Chapter 11
He couldn't help himself. At the sound of the collective gasp, Rowan turned away from the window, away from the rain and the gray and back toward his family and the gathered crowd. At least all the Velascos were accounted for, now that Ford was home.
He saw it immediately.
The young woman Ford had tugged up the stairs behind him showed her face.
Her hair was an almost-burnt-caramel shade.
It wasn't black as night like Annelise's, like Story's had once been.
Still, it highlighted the blue of her eyes, the shape of her face, the cut of her cheekbones, jaw, and nose.
It was unmistakable, but even so, Rowan didn't quite believe it.
People looked like each other all the time.
Behind him, Story whispered it again. "Monica."
It was his own mother who moved over, placing her hand on Story's shoulders almost like she could stop the woman. "I know," she said. "I saw her everywhere too, for a long time."
Shaking her off, Story walked forward as if in a trance. This time it was Annelise who stepped in, subtly but physically holding her grandmother back. They couldn't just assault a young woman because she looked like someone they knew.
As she stopped right in front of Astoria, Annelise broke the spell that had fallen over the whole room. She held out her hand to the newcomer. Even from behind her, Rowan could see she was smiling. "I'm Annelise—Annelise Lockheart."
"Jenna Brooks." She smiled and took the offered handshake.
Rowan watched all of it from a distance, and he hated it.
He hated that he knew Annelise so well that he could see her expression in his mind even though he couldn’t see her face.
That he saw the moment their fingers touched and Annelise jolted.
She hid it so well, he wasn't even sure anyone else would see it.
"Fucking hell," he murmured and wished he had a whiskey to toss back. Story wasn't wrong.
Jenna Brooks wasn't Monica; she couldn’t be.
Monica was close to his own mother's age and he remembered her being around when he was much younger. In fact, he’d heard a few stories about his mother and her sister Paris playing with Monica, Marina, and Melissa as kids.
Now he wondered if that’s what influenced his mother in her changes after his father died.
He sighed. It could have been anyone. The Goodman and Hale families were also known to carry their own magics around here.
A few others were on his suspicion list.
But the Lockhearts had the strongest powers and still seemed to have fared the worst. Their magics had been so good for the community, but it hadn’t been able to save them.
All three of Astoria’s daughters had disappeared one way or another, and he wasn't even sure if he knew the stories well enough to tell them.
"Ford," he turned to his brother.
"I know, right?" Ford stepped forward, grinning as he dripped on the floor with less decorum than any of the guests had. "I was down on the state road checking for strays."
Rowan didn't want to laugh. He guessed Ford had found one, though Jenna Brooks was hardly his usual affair.
"The road washed out," Ford announced. "Luckily, she didn't drive into it."
"I almost did," Jenna spoke up, looking around the room, seeming to have a little more comfort now that she'd been formally introduced. "It went out right in front of me."
"That must have been terrifying," Annelise, Story, and his mother all uttered some version of their concern.
"I was not prepared," Jenna said. "In fact, all my things are still down in the car. I only have this." She motioned up and down to her wet self.
As Rowan watched, the women ushered her away into the back. Surely, Jenna would appear again in whatever clothing Indie dug out of their closets.
As they walked away, he couldn't help but feel his gaze drawn to Annelise. He’d dreamed of her so many times and woken up, disappointed each morning that his reality was what it was and not what he wished.
Not that he would ever admit it out loud, nor even to himself.
It seemed odd to be watching her in the flesh, to see her move through the house that his father built and that he now did his best to run.
He knew the sway of her hips, the tilt of her head, the way her shoulders moved when she laughed, and it struck him that as the two walked away, Jenna Brooks had the same motions.
He didn't quite realize he was staring until Ford bumped him, wet shoulder squishing into Rowan's previously dry clothes.
Ford leaned in. "It's freaky, isn't it?"
"Uncanny." Rowan had to ask, "So you just found her on the side of the road?"
"I saw the car, but she didn’t see me. I had to bang on her window. I think I scared the shit out of her.” Then he shrugged. “When she looked at me through the window, though, I thought I had seen a ghost."
“You didn't say anything to her?”
