Mustiness assailed Patrick as he stepped into the front parlor. Little had changed in the years that he had been gone. The same faded area rug still covered the center of the hardwood floor. The same beige sofa sat in front of the small bay window. Dirt darkened the armrests of the matching chair across the room.

      There was an empty coffee mug and stain rings on the small table beside the chair. He could picture his stepdad sitting there, staring out the window at the town that shunned him for raising a monster.

      Patrick shook off the vision. For some odd reason his stepfather had stipulated in his will that if Patrick came back and settled the estate in person, it would all go to him. He didn’t know why. Maybe the old man wasn’t quite right in the head toward the end.

      Patrick had almost refused. But the chance to gain enough to help him secure his future overrode his reluctance. Nothing else would have brought him back to Loomis.

      He had a week or two to go through the place and get the house ready to go on the market. After that, he didn’t have to hang around to make sure someone actually bought it. His father’s attorney had been clear on that issue. All Patrick had to do was go through the belongings in the house and see to the repairs.

      Looking around, Patrick began to feel a little more hopeful. The place wasn’t a total ruin. With a little paint and elbow grease he should be able to sell it. How ironic would it be if his stepfather had actually handed him the means to make his dreams come true?

      Before today, Patrick figured it would take him another two years of scrimping and saving to buy into a partnership at the custom bike shop where he worked. His plan was to become part owner and eventually sole proprietor of Wolfwind Cycles.

      Bikes were his life. His only love. A man could count on a good machine.

      If he could make enough from the sale of this place, he could push his agenda forward by several years.

      Walking around the living room, Patrick tried to take a quick inventory but found himself touching things and thinking about them. His mother had loved the painting of the old barn over the fireplace. He picked up the small pewter unicorn from the mantel. He had given it to her for Christmas the year before she died.

      Closing his eyes, he recalled the feel of her hugs, the scent of her perfume, the happiness in her laughter. He searched for similar memories of his stepfather but couldn’t find them.

      All he could hear was his stepfather’s angry voice raised in accusations. All he could see was the disappointment and repugnance etched on the face of the only father Patrick had ever known.

      Opening his eyes, Patrick sighed. This wasn’t going to be as easy as he had hoped. Folding his fingers around the trinket, he shoved it deep in his pockets and rocked back on his heels.

      There was a stack of books on the table beside his stepfather’s chair. Picking up the top book, Patrick saw it was a murder mystery by a popular new writer. He opened the cover. The book had been checked out of the Loomis library three months before.

      Great. I’ve got overdue fines to pay.

      He snapped the book shut and returned it to the top of the stack.

      Someone, most likely the attorney, had gathered together a pile of mail and left it on the seat of the chair. Picking it up, Patrick sat and began to sort through it. Most of it was junk mail and old newspapers, but he did find a few bills he would have to take care of.

      When he came across a late notice from the library, he read the note with special interest. It was signed by Shelby Mason.

      Shelby, with the gorgeous red hair and roses in her cheeks. So she had moved from working at the college library to working at the city library. Why hadn’t she left this miserable town behind?

      She’d been a sweet kid. He had wanted to ask her about her life this morning at the café, but he had left instead when he saw the number of cold stares leveled in his direction.

      He’d cut short the conversation as much for her sake as for his. The gossip machine in Loomis could grind her up and spit her out in no time just for passing the time of day with him.

      He tossed the letter aside with a weary shake of his head. It seemed he still had a need to protect the underdog.

      What made him think Shelby Mason needed protection? In Loomis, he was the underdog. A cur no one would speak up for.

      He rose and wandered through the kitchen and down the hall that led to the back of the house. His old bedroom was the first door on the right.

      Stepping inside, he wasn’t surprised to find it stripped bare. His football trophies, his track ribbons, his posters of Easy Rider, Santana and Jennifer Lopez were all gone. His stepfather had gotten rid of every trace of him. Only the blue drapes remained to remind Patrick of the way the room once looked. He pulled the door shut.

      The next room down the hall was his father’s bedroom. Easing the door open, Patrick looked in. The bed was neatly made. There were a few clothes scattered around, but nothing of his mother’s.

      He frowned when he saw the empty bookcases lining two walls. Had his father gotten rid of his mother’s books?

      Diana Rivers had been an English teacher with a true love of literature and history and a passion for collecting old books. Some of Patrick’s fondest memories were of the two of them traveling to estate sales, rummage sales, even auctions looking for unusual books on the state’s history or first editions of her favorite authors.

      Once, at a garage sale in Covington she paid a dollar for a first edition of a Mark Twain novel and had spoken of it gleefully for months afterwards.

      A lumber mill worker like his father and his grandfather before him, Ben Rivers had put up with his wife’s odd obsession, but he never understood why words were so important to her.

      Patrick closed the bedroom door and turned to the last small room at the end of the hall. It had been his mother’s sewing room. When he pushed open the door, he found himself confronted with a room stacked full of packing boxes.

      Lifting the lid off the nearest one, he found it contained some of his mother’s clothes. A second box held more of the same, but he relaxed when he opened the third box. In it were dozens of his mother’s books.

      Sinking onto the dusty floor, Patrick drew out a novel bound with thick red leather and embossed with gold lettering. He breathed in the scent of the old paper and truly smiled for the first time since he had crossed the Louisiana state line.