USA TODAY bestselling author Marilyn Pappano returns to the mysterious and dangerous town of Copper Lake

Nev Wilson believes in dreams—because hers come true. Her latest nightmares are worrisome enough to draw her to Copper Lake, where a frightening truth awaits. Luckily, she’s under the protection of hunky detective Ty Gadney.

As the only black cop in town, Ty has faced his share of hardship. When Nev needs his help untangling mysteries of her past, he discovers that hatred and fear are very much alive today. But as they work together, he feels he’s met the woman of his dreams—if her dreams don’t get them both killed.

“How long will you be here?” Ty asked.

“I don’t know. My schedule is flexible.” Nev took a long sip of coffee, savoring it. “Does it offend you if people call you police officer instead of detective?”

“Nah. Either title deserves respect in my opinion.”

“Is it what you always wanted to do?”

“Always.” Ty polished off his first cookie, then glanced at his watch. “Man, I’ve got to get going. I’ve got a big date tonight, and I can’t be late.”

“A big one, huh?” Of course he had a date. He was gorgeous. It was Saturday.

“Yeah, Granddad can’t stand to miss the beginning of a movie.” He flashed that bright smile at her again. “It’s been nice meeting you, Nev Wilson. I’ll see you again.”

That last seemed a bit presumptuous, but the thought was lost as she watched the back view of him on the way to his car. Snug-fitting jeans, long legs, muscular everything… Sigh.

Seeing him again would be a benefit.

But it didn’t change the reason she was here.

Dear Reader,

When Scandal in Copper Lake came out a few years ago, a lot of readers wanted to know more about Charlotte, Anamaria Duquesne’s baby sister who disappeared at birth and, until the end of the book, was presumed dead. The fact that she was alive surprised me, too (that happens a lot when I write), so I also began to wonder what had happened to her.

It took a lot of wondering on my part (that happens a lot, too), though I knew one thing right away: her story would involve Detective Tyler Gadney. I’d had a crush on him since I’d introduced him in another book and really wanted to get to know him better.

But how to find Charlotte? Get her to Copper Lake? Unravel the mystery of her birth and her life? It took a while, but I’m very pleased with the answers and the journey the characters took to find them. I hope you are, too.

Marilyn

Copper Lake Encounter

Marilyn Pappano

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MARILYN PAPPANO

has spent most of her life growing into the person she was meant to be, but isn’t there yet. She’s been blessed by family—her husband, their son, his lovely wife and a grandson who is almost certainly the most beautiful and talented baby in the world—and friends, along with a writing career that’s made her one of the luckiest people around. Her passions, besides those already listed, include the pack of wild dogs who make their home in her house, fighting the good fight against the weeds that make up her yard, killing the creepy-crawlies that slither out of those weeds and, of course, anything having to do with books.

MILLS & BOON

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To Debbie Hill Hodge, my idea of the perfect reader—and you’re funny, smart, compassionate and entertaining, too. I hope to meet you in person someday. Many, many thanks for the friendship and support!

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Excerpt

Chapter 1

Welcome to my dream.

I’ve been having it every night for the past twenty-nine days. I’m in a strange place. It could be a neighborhood here in Atlanta, but I don’t think so. It has a small-town feel. I walk down the streets, passing businesses that are closed up tight. I don’t see any people, though I hear them, as if life is going on around me, but instead of me being invisible, in this dream everyone else is.

On one side of the street is an old-fashioned square. On the other, I see restaurants, a pharmacy, a flower shop, a coffee shop. I smell the rich dark roast and, fainter, the buttery aroma of fresh pastry. I can’t see the names of any of the establishments or enough details to make identifying them possible.

Now I’m in a riverfront park. There’s a parking lot, playground equipment, a broad asphalt track used by runners. I’m not one of them. I prefer to get my exercise in a shopping mall or a kitchen, which explains why I’m...plump, says my mother. Fat, says my sister. Curvaceous, says my grandmother. Like a woman should be.

I follow the trail as it leads out of town into the woods that border the river. It starts to rain, a gentle mist that gradually gains intensity, growing into fatter, forceful drops. The sky darkens, but I can’t turn around. Something draws me along the trail, to its end, onto a faint path that sticks close to the river. With each breath I inhale the smells so foreign to me, the city girl: decaying leaves, mud, water, fish. Nature.

The trail peters out fifteen feet ahead. I stand beside a fallen tree, downed so long ago that it seems impossible it ever could have stood upright. Some of its ghostly branches reach into the slow-moving river; others rise into the night sky like phantom limbs from phantom dead. They beckon me, and I move closer, until lightning flashes, brilliant and blinding, frightening me, making me spin and turn back the way I came.

My pace picks up until I’m running as fast as my three-inch heels and tight skirt will allow. I feel something following, something that escaped the fallen tree. The parking lot, the town, is ahead, the people I can’t see, but the thing behind me is closer, ever closer, and suddenly I trip—

Nevaeh Wilson’s breath caught with such force that her chest and throat ached. Though her eyes were still closed, she laid her arm over them and concentrated on filling her lungs, slowing her heart rate. She hated dreams, especially the repetitive ones. Especially the ones she was actually a part of.

Most of the dreams were harmless—about friends, acquaintances, occasionally strangers, about falling in love and having babies and gentle, easy deaths, breaking hearts and starting over.

This dream disturbed her.

Finally, she removed her arm and glanced around the room. It was comforting in the way old familiar things were. She’d lived most of her life in this room, with her parents down the hall, her sister, Marieka, next door, her mother’s mother across the hall. She’d been ten when she moved into it, not sure she was ready to have a room all to herself. But there’d been no doubt that Marieka was ready. She was tired of having her big sister hanging around all the time. She needed privacy and peace.

Now here they were, twenty-eight and twenty-seven, still living in their mother’s house with their mother and grandmother and a lifetime of memories.

Nev checked the clock. Five-fifteen. If she managed to fall back to sleep, the dream might return. Tossing back the covers, she stood, stretched her arms high and then touched the floor before shrugging into her bathrobe and stepping into scuffs.

The upstairs was dimly lit by a single bulb shining up from the foyer. She tiptoed past Marieka’s room and then went down the steps, avoiding the creaky ones that had always alerted their father to their sneaking about. He’d been gone five years, but the habit was still with her.

The aroma of coffee led her to the kitchen, where YaYa was sitting on the padded bench of the breakfast nook. Her grandmother was seventy-two and didn’t have much need for sleep. Never had. She could function better on four hours than most people could on double that.

She didn’t look up from the computer screen as Nev shuffled in. “About time you got up. Your coffee’s ready. Get your cereal and sit down before your mama wakes up.”

Nev inhaled, and the chicory of her favorite New Orleans roast separated itself on the warm air from YaYa’s Newman’s Own blend. Usually YaYa just fixed her own and then set up the Keurig so all Nev had to do was push a button. Nev didn’t question why she had deviated from morning routine. She just measured out a bowl of cereal, topped it with one-half cup light coconut milk and joined her at the table. “Any news?”

The first words out of her mouth every morning, and they could keep YaYa talking until Nev had enough caffeine in her to take part in the conversation.

“Politicians are all crooked, but that’s been true since the beginning of time. Gonna be sunny and humid today.” YaYa snorted. “August in Georgia. That’s not news, either. I got three new followers on Twitter and two new subscribers to my blog. That means I got more on both than Rachelle.”

She grinned at Nev over the monitor. Who ever would have guessed when she retired from her housekeeping job at the nursing home that she would become the internet maven of Magnolia Street? Nev’s mother, Lima—like the city, not the bean—called her a foolish old woman. Lima didn’t even have an email account. Marieka sought help from YaYa in keeping up with her own social media. Nev was just happy she had a passion in her life.

