Blackberry Winter. Cheryl Reavis

could hear the faint rumble of thunder in the distance. She forced herself to move away from the window and cross the cluttered room to the front door. She stepped outside onto the porch, careful of the warped and rotted boards under her feet.

      She knew that she wouldn’t be able to see the trees along the ridge any better from the porch, but she still looked in that direction, straining to find something, anything in the shadows.

      She could smell the rain coming. The trees in the yard began to sway, and she could hear the wind moving along the mountainside treetop by treetop.

      Tommy.

      “Tommy,” she said in a whisper.

      “Tommy!”

      His name echoed into the distance.

      If he was out there, he would hear her, and he would know that she’d missed the signal somehow. He’d know, and he would come to her.

      She waited.

      Listening.

      Listening.

      She stood at the edge of the porch, her eyes focused on the trees along the ridge until the shapes became meaningless, until the raindrops began to fall, until she knew.

      He was like Foy Kimball after all.

      CHAPTER 1

       F or some reason, the drive from D.C. into Arlington was less hair-raising than usual this morning. Loran Kimball tried to put her worry aside enough to be happy about it. She wanted—needed—to see her mother today, and for once she might actually arrive only minimally stressed by the Beltway traffic.

      She never knew what to say to Maddie these days, what to do. She didn’t know if coming to visit so often was making things easier for her or not. She couldn’t tell without specifically asking, and even if she did ask, she could never be certain of the accuracy of the answer. Maddie was so adept at seeming to indulge an inquiry, but, truly, she was the quintessential self-contained “private person.” Not standoffish. Not rude or unfriendly. Just private. She didn’t respond with precise answers to the things people asked her; she responded with whatever she wanted them to know. And, as far as Loran could tell, Maddie’s illness hadn’t made her any more forthcoming. She was quite willing to make some morbid joke about her imminent demise, but she was typically sketchy regarding what was actually happening to her body and how she felt about it. Loran had only lately come to recognize that she had never really known with any certainty how Maddie had felt about anything—except in the strictest parent-child context. She knew Maddie’s Rules of Etiquette and Social Behavior inside out, but Maddie herself was, and always had been, an enigma. What little real information Loran had gleaned about her mother had come from the example she’d set, not from anything she’d said. Did her mother have hopes and dreams beyond getting herself and her daughter educated and well-employed? Loran had no idea, and, at this late date, she wasn’t at all certain she wanted to find out, not when it was too late for Maddie to realize them.

      She gave a quiet sigh and made the first of a series of turns that would take her deep into Maddie’s peaceful residential neighborhood, driving slowly down the tree-lined streets toward the bungalow where Maddie lived, for once paying attention to the houses and the front yards as she passed. They all reminded her of 1950s television somehow, of a world where families thrived intact and where wives stayed at home, mindlessly happy and wearing high heels and pearls, women who never worried about anything beyond the boundaries of their neatly manicured yards. They kept their houses and raised their children themselves, while their husbands went out into the real world every day and earned a decent living. It was not the kind of place she would have thought would appeal to Maddie, but clearly it had. Maddie had been living there ever since Loran had graduated from college eighteen years ago.

      “Oh,” Loran said out loud as her mother’s house came into view. Maddie was an early riser, but her driveway shouldn’t be empty this time of morning. Her car was gone and the drapes at the windows were still drawn—a sure sign that her daylight-loving mother wasn’t at home.

      Loran pulled sharply to the curb and parked. She hadn’t called first to let Maddie know she was coming today, and her immediate thought was that Maddie’s condition had worsened, that she had unexpectedly taken herself to the hospital again, and she hadn’t called yet to let Loran know.

      Except that Maddie was Maddie, and it was just as likely that she wouldn’t call at all, if she could help it. Loran didn’t want to think that she might be physically unable to use the phone—but either way, it was a contingency she had planned for. She had the patient-information number at the hospital programmed into her cell phone.

      When the woman at the hospital answered, Loran made no attempt to try to explain or to justify the reason for her call.

      “I’d like the room number for Ms. Maddie Kimball, please,” she said, spelling both names.

      There was a pause, one filled with the staccato clicking of computer keys.

      “We have no one listed by that name,” the woman said.

      “It’s possible she could still be in Emergency,” Loran said, trying to keep her voice steady and not grip the phone so tightly.

      “I’m sorry. That name hasn’t been entered into the system.”

      “If she just arrived—”

      “All patient data should be entered right away. You could try again later, just in case there’s been some unforeseen delay.”

      “Thank you,” Loran said. She snapped the cell phone shut and stared out the windshield. “Okay, Maddie, where are you?”

      Out hitting the yard sales? Gone to meet some other early bird for breakfast? Either would be unlikely, Loran thought. She had no choice but to wait. She had the key to Maddie’s house and she rummaged through her purse until she found it.

      She glanced at the bright blue sky as she got out of her vehicle—the new and far too expensive SUV Maddie called the domestic version of a Sherman tank—and walked toward the back door. It was going to be a beautiful fall day, crisp and clear. A group of children rode by on bicycles. Someone was burning leaves somewhere—probably illegally.

      Loran stopped abruptly when she reached the carport. The back door was slightly ajar. She hesitated, then pushed it open wider and stood on the threshold, ready to run if she had to. She listened intently and she could hear a child babbling somewhere in the house and a man’s voice. After a moment, a portly bald man wearing a bow tie came into view. He was carrying a little girl and holding Maddie’s red watering can.

      “What are you doing in here?” Loran asked bluntly.

      He looked around in surprise. “Oh—we’re just watering the plants,” he said, clearly unperturbed by the question. He held up the red watering can for Loran to see.

      “Water pants,” the little girl echoed and the man smiled at her. She smiled at him in return, then gave him a hug. “Hi, Daddy,” she said.

      “Hi, little miss,” he said to her. “Aspiring linguist,” he said to Loran.

      Loran stared at him. “You are…?”

      “Andrew Kessler—this is Sara—we live next door.”

      “Nest-or,” Sara said, making her father smile again.

      “You have to be really careful at this stage,” he said to Loran. “They’re a walking instant replay, only the replay might not be instant. It might show up three days later in the middle of church.” He proceeded to water the herb pots on the kitchen windowsill.

      “Do you…know where Maddie is?”

      “Yeah—she gave me the address. Or the vicinity, anyway.”

      “Where is she?”

      “You are…?” he asked pointedly, in the same way she had done.

      “Her