Page 15 of A Midlife Vanishing Trick

“You never stopped loving me?” she scoffed. “I’m starting to wonder if you even loved me to begin with.”

He blinked. “Of course I did—”

“If you loved me, you wouldn’t have left.”

“I didn’t—”

“If you loved me, you wouldn’t have had me waiting forfouryears!” Her eyes welled up with tears, but she made no move to wipe them away. “Did you even care what happened to me while you were gone? I was in pain, but now you’re back and riding horses around like nothing happened.”

“Allison!”

The firmness of his tone made her freeze. She saw his jaw clench, and he moved even closer. Hewasbigger than she remembered. He was sexy and intimidating all at once.

“I never meant to leave,” he told her. “Not for a moment. It’s like I told you: The whole time, I’ve been stuck on Frost Mountain—”

“Not this again,” she snapped. “You don’t need to lie to me, Stanley. The least you could do is tell me the truth instead of spinning some tale.” She shook her head. “Not that I even want to hear it.”

She turned and marched toward the barn doors.

“Allison—wait!”

“Don’t follow me,” she snapped. “Just leave me alone.”

She left the barn, tears threatening as she headed for the house. Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted Aaron and Julianon their way to one of the other barns but paid the cowhands no notice. Only when she was inside the house did she pause to catch her breath. Only then did the tears begin to fall.

Chapter Five

“You’ll Pay for What You’ve Done”

“Well, would you look at that,” said Danny, the barber, with a chuckle. “You look like one hell of a mess.”

Sitting in the chair before the large mirror, Stanley couldn’t agree more. His reflection gazed back at him—shaggy-haired, with a beard to match. Allison was right. He did look like some sort of hippie. Back on Frost Mountain, it hadn’t mattered. Hard to care about looking prim and proper when you were wondering whether the cold would kill you before starvation did.

Back here in Torpe, though, things were different. He stuck out like a sore thumb.Hippiedidn’t quite describe it. He looked more like some kind of hermit who’d finally decided to return to civilization.

His gaze swiveled, taking in the reflection in the mirror at Danny’s Haircutz. The barbershop was only large enough to accommodate three customers at a time. The other barbers were at work, grooving to the gentle music from a speaker in the corner. Danny himself stood right behind Stanley. He was bald except for a fringe of greying hair at the sides of his head. Brown eyes gazed back at him as the man looked him over.

“When was the last time you had a haircut?” Danny wanted to know. “Or shaved, for that matter. Doesn’t look like you’ve touched a razor since you last showed up here.”

Four years ago.

The man was right, but Stanley wasn’t about to say that.

He remembered Danny. They weren’t exactly close, but Danny had been his long-time barber before he found himself on Frost Mountain. It felt weird to be sitting in the barber’s chair again. Then again, so did many other things.

“So, you wanna tell me what happened?”

Stanley’s eyebrows rose slightly. “What?”

“You’ve been away for a long time. The whole town was looking for you, but you were just ... gone without a trace. What happened to you? Where’d you go? And don’t they have barbers there?”

Stanley could barely suppress a grin. Danny was human and as oblivious as they came. If anyone in town would understand what he’d been through or even believe it, it certainly wasn’t this man, and he could see why. Even he had needed time to process his new reality after he found himself on Frost Mountain. Who in their right mind would want to believe what had happened to him was possible?

“Come on, you can tell me,” Danny urged.

Stanley sighed. “I rode my horse straight through a magical portal and found myself trapped in a magical dimension called Frost Mountain. I lived there for years, trying to survive, until I got thrown into a chasm and found myself back in Torpe.”

For a moment, both men just looked at each other in the mirror.

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