YaYa looked down the hall toward the stairs and then said, “Okay, scoot on around. I’ve got something to show you.”

Nev slid around the U-shaped bench until she and YaYa anchored the U with the laptop open between them. With a few fast clicks of the mouse, YaYa brought up a website, scrolled down and clicked again, and an enlarging photo appeared on the screen. “Does this look familiar?”

Nev’s nerves tightened, and her stomach tumbled enough to make her set the coffee down. She’d confided her dreams in YaYa, of course, no one else, and her grandmother had assured her that if the dreams had significance, they’d find the town.

How many hours had YaYa searched the internet? How many pictures of small Southern towns, squares, river parks had she looked through? Each time she’d found something encouraging, she’d shown Nev, and each time Nev had stared at the pictures, willing herself to—

To recognize or not? The dream scared her. She would prefer to believe the place didn’t exist so then it would go away. But after nearly a month, it was apparent it wasn’t going away. Better to find out its location so she could do whatever she needed to get rid of it, right?

So far none of the places YaYa had shown her were right. She had so little to work with: a square, a gazebo, a river, a handful of businesses virtually all small towns had. But she kept looking, kept cruising the Net, partly because the digital age fascinated her but mostly because she loved her granddaughter.

Nev took a deep breath as the photo finished loading, squeezed her eyes shut a moment and then looked. It was the downtown area of a not-too-small town. On the left side of the screen, green grass, flowers and a white gazebo filled an entire city block. On the right side were businesses: a coffee shop, a drugstore, a lawyer’s office, a hot dog shop, a florist, a children’s clothing store and, at the far end, a restaurant. Beyond it was a highway, a narrow strip of land, a bit of grass with playground equipment.

The photographer had stood at the corner, next to the coffee shop, and taken the shot. Nev had stood at the corner, too. Had walked that sidewalk. Had crossed that highway and passed those kids’ toys.

Though she’d never been there in her life.

“You recognize it.” YaYa’s voice was low but triumphant. She nudged Nev’s coffee closer to her. “Take a drink.”

Nev numbly obeyed, lifting the cup, breathing deeply, drinking deeply. While she stared, YaYa sent more pictures scrolling across the computer screen. A close-up of the war memorials. The gazebo decked out in pastels for Easter. A front view of Ellie’s Deli, the homey kind of place that invited customers to sit for a while on the front porch. An aerial view of the Gullah River making a slow, lazy curve north of town. Antebellum mansions: River’s Edge, The Jasmine, Calloway Plantation, Fair Winds, the Kennedy Place.

“It’s called Copper Lake.” YaYa folded her hands in her lap. “It’s about halfway between Atlanta and Augusta. It’s where you’ll find the reason for your dream.”

A knot had formed in Nev’s throat. “I-it’s just a dream. Maybe some place we drove through once. Something I saw on TV. It doesn’t—” Feeling the weight of YaYa’s gaze, she stopped abruptly and inhaled again.

“Some dreams don’t mean nothing. But one you’ve had every night for—” YaYa glanced at the calendar hanging beside the refrigerator “—twenty-nine nights means something. It is twenty-nine, isn’t it? You had it again last night, didn’t you?”

Nev nodded.

“Now you know where, Nevy. All you have to do is find out why.”

If she had one bit less control, hysteria would be bubbling inside her about now. How freaky would it be, going to a town she’d never seen before and recognizing places around her? Knowing the bumps and cracks in sidewalks she had walked only in dreams? And not pleasant dreams, at that.

“How do I do that?” she whispered.

“I don’t know, sweet girl. I imagine the answer’s there.” YaYa pointed at the computer screen, where pictures still scrolled: churches, parks, hospital, schools. “You go there, and you’ll find out.”

* * *

For as long as he could remember, Tyler Gadney had wanted to be a cop. The dream had kept him out of trouble and working hard through high school and college. It had brought him back home to Copper Lake, where he’d been the first black officer hired by the department. A few decades behind other southern cities but light-years ahead of plenty of places.

He’d gotten Tased for the honor of serving and protecting. He’d been spit on and wrestled with and even shot. This Saturday morning, though, he thought the job would finally kill him. Turning to glare at the prisoner in the backseat, he gritted out, “Remember that right to remain silent? For the love of God, Maggie, would you use it?”

She stopped wailing long enough to glare back at him. “Come on, Ty, you know me. You arrested me, what, three times? You know I would never make meth in the house where my kids are at!”

Ignoring the snort from Pete Petrovski, his partner, behind the wheel, Ty scowled again. “I’ve arrested you at least eight times, Maggie, and twice your boyfriends were making meth in the house with your kids there.”

Mascara ran down her cheeks in streaks, a fine fit to her stringy bleached-blond hair and clothes that smelled as if she’d worn them most of the week. “They’ll take ’em away for sure this time! Ty, you can’t let that happen!”

He faced forward again and tried to tune out the howls from the backseat. It was a fine show, impressive for someone who hadn’t been treated to the scene plenty of times already. He didn’t feel any sympathy for Maggie Holigan. She’d been given multiple chances to get straight, to be a good mother to her kids, but she’d thrown them all away for men, for drugs, for oblivion.

He did feel sorry for the two girls, though. It wasn’t easy being a Holigan in this town. If there was a wrong side of the tracks further dividing people who already lived on the wrong side of the tracks, the Holigans were there. Mothers run off, fathers in prison, drugs and booze incapacitating the few who stuck around, looked down on by even the other poor people and no one who cared enough to take the kids in and give them a chance.

Ty gave a silent prayer of thanks for his grandfather, who’d taken him in when he’d needed someone.

Her histrionics getting no response didn’t curb Maggie’s tears. In fact, she increased the volume another ten decibels. Pete grimaced and settled his left arm on the door frame. Ty would bet he was holding one finger in his ear. He wouldn’t mind doing the same, though it wasn’t the most dignified way for a police officer to go about his official duties.

By the time they reached the station with the adjacent jail, Maggie had stopped to take a few breaths. Though it was routine for her, he glanced around. The way his luck ran, one day she’d shriek so long and loud that she’d bust a vessel in her brain and die right there, in a place as familiar to most people as their homes, handcuffed in the backseat of a police car.

He couldn’t help thinking, albeit guiltily, that her daughters would be better for it.

The rest of the suspects taken into custody at Maggie’s house—her boyfriend of the month, his cousin and three buddies—had already been escorted inside and were going through the booking process. Ty freed Maggie’s left wrist, waited until she sat on a bench and then hooked the dangling cuff to the metal loop welded there.

“Isn’t this a fun way to spend a Saturday?”

He didn’t have to look to know it was Detective Katherine Isaacs standing behind him. She’d been teamed with their boss, Tommy Maricci, this morning, and they’d been the first to return to the station with their prisoners. As he’d been the first black hire, the first black detective, Kiki had been the first female.

“Yeah,” he said before he turned. “Hell of a morning.”

She wore her brown hair pulled back tightly, braided to control its natural frizz. Like everyone else, she was dressed in jeans and a polo shirt, though she definitely looked better in them. With pale skin, a few freckles and blue eyes, she was smart and aggressive, the first requirements for a woman in a male-dominated field. The only problem was she was so used to going balls-to-the-wall for what she wanted that she had trouble accepting that she sometimes couldn’t have it.

And what she’d wanted, for the past few years, had been him.

“You got plans for tonight?” she asked as they both turned toward the hall that led to their office. Her head topped his shoulder; she wasn’t more than a few inches shorter than him and probably didn’t have much more body fat than him.

He missed the days when he’d dated shorter, softer, rounder women.

