“I did.”

  She opened her purse, took out a pad and a pencil. “I’m not as good as the police artist,” she said as she began to sketch. “Brown hair, short, neat, stylish, I guess, on the conservative side. Brown eyes, wide set. He’s good-looking, like the house on the outside. A nice smile. Ears close to the head. Some stubble—stylish again.”

  She handed the pad to Howard.

  “This is good. It’s damn good.” He took a picture of it with his phone. “Can I have it?”

  “I don’t want it. I’d really like to get on the road.”

  “We’ll take your things down. Musk.”

  Still holding the phone, Musk turned. “Lawrence James Heberman, 1331 Laurel Lane. He owns a 2010 green four-door Chevy. And he fits the profile like a fucking glove, Chuck.”

  He walked to Thea. “I’ve got a little girl. She’s five.”

  “Yes, you remarried, had a daughter. Congratulations.”

  “Howard has a daughter, too. They’ll both be fifteen one day. If you ever need anything. Hell, you want somebody to pick up your dry cleaning, paint your house, mow your lawn, you just call. I swear to God, I’ll be there.

  “We need to get to the airport. Your friend the fed’s getting us on a plane.”

  “Let’s get Thea’s things in her car, get her headed home.”

  * * *

  She stopped halfway there to buy something for the headache that wouldn’t quite fade, and a ginger ale to try to stem the queasiness.

  And saw the text on her phone from Howard.

  Shiloh’s safe, and her family’s with her. Heberman’s in custody. I wanted you to know you saved another life. I sincerely wish you everything good in yours.

  Thea sat in the car a moment, read the text again.

  And realized the headache had faded after all.

  * * *

  However three years of college had changed her life, the farm remained constant. Small changes here with a fresh coat of paint, her grandmother’s new truck in the driveway.

  And, to her surprise, two floppy-eared puppies who raced around the house well ahead of the slower-moving Goose and Cocoa.

  “Oh my God!” The little girl popped right out of her as she pushed out of the car and crouched down for puppy greetings, then the enthusiastic welcome by the older dogs.

  All but buried in dogs, she looked over as Lucy came out of the house. And to her eye, no one had ever looked more wonderful.

  Tall and slim in jeans and a red shirt rolled to the elbow, with her hair bundled up, she seemed simply ageless, as constant as the farm.

  “There’s that girl!”

  As Lucy came down from the porch, Thea detached herself from the dogs to hurry toward her. “Grammie.”

  The first embrace wrapped her in strong arms, in the scent of rosemary and fresh bread. In scents of home.

  “I missed you. It’s so good to be home.”

  “Let me get a look at you.” Lucy drew her back. “You just get prettier every day.”

  “Because I look like you.”

  “Well, I can’t deny it.” Laughing, Lucy hugged her again. “You’ve had a long drive. Let’s get you inside and settled.”

  “You’ve got two puppies.”

  “They came as a set, brother and sister.” As the puppies scrabbled at her legs, Lucy shook her head. “I had a weak moment, but the fact is since we lost Duck last winter, and Goose and Cocoa are getting on, we needed a little lively. I’ve got a soft spot for coonhounds.”

  “They’re adorable.”

  “That’s Tweedle, and his sister Dee, though I wonder if I should’ve gone with Dum instead. But I’m hoping she finds her good sense before long. Now, let’s get your bags inside. I know how you run. You’ll want to unpack.”

  “I’m not all the way home till I do. And I want to be all the way home.”

  “We’ll get that done, then sit ourselves down with a glass of wine—even though you’re not quite legal—and you can tell me everything about everything. You can finish up the telling over chicken and slicks.”

  “That sounds so good. I’ve missed your cooking, too.”

  “Rem’ll be here before supper tomorrow, so there’ll be more cooking. He favors my pork chops.”

  “Who wouldn’t?”

  The house smelled of the slowly simmering chicken and aromatics, of the orange oil on freshly polished wood.

  And her room carried the scent of lilacs from the flowers in the blue mason jar on the dresser.

