On the Wednesday my front door turned me into a criminal, the sky had the audacity to be perfect—cloudless, cobalt, a color that could have been scraped from the exact paint chip called “Atlantic Teal” that still trembled in my guilty hand. I stood on the porch of 3 Wisteria Loop, toes brushing a sun‑warmed …
Operation Trojan Horsepower, as Maya had dramatically dubbed my infiltration plan (claiming “Operation Sneaky Preservationist” lacked pizzazz), felt significantly less clever and considerably more insane as I stood sweating slightly in the overly warm service corridor behind the Oakhaven Valley Inn’s main kitchen. The borrowed catering uniform – black slacks a size too big, secured …
His voice, smooth as river stones yet carrying the distinct chill of polished steel, hung in the night air between us. “Can I help you?” Not ‘What are you doing here?’ Not ‘This is private property.’ Just that cool, infuriatingly polite inquiry, as if finding a woman lurking behind barrier tape with a camera outside his newly acquired, historically …
The box cutter sliced through the packing tape with a sound like a final, ragged sigh. Appropriate, really. My return to Oakhaven, the town I’d fled faster than a sprayed cat eighteen years ago, felt less like a homecoming and more like a strategic retreat ordered by a general who’d already lost the war. The …