“Uh, yeah. I’m going over to my grandfather’s house. Fix him some dinner, watch a movie. He’s partial to John Wayne.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Really. Saturday night, and you’re hanging out with Grandpa? Come on, Gadney. Doesn’t Pops go to bed with the sun?”

“Actually, he stays up later than me most nights. Says he doesn’t have enough time left to waste it sleeping.” Ty repeated Granddad’s words with a smile that was more grimace. Everyone had a time to die, and Granddad’s couldn’t be too far away. He’d already lived eighty full years, forty of them mourning his wife, twenty-five of them raising various grandkids and great-nephews. It had been a good life, and he was ready to meet his Maker.

Ty would never be ready for life without Granddad in it.

He opened the door at the end of the hallway that led into the police department proper, and Kiki brushed against him as she went through. “Can’t you visit Pops tomorrow? It’s Saturday night, Ty, and I want to party.”

“You’ve got other friends to party with. Granddad’s expecting me.” He said it in as friendly a voice as he could muster, but it didn’t win him any points with her.

Her lower lip sliding into a pout, she muttered something that he was pretty sure was obscene before turning into the women’s locker room. Lieutenant Maricci, coming out of the men’s locker room, gave a rueful shake of his head.

“I warned you, Gadney. Never date within the department.” Maricci held up one finger and then stuck up another. “Never date a woman who can take you in a fair fight.” Another finger. “Never date a woman who’s a better shot than you.” One more finger. “And never date a woman who’s just freaking nuts. It gets ugly when it goes bad. And it always goes bad.”

“Yeah, Lieutenant, I know.” He’d known it wasn’t a good idea the first time a bunch of them had gone to a party at Kiki’s place and he hadn’t been smart enough to not be the last one to leave. A good time, a few beers and...

He hadn’t gotten home until the late the next morning.

That had been two years ago, and they’d been together off and on since. Sometimes she said she loved him, and sometimes she said she hated him. He felt bad about it, but he didn’t love her. He didn’t even much like her when he was with her.

More important, he didn’t like himself when he was with her. Too many arguments, too much pressure, too much everything except satisfaction.

“What about Maggie’s kids?” he asked before Maricci could walk away.

“Social workers are on their way to pick them up from the neighbors and will take them to an emergency shelter.”

“They bite, you know? And they’re really good at hiding. And running away.”

Maricci grinned. “Yeah, first time I removed them from the home, my shins were bruised for a week. It took two of us to put them in the car because by the time I got one buckled in, the other was unbuckled and out the door. They’re showing the finest rebellious spirit of their uncles.”

They both got somber. It was one thing for the grown Holigans to raise hell, but it sure made it hard to find placement for the five- and six-year-old girls when it was like herding cats one-handed. “I don’t suppose a respectable, law-abiding relative has turned up since the last time Maggie was in jail.”

“Law-abiding, definitely not. But maybe one of the guys has conned some innocent into marrying him or has found God in prison and wants to do the right thing.”

They both snorted. Not likely.

“They’ll stay with one of the emergency families this weekend, and then Jill will get something more permanent figured out Monday.” Maricci punched his shoulder. “You better get out of here before Isaacs comes out and decides to take another run at you.”

Ty considered it for about sixty seconds. He didn’t need to go into the office because he and Pete had an agreement: whoever dealt with Maggie, the other would do the paperwork. Didn’t need to stop by the pop machine, either. He could buy that on the way home. And there were times when retreat really was the best option.

Maricci went one way, and Ty went the other, heading out the main door and to his truck at the far end of the lot. He tossed his vest into the passenger seat and then slid behind the wheel and pulled out of the parking lot.

As he sat waiting at a stoplight, from the corner of his eye he saw a group of officers come out of the station. Kiki was with them, one arm around the newest officer, a twenty-four-year-old kid named Benton. Every time he’d broken up with her, she’d immediately gone out with other guys, making sure he knew, and he’d always been just a little jealous. Yeah, they’d been broken up, but it would just be a matter of time before they got back together. Today...

He didn’t feel a thing besides relief, along with a little sympathy for Benton. He hoped the kid knew what he was getting into.

Instead of pop, he opted for coffee and found a parking space a half block from the square. A Cuppa Joe stood on the corner where it’d been long before Joe Saldana came to town and bought it. He’d taken the shop green, widened the selection of gourmet coffees and served pastries and cookies baked by his former deputy U.S. marshal wife, Liz.

The air was thick and damp, and he smelled more than a little ripe from the hours spent at Maggie’s place with the heavy bulletproof vest on. Definitely reason to get his order to go. He went inside, cold air rushing over him, a sensation as common in summer as the kudzu trying to conquer the South. He ordered a frozen coffee and two of Liz’s special oatmeal raisin cookies, picked them up and then stepped back outside on the sidewalk and almost plowed over the woman standing there.

“Sorry,” he murmured, but she didn’t seem to notice him. She stared down the street toward River Road as if she were in a trance, so intense that he turned to look behind him to see if anything was out of place. There wasn’t. About the usual number of shoppers, the usual old men sitting on the benches in the park, the usual cars parked diagonally along the street.

He looked back at the woman. She was a good six or eight inches shorter than him, wearing a sleeveless red dress that hugged her curves and a pair of open-toed heels that showed off her deep red nails. Sunglasses hid her eyes, but it was a good bet they were brown, fitting with the creamy milk-and-cocoa hue of her skin. Her lips were deep red, too, and her shoulder-length brown hair was smooth. Probably the result of an hour’s worth of wrestling with a flatiron.

She was... Not beautiful. Not pretty.

Lovely. She was absolutely lovely.

And Tyler Gadney was a sucker for a lovely woman.

* * *

Of course you’ve seen it before. You’ve taken the virtual tour on the website a dozen times in the past week. You’ve looked at the pictures enough to blur the line between reality and dream, right?

Right? Because that was certainly what Nev had tried to do.

Still, standing here on the sidewalk, the square on her left, the coffee shop on her right, staring ahead at the river, was raising goose bumps all up and down her arms.

“—help you? Are you okay?”

The words came from right in front of her and shook her into consciousness. A man stood before her, the kind of man who made her blink twice and back up a step. A dangerous man.

Then her rational self took over. Dangerous only if she was ever foolish enough to get involved with such a man, and she wasn’t. She’d never even had a chance, because men like him took one look at her sister and forgot she existed.

He’d asked her something and, judging by his raised brows, was waiting for an answer. Something about help? “Um, no, I’m fine,” she said, her voice hoarse. She cleared her throat and forced a slight smile. “Really. I am.”

“You sure? You look a little shaken.”

His frown and concerned tone seemed vaguely familiar but couldn’t possibly be. If she’d ever met him before, she wouldn’t have forgotten him. Heavens, she didn’t even go places where guys like him went. Sporting events, trendy clubs, modeling shoots, hangouts for the beautiful and adventurous. She went to church and shopping and the occasional movie.

“You want to sit down? Maybe have some coffee?”

She saw the coffee in his hands, quickly losing its frozen texture, and the cookies in a thin paper sleeve, and her stomach rumbled. She’d bet Marieka’s stomach never growled in front of hot men like this.

“Have a seat.” He set down his cup and cookies on the wrought iron table beside them and then pulled out a chair. “I’ll get you...coffee? Something cold? Cookies?”

Her gaze drifted past him to the square, and a shiver deep inside worked its way out. “Yeah, okay,” she said numbly.

She was here, in the place of her dreams. It had taken a full day for YaYa to convince her to come and then the rest of the week to arrange to be away and take care of last-minute details that couldn’t be handled by computer while she was gone.

Lima hadn’t been happy with Nev’s plans, but then, Lima was never thrilled with anything her older daughter did. Marieka had laughed at her for wasting vacation time in a little old Georgia town. She was going to New York on her next vacation to do some quality partying with her best girlies. She wouldn’t be caught dead in a dirty old town like Copper Lake.