"What would I even say?" Ford shrugged.
Rowan was about to return a snarky reply when his mother walked back out, a frown on her face. She motioned to the two boys to keep it down and pitched her tone low like theirs should have been. “No one needs to hear you in the other room.”
How old was he now? Rowan thought—in his thirties—and he still felt chastised by his mother for speaking too loudly in his own home. But everyone else in the room had gone mostly silent at the sight of Jenna-who-couldn’t-be-Monica.
Changing the subject, he turned to Ford. "You're dripping on the carpet."
Ford shrugged and Rowan started to get mad.
So help him God, he cared about the house.
Ford was younger. He didn't know the blood, sweat, tears, and sacrifices that had gone into this place.
Didn't know how their father had struggled in the three months past its construction, and didn't have Rowan's nagging concerns about the way the man died.
It had been declared an accident, and Rowan wondered if he was the only one who didn't believe it.
Though Ford seemed not to care about the carpet, he did care about the stern look his mother gave him, and he quickly disappeared down the stairs again.
His youngest brother liked to keep his own room tucked down and out of the way in an attempt at privacy that Rowan knew could never quite be achieved in a family this large.
Luckily, Ford was fast, so he was changed before the women returned. In dry clothing, he rubbed a small hand towel against his wet hair, not seeming to care that it stuck out in various directions. There were times Rowan wished he had his younger brother's careless attitude. It seemed easier.
"Anyway," Ford said, as though nothing could have possibly transpired without him, "I told her we'd go back and get her car later."
"On the state road?" Rowan asked, his trepidation showing.
"If it's still there," Ford told him, with another overly casual shrug.
Rowan felt his heart sink because the women had stepped back into the room and Jenna Brooks heard every word from his brother’s careless lips.
Her dismay showed in the wide blue eyes, the open mouth, the face that looked so much like what he remembered of Monica, though he'd just been a kid when she left. Rowan was the adult here—even if Ford should be one—so he tried to smooth things over. “Hopefully, you have insurance?"
She nodded.
"Then you’ve done everything you can. We just have to wait. The creek will either rise high enough, or it won't. But the good news is you're safe here, and if you need to file any insurance papers or anything, I’m a lawyer and I'll help."
It seemed like the least he could offer for the young woman his brother had brought home and they'd all looked at askance without really explaining it to her.
"You're right. I'm grateful Ford found me and convinced me to leave the car."
Rowan had to agree. Ford might be overly carefree, but he was smart and had fantastic intuition. She might not have survived if she’d stayed. Everyone who lived here had seen this before.
"Though I will say . . .” She added, with a wry look, “When he came banging on my car window, it scared the crap out of me."
Around the room, everyone nodded as if that just sounded like Ford—because it did.
"I didn't feel like I had any other options, so I followed him. But I'll admit I was afraid he was a serial killer."
That explained the look of relief he’d seen on her face when she cleared the top steps and spotted the room full of people.
"Ha!" Ford called from the other side of the room. "I'm the exact opposite of a serial killer!"
Rowan threw his head back, the laugh taking him over. He hadn't expected to find humor in the day, and the idea that Jenna Brooks had climbed the entire mountain thinking her brother might murder her at the top was honestly the funniest thing he'd heard in a while. Also, Ford deserved it.
He wasn't the only one laughing. The others in the room were locals. They knew Ford. They knew how funny it was that Jenna had been afraid of him, even though Rowan was sure it wasn't funny to Jenna.
Even Story laughed, but she kept her eyes on the young woman. As much as Rowan agreed that Ford was right and people just looked like each other, Story was rarely wrong, and he himself had seen the jolt Annelise got when she shook Jenna's hand. Something was up.
But for the moment, everyone was okay. His father would be proud that people showed up on the doorstep here when they needed shelter.
Something smelled amazing—Jasper had gotten to work in the kitchen, ready to feed everyone as always.
And they were amused. Unfortunately, the sound that struck him deep in his heart was Annelise's laugh. Though her voice blended with everyone else’s, it was as if she was the only one he could hear.
The sound—high and clear—had always worked its magic on him.
And he was pissed as hell that it still did.