  Even the breeze through the window whispered welcome.

  “Maddy should be back the day after tomorrow,” Thea said as she hung up and tucked away clothes.

  “Her family’s about bursting with pride. Top five percent of her class, and getting it done in three years. It’ll be nice for her and Rem to be close by each other next year. And, hell, I’m about bursting, so I’m going to tell you before we sit down. Caleb and Selma are finally getting married.”

  “That’s big news! When?”

  “They’re going to do it quick and quiet in New York in a week or so, then take themselves off for a honeymoon. Then they’re coming here so we can have a party. A double party. I’m getting another grandbaby before Christmas.”

  “Oh! Not big news. Huge! I’ve only met her a couple times, but I record their show every week. They look so good together. I know Rem likes her a lot.”

  “Caleb loves her, and she loves him back. I could tell it the first time I saw them together. They’ve taken their sweet time about it, but they’re on their time, not mine.”

  “The charming police detective and the no-nonsense prosecutor. Their fans will go wild.”

  “Which is why they’re doing it quick and quiet.”

  Hands on hips, Lucy looked around. “Seems you’re all the way home. Let’s go down and you can start on the everything.”

  “Not a lot of everything before today. Etta broke up with Adam again, Lily got her internship, Chelsea’s going to Italy with her family.”

  “I want to hear about your friends, too, but start with you. I’ve got store-bought as well as my apple wine.”

  “I’ll go with Grammie’s. That chicken already smells good.”

  “I’d just pulled the breasts out so they wouldn’t toughen when you drove up. We’ve got another forty minutes or so for the rest to simmer.”

  Lucy poured the wine, gave the pot a stir. Cookies came out of the jar and onto a plate.

  Thea knew the house rules. First day home, she sat while her grandmother fussed.

  “Now. What’s this about today?”

  “Two things. I guess I’ll take them in order of appearance. Professor Cheng—he’s Game Design—texted he wanted me to come to his office. Naturally, I worked myself up into a state, I guess that’s how I’m built, about tanking my finals project.”

  “I don’t believe that for a minute. You worked so hard on it, and Rem said it rocked hard—that’s a quote.”

  “Rem’s my brother, and Professor Cheng’s a hard-ass. I learned a lot from him, maybe because he’s a hard-ass.”

  “What did he have to say?”

  Thea lifted her glass in toast. “A hundred percent. Believe me, he doesn’t toss those around like Mardi Gras beads.”

  On a hoot, Lucy clapped her hands together. “Oh, Thea, I’m so proud!”

  “There’s more. His cousin works for Milken.”

  “The games people?”

  “Yeah, and he’s going to send my game to his cousin. He said he’s never done that before.”

  Lucy sat back. “You mean to say they might make your game?”

  “I don’t know about that, but if I get any kind of feedback from them, it’s gold, Grammie. And maybe a connection when I get my degree.”

  “I should’ve gotten champagne.”

  “We won’t jinx it. It’s an opportunity, and inside I’m dancing. But we won’t jinx it.”

  “I’ll be lighting a candle and sending out light with intent that my girl gets what she’s earned and deserves. No jinx there.”

  “I’ll take it. Then there was something else. When I floated back to the dorm to get my things, Detectives Howard and Musk were waiting for me.”

  Lucy’s hand shot out to grip hers. “Riggs. But … no, not Riggs.”

  “No, nothing about him. They told me that right away because I thought the same. It was about a girl who’d been abducted.”

  She told it all, beginning to end.

  When she finished, Lucy rose to pour them each a second glass. “That girl’s safe because you followed your heart and your conscience.”

  “I didn’t want to, Grammie. I really wanted them to go away, leave me alone. But…”

  “You followed your heart and your conscience,” Lucy repeated. “You helped when help was needed.”

  “And you helped me open to seeing that way, by touching or holding. It hurt, Grammie. I mean I could feel her pain, her terror. Removed from it, but still feeling her, knowing it.”

