Page 71 of Ardently Yours

“I could have met you back in the Hamptons,” I say.

“Your mom”—her voice cuts out for a couple seconds—“I talked to Rochelle. I want to”—static—“give us a chance—”

The connection goes dead, and I pull it from my ear to stare in stunned silence. Did she just say she’s ready to try? Or was she saying nothing of the sort, and my imagination is filling in things I shouldn’t?

Reese turns in his seat. “Well?”

I dial her number again, but it goes straight to voicemail.

I look back at my friend. “We’re going to Pennsylvania. Now.”

Brock pulls his carinto Charlotte’s driveway, and Reese and I park ours directly behind him. Our vehicle hasn’t reached a full stop when I bolt out of the passenger door and into the darkness.

Charlotte’s little blue car is parked on the gravel, so she made it home. Apparently, she doesn’t own a garage. According to the clock, it’s morning, but the sun won’t rise for another hour and a half this time of year.

The guys shut off the engines, and the ensuing silence makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck. No cars pass on the rural road behind us. No streetlights or floodlights lend a familiar buzz of electricity to the air or lift the deep shadows on the driveway. Our own headlights and some weak spillover from her porch light provide meager illumination.

The only sound that reaches my ears is the moaning wind that stirs drifts of snow in light eddies near the ground.

Fat flakes sift around me, catching on my hair, the black overcoat I’m wearing, and the blue crocheted scarf around my neck.

Reese barks across the hood of the car. “Arden, you’re not letting me do my job. You stay in the car until I give the all clear.”

“No one knows we’re here,” I say impatiently.

“If you get comfortable, you get sloppy.”

I shake my head, then scowl at Charlotte’s home.

“Did you have any idea how bad this would be?” My voice is an accusation.

Charlotte and Bronnie have been living here alone without another house in sight. We passed her nearest neighbor a mileback. “She could be screaming for help out here, and no one would hear her.”

Maybe she isn’t safer in Blackwater. Maybe she’sneverbeenbetter off without me.

The road from her place into town winds in a narrow, twisting nightmare. A mountain rises on one side, and a ravine plummets fifty feet to the Susquehanna River on the other. She drives that road daily, through all four seasons, with Bronnie in the backseat.

She was safer here than she was with me.That’s what I believed. Between the press and constant security protocols, I imagined life in Blackwater as a haven in contrast.

I’m no longer convinced. Different? Yes. Less dangerous? I doubt it.

I’ve been in the populated areas of Blackwater, tiny as they are. I hadn’t realized she lived so far out. How long would it take for an ambulance to reach her? How competent is Blackwater’s hospital for true emergencies? She doesn’t trust law enforcement.

I eye the inky shadows of the woods looming around this property. The Blackwater Bear statue was all well and good when I imagined real bears as wildlife that she had no risk of encountering, but she lives in what is, essentially, a clearing surrounded by forest. A bear or a mountain lion isn’t going to know to stay off her damn lawn.

“Crime rates are a lot lower around here. She doesn’t need the kind of security you do,” Reese says.

“They’re lower, not nonexistent. All it would take is some stalker she met at BSU or in town to become obsessed. This place looks like somebody could cut their way inside it with a pocketknife. She’s a sitting duck out here.”

I barely finish speaking before her front door swings open with a crash, and Charlotte steps out onto her porch. Her honey-blonde hair is in a messy bun, her red flannel pajamas have snowmen screen-printed on them, and her feet are stuffed inside a pair of winter boots. Without a hint of hesitation, she cocks the shotgun she’s holding in both hands, lifts it to her shoulder, and aims it straight at us. “I don’t know what you boys think you’re up to out here, but I suggest you get back in those cars and be on your way before I have to teach you a painful lesson about sneaking around where you’re not invited.”

Reese whistles between his teeth. “I get why you’re obsessed. That woman is hot.”

I send him a withering glare as the three of us lift our hands in the air.

“Charlotte, sweetheart, it’s me,” I call.

“Arden?”

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