But YaYa had encouraged Nev, and the dreams hadn’t gone away, and now here she was. The place of her dreams. Sounded like a good thing. Nightmares was more like it. Hauntings.

She tried to relax on the iron chair, wiggling like an uneasy cat. She’d been in town less than fifteen minutes, and she already wanted to leave. What could she possibly learn here? She didn’t know a soul to ask questions of and didn’t know what questions to ask.

And she certainly wasn’t walking down that asphalt path in the riverside park. Not alone.

A rush of cold air blew over her as the man came out with an identical cup of frozen coffee and a couple of cookies. He set them down and then pulled a linen napkin from his hip pocket and laid them down, too. “I’m Ty Gadney,” he said as he slid into the chair across from her.

Heat flushed her cheeks. First, he’d witnessed her standing on the sidewalk like a zombie; now he’d bought her food and felt obligated to sit with her and make sure she didn’t do something stupid like stumble in front of a car or collapse to the ground.

Nothing like looking her best when she met a gorgeous man.

“Nev Wilson,” she mumbled, paying extra attention to the napkin she spread across her lap.

“Short for Nevaeh?” He laughed. “I’ve got a cousin named that. She goes by Vaeh.”

Though she couldn’t quite meet his eyes, she smiled, too. “My younger sister got the perfectly normal name of Marie—to which she added an extra syllable in fifth grade because it was too normal—while I got heaven spelled backward. I guess my mother thought of me as a gift from heaven.” Or the backward spelling meant she wasn’t quite the gift Lima had expected.

“Vaeh has sisters named Cherina, Shiraz, Kaiea and Chablis. Makes for interesting yelling at family reunions when the rest of us have names like Tom, Janet, Linda and Bill.”

He took a bite of his cookie, and a look of pure pleasure crossed his face. Nev pinched off a piece from her own. In one bite, she tasted oatmeal, walnuts, chocolate, butter and sugar. Man, she needed this recipe.

“Are you visiting someone here?”

The obvious question—he was from here, she wasn’t—startled her, and the chill deep inside gave a faint shiver to remind her it hadn’t gone away. “I, uh, no. I’d seen the, uh, website and had some time off so...”

“If you have time while you’re here, stop inside the coffee shop in the evening. Raven works then. She did the website, pictures and everything. She’d love to hear that it caught your attention enough to make you come.”

An image of every barista she’d ever bought coffee from popped into Nev’s mind, teenagers and college students, with an occasional adult thrown in. Not exactly tourism/website developers. “She did an excellent job on the site.”

“She’s better with a camera than anyone I know.” He shifted positions, his shirt rippling over taut muscles. For the first time, she noticed the embroidery on the left chest: Detective Division, Copper Lake Police Department. Suddenly she realized why his wrinkled brow and concerned tone had been familiar: he shared more than that with her favorite television federal agent. Shaved head, muscular body, quick grin, aura of danger, devastatingly handsome.

Sighhh. Not for her, but still sighhh...

“Would you like a tour of downtown Copper Lake? Depending on whom I channel, it could take as little as ten seconds.”

She reached for her iced coffee and miscalculated, almost knocking the cup over. Catching it quickly, she looked up, meeting his gaze. “Channeling?”

Cocoa brown eyes, grin, shrug that reminded her of a big lazy cat. “Channeling, copying. Like my boss. ‘Coffee shop, church, old house. Square, memorials, old buildings. Ellie’s Deli, more old buildings. More that way, that way, that way.’” He gestured north, east and south.

The vague uneasiness stirred by his mention of channeling faded. “I take it your boss is a man of few words.”

“He was. Now that he’s got kids, he’s expanding his vocabulary. Now, I could also do Miss Lydia’s version of a tour. Her family’s been here for centuries—they built the mansion over there—and she knows the history of every building and pretty much every family in Copper Lake. She can remember seeing presidents in the town square when she was a little girl.”

“History is good,” Nev agreed. Her family had history, too, but they weren’t big on remembering it. Lima said it was people a person should value, not places, circumstances or events. Nev couldn’t figure out how to separate them. Didn’t growing up black in the South, with a grandmother who’d been a slave, do a lot to shape YaYa into the woman she was today? Hadn’t Pawpaw’s experiences in helping to break down race barriers in the army in World War II—harassment, prejudice, hatred and fear—affected who Daddy had become?

Hadn’t growing up with a father who adored her, a sister who was perfect and a mother who preferred that sister played some role in who Nev was?

“How long will you be here?”

“I don’t know. I’m pretty flexible.” As soon as his grin started, her face heated and she restated, “My schedule is flexible. So...” She took a long suck of coffee, savoring it. “Does it offend you if people call you police officer instead of detective?”

He stretched out his long legs, bumping hers, murmuring an apology. “Some of the people I work with take offense, yeah. It takes commitment to become a detective, and some people want the respect of the title. But me, nah. It took commitment to become a cop, too. Either title deserves respect in my opinion.” He took a long drink of his own. “In a lot of people’s opinion, neither does.”

“Is it what you always wanted to do?”

“Always. Are you doing what you always wanted to do?”

Once again she shifted on the metal chair. Doing what she always wanted? Not by any stretch of imagination. She was old-fashioned, Marieka said scornfully, because she’d always wanted to get married, have a bunch of kids and be happy. That was it.

Jobs didn’t matter; she’d held a variety of them and hadn’t hated any of them except waiting tables. Money didn’t matter. As long as they could pay their bills, that was enough. A husband she loved who loved her back, kids who grew up safe and hopeful and loved—that was her dream.

Aware that Ty was waiting for an answer, she shrugged. “I don’t think my job existed when I was a kid. I’m a virtual personal assistant.”

“So you work mostly online and do virtually everything your clients need?”

She smiled at his play on words. “I shop. I do research. I plan events. I liaise. I answer mail. I post on Facebook and tweet for my clients.”

He laughed. “So when people think they’re chatting with your clients, it’s really you?”

“Most of the time.” She broke off another piece of cookie, thought about her curvaceous figure and Ty Gadney’s muscles and almost put it back. Marieka certainly would have. Marieka rarely ate more than a few bites in front of a man. But she wasn’t Marieka, so she took a bite instead. “YaYa, my grandmother, became a computer whiz after she retired, but she just can’t grasp someone being so busy that she’d pay me to ‘speak’ for her.”

“Me, neither, actually,” Ty said. “Shop? You bet. I hate going into stores. Do research, plan parties, take care of my bills, sure. But I can’t imagine wanting someone else to do my talking for me.”

“My clients are mostly public figures. Their jobs require a certain amount of public interaction, but they don’t have either the time or the temperament to sit at a computer and do social media.”

“Interesting. Next time I see my favorite quarterback tweeting, I’ll wonder if it’s really him.” He polished off his first cookie and then glanced at his watch. “Man, I’ve got to get going. I’ve got a big date tonight, and I can’t be late.”

“A big one, huh?” Of course he had a date. He was gorgeous. It was Saturday. Living, breathing women lived in this town. Nev wouldn’t have thought otherwise. How long had it been since she’d had a big date? Four months? Six?

“Yeah, Granddad can’t stand to miss the beginning of a movie.” He flashed that bright smile at her again. “It’s been nice meeting you, Nev Wilson.” He picked up the lone cookie left in the wrapper. “Granddad can’t stand a day without one of Liz’s cookies, either. I’ll see you again.”

That last seemed a bit presumptuous—he didn’t know where she was staying, what she would be doing, how long she would be there, because even she didn’t know those things—but the thought was lost as she watched the back view of him on the way to his car. Snug-fitting jeans, long legs, muscular everything...sigh.

