Crumbling Truth (Spruce Hill #4)

Chapter 1

Chapter One

Theo

You could absolutely go home 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 read The 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 said Queen 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 porch steps, 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.

My grandmother in Miami had broken a hip at her last salsa class, and since my parents had both retired in the past year, they’d decided on an extended vacation down south to take care of her during the recovery period.

My brother was local, but he was incredibly allergic to cats.

Mom had always wanted one, and she finally adopted Toni after Alex moved out.

Toni was her baby now. At least, that was how she’d spun the whole situation, and I’d uprooted my ass to ensure my mother’s feline wouldn’t suffer any irreparable distress in her absence.

So here I was, taking care of the cat and the house. Most importantly, according to my mother, my purpose here was to ensure the widow renting their guest house apartment didn’t have to deal with any emergencies or shovel on her own when the snow started to fall.

The cat I could have refused, but an old lady who needed someone to keep an eye out for her? My parents definitely knew how to exploit my sympathies.

There had been no other vehicles in the driveway when I arrived, so I assumed she wasn’t home.

After I freshened Toni’s water and refilled her food dish, I peeked out the kitchen window toward the guest house.

It was tucked toward the corner of the property, framed at the back and one side by the giant oak and maple trees.

In the thick of summer, the leaves on those trees gave the little cottage a fairytale feel, but in November, the bare branches made it look desolate.

Now that I thought about it, I knew very little about this tenant. She was a widow with some classic old lady name. Edith? Agnes? Something like that. I imagined a sweet, doddering retiree who needed someone around to help out when the snow came, as it inevitably would at this time of year.

If the idea of returning to my hometown hadn’t been so terrifying, I probably would have thought to ask my mother for more details.

Instead, I’d numbly agreed to the arrangement, taking advantage of the slow season for my landscaping business down in North Carolina in order to spend two months living in my childhood home while my business partner, Billy, handled everything back in Asheville.

I still wasn’t convinced it was the right choice, but my mother had laid it on thick and I hadn’t had the heart to refuse.

Maybe twenty years of hints and pleading had finally demolished my resistance.

Fortunately, my parents had turned my childhood bedroom into an office and their guest room had a newly renovated ensuite bathroom. No matter how many times they suggested I use the master bedroom while I was there, I couldn’t stomach the thought of sleeping in the bed where I’d been conceived.

“Oh, fuck,” I whispered, lifting my elbows from where I’d braced them on the kitchen counter.

My parents had been alone in this house since my younger brother left home a few years after I moved away—that was plenty of time for them to christen every surface in the house.

God knew my father was a randy bastard, even in his sixties.

He never missed an opportunity to touch Mom’s hip or even ass, if he thought he could get away with it.

I’d seen him kiss her neck and whisper something blush-inducing into her ear too many times to doubt he’d made good use of their privacy once their sons had flown the nest.

My first order of business would be to scrub down every horizontal surface.

On the plus side, my father was also a neat freak, which made my job significantly easier because there was a stash of various cleaning supplies in the pantry that could last me an entire year in this house.

Under Toni’s watchful eye, I set to work, wiping down counters, tables, and desks.

By the time I finished, the surfaces gleamed in the afternoon sunlight and I wondered if there was any food in the house.

I shouldn’t have questioned it, because of course my mother had stocked each cabinet and every square inch of the refrigerator.