Chapter 2
TWO
Love is when someone is nice to you a lot.
As the only house down a long, winding driveway, it was unlikely to be a passing vehicle. Maybe my brother, Chris, had decided to bring Oliver home early. I set my ice cream down—it would probably be soup before I got to enjoy it now—and headed back to the kitchen to meet them at the side door.
But… nothing happened.
I waited a few beats before I pulled the door open and peered out. But Chris’s monster-sized truck wasn’t there.
“Weird.” As I was stepping back into the kitchen, the doorbell warbled its way through the house. “Even weirder.”
I didn’t know we had a doorbell.
Besides that, no one used our front door.
The mailwoman, the guy from UPS, the one dude who sold steak out of the trunk of his car—everyone used the side door.
Until three years ago, the front door had been buried behind two bookcases full of gardening books.
Which was ironic since Ollie hadn’t seemed all that interested in lawncare.
Although the bookcases had since been moved to the wall behind the door, I wasn’t even sure the front door opened .
I hesitated. The doorbell sounded again.
Maybe Chris and Oliver were playing a joke on me?
I crept into the front “sitting room” and inched my way to the window by the door.
Whoever it was had given up on the doorbell and was now knocking.
Very slowly, I peeled back a tiny edge of the curtain and peeked outside.
But it wasn’t the towering frame of my brother or Oliver’s little face that I saw. What I saw was the shadowy figure of a man. Tall, lean, wide shoulders. I couldn’t make any of his features out, but I didn’t know any man who would just show up unannounced. Especially at night.
My heart climbed into my throat. THERE WAS A STRANGE MAN AT MY FRONT DOOR.
“Stay calm,” I whispered.
The doorknob jiggled. A voice called out, “Hello? Is anyone here?”
My heartrate shifted into overdrive. As quietly as possible, I pulled out my phone from my pocket and dialed nine-one-one.
“What’s your emergency?” a voice I recognized said.
“Cammie,” I whispered. “It’s Ellie Sterns. There’s a strange man at my door.”
“Do you recognize him?”
“Didn’t you hear me? I said it was a strange man.”
“Well, stranger and strange man are two different things,” Cammie said. I swore I could hear her smacking her gum.
“I’m serious. There’s a man on my front porch…” And then the unmistakable sound of a key sliding into a lock. “I think he has a key. How does he have a key?” The lock snicked open. “H-he unlocked it.”
“Okay, okay, don’t panic. I have someone on their way right now,” she said, sounding much more serious. “Can you hide?”
I watched in horror as the doorknob turned.
“He’s opening the door.” I clicked over to speaker and set the phone on the edge of one of the bookcases.
Frantically, I glanced around for something, anything, I could use as a weapon.
My choices were limited so I grabbed the first heavy thing I could find—a gardening book titled Say Aloe to My Little Friends —and clutched it with both hands.
The door opened in slow motion; my whole body tensed.
“Ellie? Ellie, are you okay?” Cammie asked.
But there wasn’t time to answer her. Instead, I screamed and swung that book with all my might.
The stranger yelped. “Oophf. What the hel— Ouch!”
I swung again and had a momentary flashback to playing softball as a kid. I’d never been any good—wildly swinging the bat had been my typical strategy—and I wasn’t good now, but just like back then, I made up for it with enthusiasm.
With a grunt, he threw his hands over his head to protect it.
“I want you to know I’ve already called the police and…
and…I have two, no, three, no, six rottweilers in the backyard,” I yelled.
“They’ll be in here any minute and see there’s a stranger in this house and then when they attack, they’re trained to go for where it counts.
You…” Swing . “…get…” Slam . “…me…” Smack . “…mister!”
“Stop!” He ducked, covering his head with his arms.
“Plus, I’m a witch.” Swing . Miss . Damn it.
“Not the nice kind.” Swing . Hit . “I’m cursing you in my head right this second.
” Swing . Boom . Success . “After this day, you’ll have constant ringing in your ears except it won’t be ringing, it will be that song ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’ playing forever and ever until you die. ”
“I’m not trying to?—”
“The last guy I did that to ended up in a straitjacket. You’re gonna wish you’d met the dogs instead.” I stopped and heaved a breath. Turns out attacking an intruder with a book was kind of exhausting.
In the slight pause, he whipped around and yanked the book out of my hands.
I squeaked. “Give that back.”
He tossed it on the floor. “No.”
I held my hands out. “I wasn’t kidding about the dogs.”
“There aren’t any dogs. Not a single bark.” He rubbed his shoulder. Dark eyes glared at me from behind his glasses, hair disheveled, face red. He looked disgruntled, disbelieving, even offended. Like he had the right to be offended. “I am offended.”
See? I stuck my hands on my hips. “You’re offended? You broke into my house!”
Wait. He’d just broken into my house. Why? I took two small steps backwards until my back pressed against a bookshelf. “Is this…a home invasion?”
“Ellie?” Cammie’s voice called from the phone. “Are you okay?”
“He’s in the house,” I said, a frantic edge to my voice. “I hope you’re recording this for the very special episode of Dateline about my murder. Make sure to tell the producers how I lit up a room.”
The man scowled. “I’m not here to murder you.”
“That’s exactly what a murderer would say,” Cammie said.
“Where is that voice coming from?” the man asked in confusion.
I straightened. “I have emergency services on the phone. They can hear everything. The police are on their way.”
He took a step back. “I’m not here to cause any trouble.” He opened one of his hands and keys dangled from a finger. “I have a right to be here.”
I stared at the keys. “How did you get those?”
“This is my house,” he said slowly.
“No, it is not. This is my house.” I grabbed another book from the bookshelf and waved it wildly. “Out. Get out.”
“This is getting interesting,” Cammie said. It almost sounded like she was eating popcorn.
“Alright. Alright. I’ll go outside.” With a hand held up, either to protect himself or ward me off, he shuffled backwards. “But this house is mine, or at least half of it is.”
What? He was crazy. “Stop saying that. This is my house.” I grabbed the door and started to close it.
“Wait. Listen.” He paused, his face so serious it made me hesitate.
In what felt like slow motion, his mouth opened.
A tightness spread across my chest. Some part of me knew whatever he was about to say was important.
It was the feeling I’d had just before I saw a positive on that pregnancy test I took seven years ago. Epically important. Life-changing.
“My name is Gilbert Dalton. Ollie Holder was my grandfather.”
Cammie gasped. “Holy sh?—”
The sound the door made when I slammed it shut was loud enough to drown out the rest of her sentence.