Seeing him again would be a benefit.

But it didn’t change the reason she was here.

Her next sigh was heavy and morose.

Chapter 2

Nev had reviewed online the accommodations available in Copper Lake and settled on the Heart of Copper Lake Motel. If she’d had some of Marieka’s money to splurge, she would have opted for The Jasmine, an antebellum mansion turned bed-and-breakfast. It would be nice to see how the one percent lived. But a night at The Jasmine cost as much as five nights at the motel, and she didn’t intend to spend a lot of time in a room.

She checked in and unloaded her luggage in room ten—too many bags for a stay of undetermined length, but she had to be prepared for anything, YaYa had insisted, from sightseeing to interviewing people for information to a night on the town. Sure, as if Nev spent lots of nights on the town. She took the time to hang up her dresses and then headed out to her car again and drove Carolina Avenue from one end of town to the other, before taking River Road to the north edge and then the south.

She drove through neighborhoods of houses that ranged from small mansion to shack and everything in between. She passed at least one church for every three bars, noted nursing homes and assisted-living facilities, schools and historic sites, businesses of every sort. Some of it she knew from the website. Some she’d never seen before. Some she knew from her dreams.

The sun was low on the horizon when finally she pulled into the parking lot of the riverside park. A woman sat on a blanket underneath a live oak, an electronic reader in one hand, while two kids climbed on the pirate ship nearby. She glanced up with a courteous smile when Nev passed, and then she went back to her book.

Nev walked to the edge of the asphalt path and gazed at the river a few yards away. The Gullah was lazy, not too wide, giving the impression it had nowhere to go and was in no hurry to get there. A few small boats puttered toward docks jutting into the water on the other side, weekend fishermen calling it a day.

It smelled familiar. Important. A century ago it would have been vital to the logging industry that had made fortunes here. Two centuries ago it would have played a major role in the decision to found the town here. People had used it to irrigate their crops and ship them to market. They’d culled fish from the water for their meals. Kids had swum in it. Folks had been baptized in it. It had given life, and it had taken life.

It held secrets.

She stood there so long that her feet began to ache, and awareness slowly crept over her. Floodlights buzzed in the parking lot, and sound—music, voices—came from a nearby restaurant whose deck hung over the river. The sun had set more quickly than she’d expected, and then a glance at her watch showed that, no, she’d been lost in the river longer than she’d realized.

The dusky evening wrapped around her, making her shudder, reminding her of the suffocating closeness of the dream, and she spun on her heels and hurried to her car. Though she was only a few hundred feet off River Road, though there were people within shouting distance, she felt frighteningly vulnerable and alone, and the sensation didn’t ease until she’d locked herself inside the car and pulled out of the parking lot.

No fan of eating in a restaurant by herself, she stopped at a drive-through for comfort food: fried chicken, mashed potatoes, corn on the cob and golden buttery biscuits. Back in her room, she kicked off her shoes, her arches giving a little spasm of relief, and sat on the bed to eat, the television tuned to a movie she’d seen so many times that she didn’t need to pay attention.

She’d cleaned her plate, washed her face, changed into a nightgown and was about to settle in bed for mindless channel surfing when her cell rang. Muting the TV, she smiled as she answered, “Hello, YaYa.”

“Do you have a special ringtone so you know it’s me before you answer?”

“I don’t have special ringtones for anyone.”

“I need my own ring. Soon as you get back, give me your phone and I’ll hook you up. Every single person in my smartphone has her own ring. Rachelle’s is that Elton John song about the bitch.”

Her matter-of-fact tone choked a laugh from Nev. Rachelle Newton was YaYa’s neighbor, competitor in everything from cooking to gardening to tweeting and best friend she loved to hate. “YaYa! What if she finds out?”

“Oh, she knows. Her ringtone for me is ‘Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead.’ She wishes.” Immediately she changed direction. “What do you think of Copper Lake?”

“Same thing I thought when I left Atlanta this afternoon. I’d rather not be here.”

“See anything that looked familiar?”

“Everything, just about.”

“What’s your plan?”

Nev bent one knee to massage her foot. Heels killed her feet, but they were her only real vanity. She wasn’t as tall as Marieka. She wasn’t as thin as Marieka. She wasn’t as beautiful as Marieka. But she had good legs and reasonably pretty feet, as far as feet went, and she loved heels. “I don’t have a plan, beyond going to church in the morning.”

The words surprised her more than her grandmother. At home, church was a Sunday morning requirement, at least for YaYa, Lima and Nev. Marieka got excused because she spent a lot of Saturday nights with her besties—or so she claimed—and because allowances were always made for Marieka. But Nev was the good girl. Besides, she loved singing old gospel hymns as much as she loved wearing heels, and she had the voice for it.

But she was on vacation. She was a stranger in a not-too-strange town. She’d figured she had a pass for tomorrow’s services.

Her subconscious apparently had other ideas, because it even knew which of the many churches she would attend: the AME Zion church, a small structure surrounded by tall pines and oaks, blindingly white with tall windows that opened for a cooling breeze and a small but faithful congregation. She wasn’t sure how she knew that last part. She didn’t want to think about it too much.

“That’s good,” YaYa said. “You might meet someone there who has information for you. You know, the Lord didn’t lead you to that town to just leave you hanging without answers.”

“The Lord, the internet and you.”

“And once you’ve put the dreams to rest, you’ll thank us.”

Nev wasn’t as convinced about that.

“Say a prayer for your sister while you’re in church tomorrow. She just left on a date with her new boyfriend. Ooh, mama, that man was hot. Maybe he’ll be the one to settle her down and get me some great-grandbabies. Though I expect I’ll have a houseful of them from her before you even say ‘I do.’”

She didn’t mean to put Nev down. Nev understood that. Heavens, it wasn’t as if she’d had even one-tenth the dates Marieka had. But she hadn’t been a nun living in a convent, either. She’d even been in love a time or two. It hadn’t worked out, but...

Ruefully she admitted that, with her current prospects, Marieka was more likely to fall in love, get married and have babies before Nev met the right guy. And Marieka wasn’t even looking.

“I’ll call you tomorrow,” YaYa said, “and let you know what monstrosity Rachelle wears to church. Love you, little girl.”

“Love you, YaYa.”

Nev laid the phone on the night table and curled onto her side, mindless channel surfing forgotten. It wasn’t fair that some women had men lined up around the block and couldn’t care less while others wanted nothing more than love, marriage and a family of their own and were lucky to get two dates a year. It wasn’t as if she was asking for a man who was hot enough to impress her grandma. Just a nice guy who shared her values and her goals. He didn’t have to be tall and muscular or supersuccessful or model-handsome. An ordinary guy for an ordinary woman who would share an ordinary life.

An image of Ty Gadney came to mind, and she gave a little sigh involuntarily. See, Lord? She wasn’t expecting someone like him. She was sure she didn’t even register as a dateable woman from his perspective, especially given the less than stunning impression she must have made on him when they’d met, lost in her own world, barely able to answer questions coherently.

Not that she would object if the man chosen for her was handsome...tall...sexy...with gleaming dark eyes...

* * *

Neveah’s nightmare, take thirty-four.

It starts the same as usual: walking along the sidewalk, following the running trail, reaching the tree. But there, things change. The tree remains the same, crooked wooden fingers dipping into the river, branches rising into the sky, swaying in the breeze. Way off to the northwest, darkness encroaches, a storm, winds pushing the clouds so fast that they bump into each other, turning purplish blue in their anger, but overhead the sun is bright, the sky vivid blue, the clouds puffy and white.