  Lucy nodded. “It’s part of the price.”

  “But once I started, I couldn’t stop, whatever the price. The things he’d done to her? We know there’s cruelty in the world, we’ve lived through it. But, Grammie, the things he’d done to her, what he would do to her.”

  Pausing, she breathed out, drank some wine. “I understand how I could see his car, because she did. And the basement, because she did. And him, because she did. But she didn’t see the house from the outside. She didn’t see the inside except for the basement. But I did.

  “I didn’t see through him, not like Riggs. It wasn’t like that.”

  “You stepped back, so you could see. You put yourself there, with her, then stepped back to see more.”

  “I don’t know how.”

  “Honeypot, you do, or you couldn’t and wouldn’t have done it. I don’t have a gift that shines that bright, but you do. How did it make you feel?”

  “Sick, shaky, my head ached.”

  “That’s physical. How did it make you feel?”

  “Worried, scared. Scared for her. What if I was wrong? What if they didn’t find her in time? I wanted to be here, to be home and not be worried and scared for a girl I’d never met, but I knew. I knew her now. I had to stop on the way here to get something for my head. But before I got out, I got the text that she was safe. And my headache went away. Just like that.”

  “You connected to her, shared her fear and pain. The gift carries weight, you knew that, but you lifted it up. When you knew she was safe, you could let it go.”

  “What about … when I don’t want to lift it up?”

  “You follow your heart and your conscience. It’s a choice, Thea. It’s always going to be your choice, just like it’s your gift.”

  “I really needed to talk to you. I really needed to come home.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Rem’s homecoming, delayed for a day, as Caleb had his quick and quiet wedding with him as best man, brought Rem’s usual chaos and joy.

  He didn’t unpack, a process Thea knew would take him the better part of a week.

  He stood at six-three, and looked so much like Caleb, it dazzled. But he had their father’s eyes.

  He surrounded himself with the dogs, roughhousing like a twelve-year-old. He lifted his grandmother up and swung her in circles, and nearly cracked Thea’s ribs with his hug.

  “Can I have a beer, Grammie? You probably suspect I’ve had one or two in my checkered past.”

  “I’ve had that suspicion, so I laid some in. Go on and get one. Then I want to hear about the wedding.”

  “Nothing to it.” He popped the top on a beer. “They decided, Hey, let’s just do it now, and it took like five minutes. But I’ve got pictures.”

  He took out his phone, hit the app, handed it over.

  “Oh, look, Thea! Don’t they look happy? And my boy so handsome in his suit, and his bride just a vision in her pretty dress. Oh, and this one here, see the way they look at each other. That says everything you need to hear. I need you to print this one out for me, Rem, so I can frame it.”

  “No problem. Man, it’s really seriously good to be home. I like New York. I like it a lot, but there really is no fricking place like home.”

  “Since you mention it, I’ve got something to talk to the two of you about. Let’s sit out on the porch.”

  When they did, the dogs rushed them. After the chaos Rem joined in, Lucy gave the word.

  “Y’all sit! Sit and settle.”

  The puppies sat, for about two minutes, then raced off to wrestle in the yard. Cocoa lay across Rem’s feet, and Goose snored under Lucy’s chair.

  “I’m going to say first, I’m as happy as those lunatic puppies to have both of you home. I’m proud as I can be with how you’re making your way, but that doesn’t mean I don’t miss you when you’re gone.”

  Content, she looked out over the gardens, the fields. “This place has been my home most of my life, and it’s always going to be yours. Now, I wondered if y’all might want to make your homes elsewhere. New York, like Caleb, Atlanta, like my mama, traveling around, like Waylon did before the children came. Not that he and Kyra and the family don’t still get out and about, but they’ve made their home. Somehow I’ve come to think, and you tell me if I’m wrong, that’s not what you’re after.”

  “This is where I want to be, Grammie,” Thea told her. “Like Rem, I like New York whenever we’ve visited Caleb, and I like other places I’ve been. But I’m happiest here.”

