Page 1 of Crumbling Truth
Chapter One
Theo
Youcouldabsolutelygohome again—I just didn’t want to.
Driving across the town line convinced me that Thomas Wolfe’s famous line was utter bullshit. Spruce Hill looked exactly as it had when I left.
The twenty years I’d been gone had barely touched the place, aside from a facelift on the Starbucks that rocked the town’s inhabitants when it first opened back in the nineties. Most of the landscape hadn’t changed one bit in all that time, from the lampposts lining Main Street to the tidy little yards and minivans parked along roads named after various trees and flowers. Not even a few tall, modern buildings at one end of town, featuring trendy restaurants at street level and luxury condos above, could dispel the bizarre time warp I was experiencing.
The familiarity of it threatened to tear my chest wide open.
I pressed a fist to my sternum to quell the ache, but it did no good. I even tried not to flinch when I passed the high school—so many of my memories here centered around that red brick building, the stone benches out front, the soccer fields tucked behind. For a moment, I felt like I was drowning in them.
As I paused at a red light at the corner of Magnolia, I caught sight of a purple food truck by the edge of a parking lot. My stomach rumbled, and I decided my parents’ cat could wait an extra twenty minutes while I grabbed something to eat.
I parked my pickup at the end of a row, shoved my hands in my pockets, and strolled over to join the line leading up to the window, hoping for a burrito or something to tide me over.
The name painted along the side of the truck in swirling pink script readThe Nutless Wonder. I snorted a laugh and the young blond guy in front of me shot a dirty look over his shoulder, but he quickly turned away.
The line was long enough for me to scan the menu board—an array of cupcakes, cookies, and pastries that the fancy chalk script professed to be free of milk, eggs, and nuts—but the guy in front of me lingered, chatting with the person behind the counter. My mind drifted to all the reasons I didn’t want to be back in Spruce Hill until he finally left, then I had only a split second to realize it was my turn to order from an outrageously beautiful woman wearing a tee that matched the truck.
“Sorry.” I cleared my throat. “I’ll take a couple of apple turnovers and a chocolate chip cookie.”
The woman, whose nametag saidQueen of Sweets,grinned at me. She had dark hair pulled into a bun, golden skin even though it was the beginning of November, and eyes of the palest green, practically seafoam. I was grateful for her unfamiliarity—it was a balm against the flashbacks brought on by my drive into town.
“First time, huh?”
I grimaced. “Is it that obvious?”
“I can’t say any of my regulars would order a single cookie,” she teased, moving to the display case to put my turnovers in a brown paper bag.
“How many should I get?” I asked.
She paused, scanned me top to toe in a way that shouldn’t have warmed my body the way it did, and said, “At least four, but probably half a dozen.”
“Then I’ll trust your professional opinion and take six.”
I almost asked for her number as she swiped my card, then reminded myself my stay here was the very definition of temporary. Getting involved with a woman from Spruce Hill would be an act of idiocy—not only because I’d be leaving in two months to go back to Asheville, but also because there was almost no chance that my parents wouldn’t hear about it.
Instead of flirting, I took my items, thanked her, and bumped straight into the same dude who’d ordered before me but now stood weirdly close behind me. He skirted around me to get to the window, cooing about forgetting something. I rolled my eyes as I trudged back to my pickup.
Before pulling out of the parking lot, I grabbed one of the cookies and groaned into the silence of the cab as the perfect blend of chewy and crispy goodness melted against my tongue.
The Queen of Sweets had earned herself a newly devoted customer.
I shoved the rest of it into my mouth as I drove to my parents’ house, too caught up in thinking about a beautiful stranger and her phenomenal cookies to feel more than a twinge as I made each familiar turn.
The house looked as unchanged as the town itself: immaculate landscaping, because not even retirement could keep my father from doing what he loved, clean white siding above red bricks, pale green shutters and a cheerful yellow front door. A pumpkin or gourd sat on each of the concrete porchsteps, the only traces of Halloween that remained after the calendar changed over to November.
When I pulled the key from under the welcome mat by the side door, I paused and stared down at the keychain. It was shaped like the Spruce Hill Lighthouse and made of cheap plastic, but it caused my lungs to seize.
I knew it predated my high school years—this ring had held our spare key for as far back as I could remember, a memento from some field trip in elementary school—but I couldn’t believe they’d kept it.
Nor could I believe my response to a piddly piece of plastic.
It was only when I heard the breath wheezing from my own chest that I forced myself to swallow the reaction and go inside.
Toni, my parents’ fluffy ginger cat, sat barely three feet from the front door, staring at me with huge golden eyes. This creature was, ostensibly, one half of the purpose of my return to Spruce Hill. For a moment, we simply stared at one another, her steady feline gaze against my own, then I let out a laugh that startled the cat into flicking her plumed tail and stalking toward the kitchen. Hoisting my duffle bag over one shoulder, I followed her.