I watch the gentle movement of the branches, and an inexplicable urge to kick off my shoes and climb up the massive trunk strikes me. It’s ridiculous enough to make me laugh. I’m not a tomboy. I’ve never climbed a tree. I don’t even go barefoot, ever. My bright orange sundress would snag, and the tender soles of my feet throb at even the thought of digging into the bark for purchase.

The wind picks up, and someone ahead along the winding path calls. I look just in time to catch a glimpse of a slender leg, a long black curl, disappearing into the tall grass. A child, and her giggle is all that remains by the time I reach the spot. Raindrops begin to fall. I don’t worry about getting wet. I don’t scamper for cover. Instead I follow the trail, led on by the laughter of the young girl and the calls, fainter now, picked up by the wind and blown away before I can make out the words.

“Wait!” I shout, walking as fast as the uneven ground and my high-heeled sandals allow, but the girl doesn’t listen, or perhaps she doesn’t hear. Perhaps the wind carries my voice away, too. Yet her laughs come back to me clearly, though they, too, should be dispersed on the growing gale.

Seeing only occasional glimpses—a sneakered foot, a hot-pink blouse, more of those glorious long curls—I break into a run. My heart pounds in my chest, and I’m gasping for air when I see lights ahead. When did it get so dark? I look, and the blazing sun, the fat clouds, the vivid sky are all lost in the roiling anger of the rushing storm. The air is electric, robbing the very breath from my lungs, and I struggle, but for each step I take forward, the wind pushes me back another. I can no longer hear the calls or the laughter. I can’t hear anything but the thunderous beat of my heart and the fierce power of the storm descending.

Rain drenches me, unloosing the curls in my own hair, soaking my clothes, making my feet slip within the delicate straps of my shoes. I fall, struggle back up, fall again, but my gaze remains fixed on the lights up ahead. House lights, I realize: a yellow glow above a door, cooler incandescent glows from all the windows. Home.

The place is home, and I need to get there, but something’s stopping me. Rain, thunder that vibrates the very ground, lightning so brilliant I have to close my eyes. It strikes a nearby tree, the dead wood flaming before the rain extinguishes it, and the trunk splits in two, half of it landing mere feet in front of me. There’s no path around, I can’t climb over it, and I’m too big to wiggle through the narrow space beneath it.

I turn to go back, fear heavy in my chest. I take a few steps, and the rain stops. The wind stops. The sun reappears in the bright blue sky with the fat white clouds. The air is warm and muggy, and ahead of me, so close I could reach out my fingers and touch it, is the other tree, half in the water, half in the air. Its limbs are still and dry. I’m still and dry.

There’s no storm. No gale-force wind. No deluge. No lights. No house. No little girl. No one calling. Just the dead tree and me.

* * *

Church had been a part of Ty’s life ever since he’d come to Copper Lake to live with Granddad. Back in the beginning, he’d been okay with the going-to-church part. He’d just had trouble with the church-clothes part: black or gray pants, white button-down shirt and tie, no matter how hot and miserable the weather was. Despite the fact that his father had run off before Ty was old enough to remember him or that his mother had died long before her time and he’d been uprooted from his home in Macon, he was thankful. He just didn’t see that it made much difference to God whether he was thankful in church clothes or shorts and a T-shirt.

It was all about respect, Granddad said, and there’d been no arguing with Obadiah Gadney. Still wasn’t. Eighty years of getting what he wanted meant he expected to continue getting what he wanted. What he’d wanted was for his grandson to be a God-loving, God-fearing, responsible and honorable young man.

As he straightened his tie and then left his house for Granddad’s down the street, Ty hoped he’d lived up to Obadiah’s expectations. He was pretty sure he had, except maybe when it came to women. No maybe about it when it came to Kiki Isaacs in particular. Granddad didn’t have anything against mixed-race relationships. He’d always said a person’s outside wasn’t important. It was the inside that mattered. He just didn’t think Kiki’s inside was very pretty. He couldn’t see her settling down, being happy, having babies or going to church. She’d never set foot in church yet, she had once proudly told Obadiah, and she wasn’t about to change.

The disappointment in Granddad’s face before he’d no doubt said a silent prayer for her had stayed with Ty.

Jingling his keys in his pocket, he walked the half block to the house where he’d grown up. It was nothing fancy. None of the houses on Easy Street were. It was a black neighborhood, its residents mostly hardworking and underpaid, spending too much energy and money on the necessities of living to have either left over to spend on their houses. Back in the day, when the neighborhood was new, practically every soul there had worked for the rich white families in town. All of them had traced their family history back to before the Civil War and ancestors who’d been owned by the rich white families in town.

In the past six months, though, two new families had moved in: a physician’s assistant and her husband, an accountant and his schoolteacher wife, both with kids. Ty had been living there a year in his own house, bought from Anamaria Duquesne Calloway. It was good to hear kids playing in the yards again, to see care taken with the properties. Someday he planned to expand his house and raise his own kids there.

Easy Street was getting gentrified, Obadiah said with a great satisfied laugh. Who would have believed it?

Ty didn’t think Obadiah was as surprised by it as he pretended. His family wasn’t the only group of people Granddad had high hopes for.

The front door of Granddad’s house closed as Ty turned into the driveway. Despite the heat, the old man wore a pale gray suit, a white shirt and a deep red striped tie, and his hat, a shade darker than the suit, was settled on his head. He held a cane in one hand and carried his Bible in the other. Ignoring the ramp Ty and his buddies had built a few years earlier, he took the steps with a slow, measured step and then started along the sidewalk.

“Mornin’, son.”

“Good morning.”

“You have breakfast?”

“Now, why would I do that when I know you’ve got pot roast with all the trimmings in the slow cooker?”

Obadiah grinned. “And pecan and sweet potato pie for dessert.” He pronounced it pee-can, with equal emphasis on both syllables. “Anamaria delivered ’em this morning, hot from the oven. She’s a sweet girl. I sure wish you’d met her before that Calloway boy did.”

“It wouldn’t have mattered. Once she saw Robbie, she would have forgotten all about me.”

His grandfather nodded in agreement. “The girl’s got the sight. She knew.”

A lot of people Ty knew, especially within the department, didn’t believe in the sight or any other psychic abilities. But Granddad knew there was plenty more to the world than people could see and touch, and he’d taught his kids the same.

Ty opened the passenger door of the 1963 Mercury, helped his grandfather inside and then went to the driver’s seat. “One of these days, you’re gonna have to ride to church in my truck,” he teased as he strapped the seat belt over his hips and then turned the key. “This old barge doesn’t do much for my reputation.”

Obadiah snorted. “I don’t think I can climb high enough to get into that truck of yours. It’d take you and two of the deacons to get me out when we get there.”

“There’d be plenty of volunteers to catch you when I push. Miz Hopkins, Miz Rutledge, Miz Mattie...”

A grin split Granddad’s face. “I’ve still got my own hair and my own teeth, and all the parts God sent me into the world with still work. Can you blame them for likin’ me?”

There was some truth to what he said. He was eighty, breathing, living on his own, and he didn’t require medication for every little thing. He probably was a prize to the elderly widows at the church.

Not that he’d ever looked twice at any of them. Ty’s grandmother, Genevieve, had been the one love of his life. They’d both been forty when she died—of cancer, like Ty’s mother—and it had broken Obadiah’s heart. He’d never shown any interest in another woman. He fully believed he was going to be reunited with his precious Genevieve in heaven, and that promise was enough to keep him going here on earth.

They were met in the parking lot by a dozen kids, most of them Ty’s cousins two or three times removed and all of them eager to be the one to help Obadiah inside. They were scrubbed clean, the girls in summer dresses and sandals, the boys in trousers, white shirts and ties. Had a Gadney female ever attended a church service in pants, a Gadney male without a tie? Not in Granddad’s life, he was sure.

