a drunken poker game back in 1918.

      Seamus had settled comfortably into his new house, and married a Nez Perce woman that he’d met in Pendleton. Ellen had seen a photo of her in Gus’s kitchen one day when she’d brought over some fresh bread. Simon, her great-grandson, had inherited her prominent cheekbones, her black hair and her somber, penetrating eyes.

      The place had been an eyesore for as long as Ellen could remember, but Gus had been flatly unreceptive to all offers to buy him out. Perhaps Simon would be willing to sell it to her.

      “Hello, there, Ellen!”

      A handsome middle-aged man pushed his way through the lilacs. Ray Mitchell, Brad’s father. Her future father-in-law was the very last person she expected to see stepping off of the late Gus Riley’s property.

      “Uh, hi, Mr. Mitchell,” she said.

      Ray beamed at her. “Keeping cool, honey?”

      “Hardly,” she murmured. Ray’s hearty voice bugged her, for some reason. Hearty and Affable was one of his four settings; the other three being Solemnly Sincere, Deeply Concerned, or Indulgently Amused.

      She was being unfair. Ray had never been anything but courteous to her. His social style was due to the fact that he’d been a public figure for so many years, she supposed. But Ray Mitchell’s public persona seemed to have taken over the private one. She hoped that wouldn’t happen to Brad if he decided to go into politics. It would drive her nuts.

      “What a nice surprise,” she heard herself say. “Would you like to come in for a glass of iced tea?”

      Ray took the cooler from her arms. “Let me get this for you, honey. Can’t stay long, but I’d be glad for a glass of your great iced tea.”

      He followed her into the kitchen and set the cooler on the table. Ellen stuck a tumbler under the ice maker. “Peach or lemon?”

      “Lemon, please,” Ray said. “Thank you. That’ll just hit the spot. Hotter