CHAPTER THREE

      Crossroads, Texas

      YANCY GREY WALKED the midnight streets, barely noticing where he was going or caring that winter’s breath still circled in the breeze.

      Today was his birthday. Or at least he thought it was. His mother’s memory had been smothered with pills most of his childhood. She’d told him she’d filled out the birth certificate a week or so after he’d been born when she’d finally healed and sobered enough to walk to the clinic in Crossroads, Texas.

      When Yancy had run away at fourteen, he doubted she’d noticed. She’d never celebrated his birth, and after he left, he continued the nontradition through his wandering teen years and his early twenties, which he’d spent in prison. And now, he thought, during his calm years in Texas.

      He was alone at thirty-two and wise enough to realize that it wasn’t a bad place to be. The old folks at the Evening Shadows Retirement Community, where he worked, would have thrown him a birthday party if they’d known, but they were all tucked in their beds by dark. They counted away what was left of their lives, but Yancy wanted to count forward.

      He’d been with the retired teachers for seven years now, repairing their homes, managing the twenty-cottage complex that had started as an eight-bungalow motel set in a town where two highways crossed. The school system had originally bought the old motel, hoping to offer small homes to new teachers, but those retiring from teaching had wanted to stay in town and together.

      Yancy drove the old residents to the doctor and picked up their prescriptions. He cared about and for them. He repaired everything around the place and built a new cottage now and then when a single teacher needed a place to live out his or her days in peace.

      In return, they all loved him and tried to pass down their wisdom. Cap taught him carpentry and plumbing, and Miss Bees had taught him to cook. Leo was a wizard with money and had him investing, and Mrs. Abernathy had even tried to teach him to play the piano. No matter what project he took on, Yancy knew there would be someone waiting to advise him on every detail.

      Yancy sometimes thought he’d gone from high school to grad school in the years he’d been employed by the teachers. They were a wealth of knowledge, and he was a ready pupil.

      But when it came to women, nothing they said worked. He hadn’t had a date in months, and the two he’d had last year had convinced him that being single wasn’t so bad. There seemed to be no family for him, past or future. No girl wanted to be seen with an ex-con, handyman, drifter, no matter how nice he was or how much her grandmother bragged about him.

      Looking up, he saw the old gypsy house a quarter mile away, far enough from the lights to not be in town and close enough to not be completely outside it. His place. Nestled among the barren elm trees, the house still looked haunted, even if he had framed up the second floor and repaired the roof. The trash and tumbleweeds were gone, but no grass or flowers grew near the porches. Like him, the place didn’t quite fit in among the others in town.

      Yancy had built a workshop behind the hundred-year-old crumbling remains so that he could rebuild the old house better than it had been built a century ago. The workshop looked more like a small barn, with a high roof and a loft for storing supplies. Inside, the bay was big enough to hold six cars, but he’d set up long worktables and saws he’d bought at flea markets and yard sales.

      This crumbling home and five acres of dirt surrounding it might not look like much, but it was his, all his. A grandmother he’d never met had left it to him, along with enough money to pay the taxes for years. He didn’t care that he had no relative to ever send a birthday or Christmas present for the rest of his life. This was enough.

      Last Christmas, the ladies at the Evening Shadows had held a fund-raiser in his barn. They’d hung quilts to cover the walls of tools and shelves, then loaded the tables with homemade sweets and crafts. He swore everyone in town had come and bought an armful, whether they needed a new tissue-box cover or reindeer coaster set or not.

      He’d loved helping the ladies out, but was glad when his shop was back in order. Old Cap had taught him that there needed to be a place for everything, and Yancy believed he could have located, with his eyes closed, any tool on his walls.

      From the first day he found out the place had been willed to him, Yancy had decided to start remodeling from the inside out. When he finished, the place would shine. He’d move into a real home for the first time in his life. The house might have held only sadness and hate thirty-one years ago when his mother lived here during her pregnancy, but he’d rebuild it with the love of a craftsman who’d learned his skills in prison and had dreamed of a project like this one.

      The workshop door creaked a little when he opened it.

      Yancy smiled. He liked the sound; it was like the place was welcoming him.

      As he did every other night, he tugged off his coat, hung it on the latch and began to work. Tonight he’d sand down aged boards that would eventually be polished and grooved to fit perfectly in the upstairs rooms of the house. He’d turned the four little rooms downstairs into one open space, with a kitchen on the back wall and a long bar separating it from the living space. The bar had taken him three months and was made out of one piece of oak.

      He’d bought a radio months ago, thinking that music might be nice while he worked, but most nights he forgot to turn it on. He liked the silence and the rhythm of the midnight shadows, and he liked being alone with his thoughts and dreams. Seven years ago, when he’d arrived, he’d had nothing but a few clothes that were left over from before he’d gone to prison. Now he was a rich man. He had a job he loved and he had the silence of the night in which to think.

      As he began to sand the wood and carve away the stress of the day, the loneliness of his nights and the worries he always had about the tenants he cared for all slipped away as his muscles welcomed the work.

      This was what he needed. A passion. A job. A goal to move toward. When he finished, he’d have pride in what he’d done, and no one could take that from him.

      After a while, he heard a sound above his head. A slight movement, as if someone had shifted atop the loose boards stacked along one side of the loft.

      Another sound. The creaking of the flooring.

      As he had each time for a week when this had happened, he didn’t react. He simply kept working. If the invisible visitor had meant him any harm, he would have known it long before now. Maybe some frightened animal had taken shelter from the last month of winter, or maybe a drifter just wanted a warm place to rest before moving on. He’d been there in his teens. He knew how much a quiet, safe place could mean.

      Yancy was lost in his work an hour later when a loose board shifted above and tumbled down.

      A little squeak followed.

      Yancy waited, then said calmly, “If you’re trying to kill me, you’ll need to toss down something bigger than a two-by-four.”

      “Sorry,” came a whisper.

      “No harm. I’ve known