Ty was halfway across the parking lot when he passed Cherina’s and Shiraz’s teenage boys leaning against the oak tree in the center of the yard, looking off in the direction from which he’d just come.

Roland gave a low whistle. “She got some curves on her.”

“She don’t look bad in that pink dress, neither,” David agreed.

Since he couldn’t remember the last time a girl had caught their attention so thoroughly, Ty turned to see whom they were talking about. He totally got the sense of wonder in their voices as he watched Nev Wilson make her way carefully across the parking lot. In her snug-fitting dress and ridiculously high heels, she should have looked at least a bit comical, taking small, cautious steps to avoid twisting an ankle on a loose piece of gravel, but she didn’t. She looked graceful and womanly and...damn, was it a sin to think sexy in the churchyard?

“Wonder who she is,” Roland said.

“And why we ain’t seen her here before,” David added.

“She’s a friend of mine.”

Both boys startled at the sound of his voice. They’d been concentrating so fully on Nev that they hadn’t even noticed him. He took each by a shoulder and turned them toward the door. “Go on, now. Get inside or you’ll miss Miz Rutledge warming up on the organ.”

With groans and rolls of their eyes, both boys headed to the door. Ty waited a moment and then stepped from the oak’s shade and walked to the edge of the grass. “Nevaeh.” He liked the way her name rolled off in three easy-flowing syllables. “You look like a little bit of heaven right here on earth.”

Even more startled than the boys had been, she blinked at the sight of him. “Detective Gadney.”

“Please call me Ty.”

“Please call me Nev.”

“Of all the churches in all of Copper Lake... Are you stalking me?”

“Absolutely. Your almost running me down on the sidewalk yesterday—I planned that. Your buying me coffee and cookies was part of the plot, too.”

He laughed and then, as she reached the parched grass, offered his arm. He’d escorted plenty of women in heels across the lawn on Sundays—most of them old enough to be his mother or his grandmother—but this was the first time he didn’t wonder why the church hadn’t built a sidewalk to the parking lot years ago. He was grateful they hadn’t, in fact.

“Do you always go to church when you’re on vacation?”

She shrugged, and he felt the movement where her fingers rested on his forearm. Today would have been a good day to wear a short-sleeved shirt. Then he could have really felt her touch, could have seen whether her skin was soft or callused, cool or warm or clammy in the muggy air. But damn his ego, he didn’t like the look of short sleeves with a tie, and since the tie wasn’t optional...

“I don’t actually go on vacation very often,” she replied. “I mean, I take time off, but our family trips are usually to visit other family who live in Georgia. And that’s not a vacation at all, not when it comes to church. Heavens, I spent half my summers growing up attending Aunt Lavinia’s little church in Jonesboro or Aunt Opal’s in Three Rivers.”

“Old habits are hard to break. I’m glad.” When they reached the sidewalk that extended from the double doors out to the street—and not to the parking lot on each side—he kept his hand on hers to keep her from pulling away. The momentary tightening, and then easing, of her strong fingers suggested that had been her plan. “How did you choose this one?”

She gazed at the wooden doors as if she could see inside. “I drove around town yesterday after we met, just to get a feel for the place. I think it chose me. It spoke to me.” Her gaze darted his way, a bit of embarrassment in it.

No need. The old church spoke to a lot of people. There were plenty of bigger, newer, fancier churches in Copper Lake—plenty that relied on central air instead of big windows and ceiling fans. Paper or bamboo fans had never gone out of style here. Most of the families who attended services here were following generations of family tradition. Gadneys had sat in these pews for a hundred and fifty years. It was home to them.

The strains of the old organ swelled through the open windows as Miz Rutledge began warming up her arthritic fingers. Despite Roland’s and David’s groans, she was a talented musician. She just had a tendency to do everything with great flourishes.

Ty opened the door and then followed Nev into the vestibule. There he had no choice but to let go of her. If he escorted her into the sanctuary, every soul inside would think, first, that he’d been holding out on them and, second, that a marriage was in the planning.

And all of them who knew Kiki would be thanking God, silently or out loud. A few of them might even give in to the urge to dance in the aisle in response to the miracle.

Ty would have led the way to the pew near the front that he usually shared with Granddad, but Nev was quick to slide into the empty last row. He followed her, thinking with a grin that if she figured sitting in the back row would stop Brother Luther from acknowledging her, she was in for a surprise. The church didn’t get many out-of-town visitors, and they never got any wearing hot-pink dresses and shoes with four-inch heels and sexy little bows just above where the toes peeked out.

They didn’t even get a chance to sit down before Brother Luther, wearing his usual robe and already wiping his forehead with a handkerchief, stepped to the pulpit and invited everyone to stand for prayer. Some rose easily, others struggled with help from their neighbors. Mothers admonished their children to bow their heads, close their eyes. Beside Ty, Nev did both with the comfortable ease of familiar routine. He lowered his head but didn’t close his eyes. Too many years of being a cop made that part difficult.

After a rousing prayer, everyone sat again. Nev settled on the moss-green cushion that ran the length of the pew and crossed her legs. Cousin Roland had been right: she had some curves on her, and Ty had the best vantage point in the house to notice. If the reverend’s sermon wasn’t all hellfire and brimstone today, he was going to be at risk of behaving inappropriately in the Lord’s house, and he did not want that.

“Before we get started on the prayer requests—” Luther’s voice boomed from the pulpit “—Brother Tyler, would you like to introduce your guest today?”

Ty grinned as the moment Nev equated Tyler with him became evident on her face. He stood—another of those matters of respect Granddad had taught him—and offered his hand to her. “This is Nev Wilson.”

“Ned? Did he say Ned?” Miss Mattie sat four rows up, hard of hearing but refusing to give up the pew she’d spent seventy-four years in to hear better. “She don’t look like no Ned to me.”

“Nev, Miss Mattie,” he said louder. “Nevaeh.”

“Oh, Nev. Like the first half of your cousin Vaeh.” Miss Mattie nodded her gray head. “Heaven spelled backward.”

“Welcome, Sister Nevaeh.” A number of voices echoed the reverend’s, and then he gave the nod that allowed them to sit again.

Ty leaned near her as they did and murmured with a grin. “Welcome, Nevaeh.”

* * *

Sunday school and sermons were fine, and prayers, of course; Nev prayed every single day. But her favorite part of church was always the singing. She’d been blessed with a voice, and the looks she’d received from virtually everyone in the church soon after the song service started showed they agreed. She was flushed with pleasure as the strains of the last hymn faded away, followed by the final prayer, and the slow exile started.

“Lovely voice, girl,” Miss Mattie said in the booming voice she used to compensate for her hearing loss. “You sing like an angel.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

“Like an angel,” another woman agreed, bobbing her head. “Pure and sweet.”

“And soulful.” That came from the elderly man behind them.

Lima had always told her it was wrong to take such pleasure in the compliments. After all, it wasn’t as if she had anything to do with the quality of her voice; it was just the one the Lord had given her. To which YaYa had always responded that of course she should bask in the compliments. After all, it was the voice the Lord had given her.

She met a lot of people on the short journey from church to parking lot, all of them friendly, inviting her back again, wishing her a good visit. She committed names to memory, studied faces and even thought for a moment that a few of them seemed familiar, and then the obviousness of it hit her: as she’d told Ty, she’d grown up in churches like this. The old buildings; the talented choirs; the spirituals; the Sunday clothes; the women’s hats that, all gathered together, could rival the brightest garden for color; the families and friends. Things were bound to feel familiar.

They were making their way across the gravel lot, Ty offering his arm again, when Nev realized they were headed in the opposite direction of her car. She started to speak, but an elderly man waiting beside an old boat of a car caught her attention. He was clearly waiting for them.

