Chapter 24
He stepped into the house, wondering why Annelise didn't turn around, didn’t acknowledge he was here.
She seemed lost in her own world, shoulders sagging. It was almost as if he could see her thoughts tumbling. Rowan fought the desire to step in and turn her around.
He’d parked down the street and walked up the driveway, then across the concrete walk—still cracked, with little weeds and the occasional purple flower pushing its way through. He'd stepped across the porch, which creaked more than he remembered, and still she didn't seem to know that he was here.
He'd walked softly then through the doorway, confident that if the door was open, one or more of the Lockheart women was here. He didn't recognize the car in the driveway, which made it Annelise’s. Story would never rent . . . well, anything.
But he'd been prepared for her to turn around, to face him, to be angry at him, or something.
It hadn't happened. Instead, she faced away from him, taking slow, deep breaths.
Maybe trying to center herself in the face of overwhelming odds.
Maybe she was trying to find some steel for the spine that held shoulders that clearly held too much responsibility right now.
He hoped he wasn't adding to that weight. The last thing he told her before he'd run out of her office Sunday morning like his ass was on fire was that he had a possible way to leverage the case and he needed to talk to Story.
The last time he'd seen Annelise, they'd walked directly into each other's arms, basically torn their clothing off, and come together in a rush of need and sex just like they used to. Like fifteen years hadn't been a day. Now he wondered if maybe he wasn't part of the problem.
"Annelise," he whispered it, not surprised when she jolted, spinning around to turn and look at him.
"What are you doing here?" It wasn't accusatory, but it wasn't neutral either.
Rowan figured he deserved that. He wanted to hold his hands up in surrender, ask what he could do to get her back, because the longer this went on, the more he needed her.
At the same time, his self-respect almost demanded he not do any of that.
She hated him. She made it clear they didn't owe each other anything, despite what he'd said.
"I talked to Story," he told her. "So I wanted to update you."
She raised one eyebrow, and he read it so clearly it was obvious even to him: That though he'd talked to Story, Story had not talked to her. So Story might be pushing them together. Jesus. He watched as Annelise visibly swallowed and he realized she'd been living out of town.
It wasn’t a coincidence that she’d been disheveled in her office on a Sunday morning; she was probably sleeping there, though he hadn’t seen a bed. She'd been staying away on purpose.
When he stepped into this old house, he'd only been able to see her—the curve of her spine, the slump of her shoulders, the waves in her dark, dark hair. But now he saw the house, and the house was a fucking mess.
Most of the walls were stripped down to studs.
There were no places where the drywall remained on the upper half.
Saving the drywall was a last-ditch effort in saving money, but after what had happened in some of the houses last time, they couldn’t even do that.
The floor was just bare subflooring. The tile in the kitchen was cracked, though he had no idea if that was new.
He could see straight through the empty walls into the back bedroom where a bed frame sat, but the mattress was gone. A dresser remained, but flood damage marred the wood, stopping almost at the top. It should have been a loss, but it was still here. He wondered if the drawers even still opened.
He almost opened his mouth to ask if the appliances still worked. That was as stupid as asking if he could help, and he desperately wanted to. Rowan knew better. He realized in that moment what the truth was. "You're completely supporting Story, aren't you?"
She looked at the floor, but Annelise nodded.
"Then your name should be on the house, and you should be making these decisions."
"She won't let me," Annelise offered with a small half shrug, her hands lifting and dropping almost as if to indicate around her, but not quite. "I guess I should be glad now that she didn't let me replace the tile in the kitchen."
"You don't have to. You know Story can take care of herself.” He paused at the sharp, dark eyebrow she raised at him.
It questioned his sanity at the same time it smacked him back for not paying attention.
He tried again, “She might step up and do it if you're not doing it for her. Also, the town will step up."
"Clearly," Annelise replied, obviously frustrated with the situation as a whole.
He hated that for her even as he loved that she was letting him see her, see what she felt and what she needed. They were having a real conversation for the first time in well over a decade, and he hated how much he ached for it. But he did.
"She's making it very clear that she doesn't need me right now, and she doesn't want my help, and she doesn't want anyone's help." Annelise’s tone was soft but sharp, the anger sliding through.