  “It’s home.” Rem nodded. “I want to see other places, sure, but this is where I want to come back to.”

  “If that’s the case, I want to say you can live here as long as you want. Hell, if you start your own family, we’ll just build the house bigger. We got room for that. But I’m thinking down the road and how you might, and most likely will, want places of your own. It happens circumstances gave me an idea on that.”

  “I hope that’s a long road. I’m not even legal to drink this beer in a bar yet.”

  “Time moves fast, darling. A minute ago you were sitting out here wanting to be an astronaut. Y’all remember Miss Leona from down the road a little ways?”

  “The little yellow house. She likes your oatmeal soap. Rem mowed her yard in the summer all through high school.”

  “She always had cookies and sweet tea for me. Is she okay?”

  “She is. Getting up there, though, and a widow these last eight years. Used to plant a big garden, and raise some beef cattle, keep chickens. Nowadays, she plants small, has some help with that. She sold off the cattle. Too much for a woman alone nearing eighty. I suspect some past that, as she won’t say.”

  “If you want us to give her a hand this summer,” Rem began, and Lucy patted his hand.

  “I expect she’d be grateful. She asked me to come see her, talk some business, so I did. She’s got fifteen good acres where the house sits, the old barn and such, the fields, and some wooded land where the stream goes through. She wants to sell off all but five, hoping to keep that in the family when she passes, and wondered if I’d have an interest in those ten acres.”

  “What would you do with ten acres?” Thea wondered. “Nearly a mile away?”

  “About three-quarters of a mile, and I’m not thinking of it for me.” Lucy smiled out at her land. “No, this is enough for me. Five acres for each of you, though, that’s interesting to me. You’d have a place to plant a home, build a house that suits you, if you’re still of a mind to. Sell it, if you change your mind. Either way, a good investment, I think. It’s good land, and I’m selfish enough to like it’s close.”

  “Buy five acres,” Rem murmured.

  “The business major’s mind’s working. There’d be legal what all. Survey, right-of-way, as you’d need to put a road back to your properties. She’d toss that right-of-way in. I’m going to say it’s hurting her heart to see the land go wasted. You’d need wells and septic and getting the electric back there. It’ll take time, but if you have an interest, you have that time, and you have the money to make what you want of it.”

  “What do you think, Thea?”

  She looked at her brother. “I’m trying to think about something I never thought about.”

  “Thinking’s what you should do. Why don’t the two of you take a walk on down there, have a look, have that thinking and talking-about-it time. And, Thea, you have other things to tell Rem.”

  “What?”

  “Not yet. I’m thinking.” Thea got to her feet. “Let’s take that walk.”

  Lucy whistled for the pups. “I’ll take them inside so they don’t trail you.”

  They hadn’t reached the road before Rem spoke. “I want to buy it.”

  “Rem, we haven’t thought about it for five minutes. You’ve got three more years of college.”

  “It’s a good investment, and one we can see and feel. One we can use. And you’ve only got one more year. Making the deal, getting a lane put in and the rest, getting a house designed and built? That’ll take longer.

  “You’re not going anywhere, Thea. I know you.”

  She looked out toward the hills, the woods that climbed them.

  “No, I’m not going anywhere. I guess part of me didn’t want to look past living at Grammie’s little farm.”

  “Well, look now.”

  When she did, she could imagine herself, maybe a pretty cottage, gardens, and the quiet of it. She could keep chickens, maybe a goat or a milk cow.

  “Why do you want it?” she countered. “And don’t say just for the investment.”

  “Because this is home. I wouldn’t build on it, at least not for a long while. Grammie can use my help, with the little farm, with managing her business, and with the rest. I’m nowhere near ready for a house, but you are.”

  “Maybe.”

  “What are you supposed to tell me?”

  “After we look at the property.”

  And it was so damn pretty, she thought when they stood on the road that looked over it.

  The yellow house stood well back from that road, and its porch sagged more than a little in the middle. Thea could see where the roof had been patched.