“Miss Nevaeh Wilson,” he said, his voice thin, creaky but strong. It was a good description of him in general. He might have been six feet tall before age stooped his shoulders and rounded his spine. His skin stretched tightly over the bones of his face and his swollen knuckles, burnished and gleaming in the midday sun, and his gaze was sharp and...peaceful. This gentleman was happy with himself, his life, his past and present and future.

She took the hand he offered, but he didn’t just shake it. He folded both of his own hands over hers. “I’m Obadiah Gadney. Ty, here, is my grandson. All that charm and presence and intelligence? Comes straight from me.”

“I can see that, Mr. Gadney.”

“If you aren’t tired of hearing it, can I say you have a lovely voice?”

“Do you get tired of hearing that you’re a devilishly handsome man?”

He laughed and gave her hand a light squeeze. “Not at all. Would you do an old man the honor of having Sunday dinner with him and his boy?”

Nev glanced at Ty, but if the invitation was an unwelcome surprise, he didn’t show it. Since she wasn’t looking forward to another take-out meal alone in the motel room, she smiled. “Oh, Mr. Obadiah, the honor would be mine.”

With fingers that trembled slightly, Obadiah pulled a set of keys from his pocket. “Ty, why don’t you come with her? Easier than givin’ her directions. I’ll drive the barge home myself.”

“Yeah, right. It’s not that hard to get to. Besides, she won’t mind following us. It’s not like she’ll lose sight of this baby.” Ty patted the pale blue trunk before meeting her gaze. “You don’t mind, do you?”

His unspoken message was clear: he’d rather not have his grandfather behind the wheel of the car in Sunday post-church traffic. If her family didn’t live close enough to walk to church most Sundays, she would feel exactly the same about YaYa, for her own safety as well as everyone else’s. “I don’t mind at all.”

“Then I’ll go ahead and get settled while Ty walks you to your car.” Obadiah gave her a wink. “It takes me a bit longer than you young folks. I don’t move as fast as I used to.”

With only half a mind on vehicles backing up and exiting the parking lot, Nev walked alongside Ty to her car. Small, sleek, silver, convertible, it was her third-proudest possession, after her voice and her shoes. A fancy car didn’t make up for being short and fat, Marieka had said disdainfully, right before she’d tried to borrow it for a night out with her besties. It wasn’t going to provide any protection if she got into an accident, Lima had pointed out.

Put the top down and let’s drive real fast, YaYa had suggested.

“Nice car,” Ty said.

“I like it.” She opened the door and tossed her purse onto the passenger seat, and then she paused before sliding in. “In case I do lose sight of the big blue baby, where are we going?”

“108 Easy Street. But I’ll keep you close.”

Now, there was an image to make a woman hot, as if ninety degrees and matching humidity weren’t enough on their own. Then his answer registered. “Your grandfather lives on Easy Street?”

“Yeah, I know. It’s aptly named in some ways, grossly misnamed in others. You’ll see for yourself in a few minutes.”

She sat in the driver’s seat, swinging her legs in last, and had the satisfaction of seeing Ty’s gaze slide with them, from the adorable peep-toes all the way up to where her dress slid a few inches above her knees. He was gorgeous and probably preferred women who matched him for breath-stealing perfection. He probably had never dated a woman who wasn’t as dedicated to fitness as he was—like Marieka—but he still had a man’s appreciation for a few soft curves.

Wordlessly he grinned, closed the door and walked away. By the time she got the engine running, the air conditioner blasting and her seat belt fastened, a low rumble sounded behind and to her left. He and his grandfather, in the big old blue car, were waiting for her to back out and follow them.

Going to a stranger’s house for dinner? And no one knows you’ll be there? She wasn’t sure whether the voice in her head was Lima’s or Marieka’s. Granted, Marieka had been plenty of places with strangers, and done a whole lot more than eat dinner, but rules were different for her. She considered herself savvier, more sophisticated, far more experienced and bulletproof. She was the golden girl, not only of the Wilson family but of their neighborhood, of the entire city of Atlanta. Bad things could not happen to her.

And drowning out that voice as she followed the Gadneys from the parking lot was YaYa’s: Ooh, mama, that man is hot!

The church was in the north part of town, situated off a two-lane road that would have been better suited as a country lane: paved, broad shoulders, meandering this way and that. Houses lined the left side; the right opened onto a forest of tall pines, oaks and crape myrtles. In thin places between the trees, she caught sight of wooden fences, the privacy kind people built around their backyards, and soaring roof peaks, houses that probably cost twenty times what the compact little homes across the street ran.

The contrast seemed a perfect definition of the South to her.

When they reached River Road, they turned right and then a short distance later made a left. One more turn put them on Easy Street. The sign mounted at the intersection looked brand new. Thinking back to her school days, she’d bet theft was a problem. A lot of her classmates would have loved an Easy Street sign to hang on their walls.

The Gadney house was on the right, third house down on the single long block. There were no shoulders here, just deep ditches that collected the runoff from the rain. Luckily, Mr. Obadiah’s driveway was long enough to allow docking of the blue barge with plenty of space left over for her car behind it.

As she climbed out, she breathed deeply and smelled woods and water. From the internet photos and maps she’d studied, she would guess they weren’t far from the river, maybe a block through the tangle of tall grass and trees on the far side of the street. The sound of kids laughing came from a yard a few houses to the north, a beagle’s baying from the house directly south. His face was pressed to the chain-link fence, begging for attention or sounding an alarm. She wasn’t sure which.

Ty helped Mr. Obadiah out of the car, but as she joined them, the old gentleman shook off his grandson’s hand and offered her his arm. “You’ll have to pardon the mess inside. I don’t often have women guests.”

“At least, not ones who can see without their glasses,” Ty murmured from behind them. “Usually not ones who can see with their glasses.”

“I heard that.”

Nev grinned. Elderly, stooped and slow, but nothing wrong with his hearing. Would PawPaw have been like Mr. Obadiah if his heart hadn’t given out on him before she was born? Still alert, smart, friendly, compassionate and happy? She liked to think the answer was yes.

Steps led to a screened porch, along with a ramp that Mr. Obadiah ignored. A trio of ancient rockers, plus an old wooden church pew, were sheltered inside, and a door with a nine-paned window led into the house. It was small, square, little space wasted on hallways, decorated in the style of decades past, and it felt like home the moment she walked through the door. Delectable smells drifted on the air—beef roast, potatoes, carrots and onions, the usual dinner every fourth Sunday in the Wilson house.

“I’d have cleaned the clutter if I’d known we’d be entertaining,” Mr. Obadiah said as he hung his hat on a hook inside the door, his suit coat on another.

“This isn’t clutter,” she disagreed. “This is just living. Besides, you’re entertaining all on your own.”

With a laugh and a wink, he gestured toward a photograph on the nearest wall. “This here’s my boy when he come to live with me. Good thing he grew into those ears, huh?”

“Hey, old man,” Ty said with genuine respect. “I got those ears from you.”

“I accept complete credit for the charm and the intelligence and your way with women, but I’m pretty sure the ears came from your own daddy. Now, you two go on and make yourself comfortable. I’m gonna check on dinner.”

Nev glanced around the room, its overstuffed furniture in muted floral prints, crocheted doilies and scarves on every table, a scarred wood floor with most of its finish gone covered by a faded fringed rug. As she circled an early American coffee table to sit in an armchair, Ty took a seat on the couch.

“Kind of like a time capsule, isn’t it? He never wanted to change anything after Grandma died.”

“I don’t blame him.” She gently stroked the ecru-shaded doilies draped over both arms of the chair. “The memories this room must have...”

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