Didn't he know that? He’d practically grown up in this house with the woman standing in front of him. He nodded. "I went to her with the case."
"Let me guess," Annelise interrupted. "She didn't want the money. The universe will provide for her."
Annelise was gesturing sharply with one hand, and he knew it wasn’t the first time she’d heard exactly what Story told him.
He did find it interesting that a woman who could go down to the store and just buy winning lotto tickets would think she didn’t need to employ those skills to help herself.
He remembered Annelise once saying they couldn’t buy too many because the state would recognize that one person was winning too often.
It wasn’t a cure-all for the family’s money problems.
It was starting to occur to him that the ‘family’s money problems’ might be Story herself.
He looked closer at Annelise and saw it then. The moment where this flood might have broken something inside her. He remembered holding her after the last one, how she'd cracked and shuddered in his arms as she cried. How she felt she’d failed because she hadn't been able to save the houses.
He couldn't help it. He frowned. “You couldn’t save the house last time and you couldn’t this time.”
“Thanks.” The deep sarcasm was cutting.
But that wasn’t what he meant. “Why would you think you could? None of you are that powerful, you know."
She frowned at him.
"You are strong, and you are amazing. But you're not powerful enough to fight the whole river. No one is. Not even Story."
The look on her face seemed to cross between confusion and acceptance.
Then her voice came through, soft and broken, and it cracked something in his heart. "I'm supposed to be."
He remembered. She’d been told since she was a young child that she was the scion of the Lockheart clan, the last of the women, the strongest of the witches.
But he shook his head. "It's a river. On its best, lowest day, you might move it. But this flood was water from the majority of the watershed. Lise, you could never have turned it away. Story told me you held it back for an incredibly long time."
Annelise shrugged, and then she did wave her hand around at the empty and damaged house. "Doesn't matter. In the end, the water won again."
"I always wondered if you might have been able to do it if all the Lockheart women had been able to join together."
"All the Lockheart women." She muttered the phrase almost as if it were a curse, and he wondered now if maybe it was.
There were legends about the Lockhearts, passed through the gossip and stories of the Hollow.
That they only ever gave birth to female children.
Every girl that every Lockheart woman gave birth to was a witch.
Marrying out of the family and changing her name could dull the power over a few generations.
Those were things he had grown up hearing.
For himself, he could only say what he'd seen. What he'd seen was that Astoria Lockheart had three daughters, and each of her three daughters had a daughter as well. Or at least they knew that now, once Jenna Brooks arrived.
He knew the story of the Lockheart triplets—that every handful of generations, three identical daughters were born together, and that they were even stronger than individually born Lockheart girls.
But he'd watched when he and Annelise were kids, when they were teenagers, as one by one, the Lockheart women fell away.
First Monica disappeared and disappeared again.
Then Marina decided she'd had enough, and she took Teagan with her.
He hadn't been there for it, but later Melissa had succumbed to illness and died.
Annelise had been through so much. He’d seen some of it and still couldn’t fully comprehend what it must be to lose her family one piece at a time. His life had gone the other direction.
The oldest child, he'd been blessed with a brother, and another brother, and another, until his sixth youngest sibling was a girl.
Their house had been flooded, but their insurance had covered it, and they'd very quickly rebuilt and moved away, up the hill to a bigger house.
The new house had more bedrooms—not just one for all the boys and the other for Indie.
As the oldest, he'd been granted his own room for the first time. Just before he left for college.
Then they had moved further up the mountainside to the big house at the top.
This time, his father had managed to provide a bedroom for every child.
Rowan’s brother had gone to medical school, another trained in France as a chef.
He'd gone to law school himself. His family had been able to afford it.
The path that Annelise's life had taken had diverged so dramatically from his.
Rowan hadn't really thought about it until just now.
Maybe that's why she was mad at him: because his luck had been so different from hers.
He must have been thinking too hard, because she filled in the pieces.
"If Story doesn't want you to file the case against the insurance company, is that it? Are we dead in the water?"
He almost quirked his mouth at the use of the phrase, but the image flashed of his father face down in the creek, almost as if it had come from Annelise herself. Couldn't be. He brushed it to the side. "No. You know Story. But so do I."
For a moment, he thought Annelise almost smiled. "What did you do?"