Chapter 3 #2
It took her a full three seconds to realize exactly what she was looking at.
This was the room.
The bed where Eleanor had said they’d found Mabel, her heart giving out peacefully in the middle of the night.
A thin strand of cold unspooled down her back.
She could practically see the outline of Mabel’s body on the duvet, imagine the ambulance crew leaning over the mattress, the paramedics’ shoes scuffing the same rug beneath her heels.
“It’s a room,” she whispered. “It’s a bed.”
But her feet still refused to carry her any farther in.
There were framed photographs on the dresser.
Aubrey picked one up. A little girl in a yellow sundress sat on a porch swing beside a woman with blonde hair and laughing eyes.
Mabel.
And her.
Aubrey frowned. She barely remembered that day.
She set the frame down and reached for another.
This one was older; the colors were slightly faded.
It had been taken in front of the house—before the paint was fresh and the porch rails quite so straight.
A man with dark hair and a wide easy grin stood in the center, his arm slung around a younger Mabel.
Red Stephens was on her other side, leaner then, his hair a deeper rust, one hand hooked over the porch rail.
Mabel’s hair was twisted up in a loose knot, sunglasses pushed on top of her head, her mouth caught mid-laugh. She wore a simple summer dress and a look of fierce, uncomplicated joy.
Aubrey stared.
From this angle—from the line of her jaw, the tilt of her smile—Mabel looked alarmingly like Aubrey did now.
Same bones. Same mouth. Same stubborn lift to her chin.
It was like looking at a version of herself dropped into another decade, another life.
She huffed out a breath that wasn’t a laugh. “Apparently the genetics committee had some strong opinions,” she muttered.
She put the frame back a little too carefully and reached for the next photograph.
This one was recent.
Mabel stood in front of the black barn, one hand on her hip, sunglasses on, grinning at the camera.
Beside her stood Bennett.
His arm was around her shoulders. He was actually smiling.
Not the grim, aggravated, bourbon-soaked version she’d met. A real smile. Wide. Warm. Boyish, almost.
It transformed him. Made him look younger. Softer. Dangerous in an entirely different way—the kind of man women forgave too easily.
Aubrey set the picture down too quickly.
“Still a jerk,” she muttered.
The front door downstairs opened.
Aubrey froze.
Before she could move, something huge thundered across the hardwood below. Claws skidded. A deep woof echoed through the house.
Then a massive white dog came barreling into the bedroom.
A Great Pyrenees.
He was beautiful and heartbreakingly thin beneath his thick white fur. The ruff around his neck was slightly matted, like he’d been lying in the same spots over and over instead of roaming the property the way a dog his size should.
He didn’t even look at her.
He went straight to the bed—Mabel’s side—and pressed his nose into the comforter, inhaling hard, once, twice, three times, dragging in whatever was left of her scent.
The dog stood motionless a second, waiting.
As if some part of him still expected her to answer.
Then he crossed to the oversized dog bed near the fireplace and lowered himself slowly onto the rug beside it—again on Mabel’s side of the bed. He collapsed with a heavy, defeated sigh.
He laid his giant head on his paws. Up close, Aubrey could see the tired red rims of his eyes and the faint shadow of ribs under his fur. He didn’t look cute-sad; he looked grief-stricken.
The dog lifted his head at the sound of footsteps on the stairs.
A second later, heavy boots sounded in the hall.
Aubrey turned as Bennett appeared in the doorway.
“You have a key?”
“Mabel gave me one.”
“Of course she did.”
Neither of them said anything.
Then Bennett looked at the dog.
“There you are.”
The Great Pyrenees thumped his tail once against the dog bed but didn’t get up.
Bennett’s expression shifted. The hard lines in his face eased.
“He’s yours now,” he said quietly.
Aubrey blinked. “My what?”
“Dog.” He nodded toward the enormous white mass on the floor. “Moose.”
Moose lifted his head at the sound of his name, then let it drop back onto his paws.
“He belonged to Mabel.”
Aubrey looked from the dog to Bennett. “I don’t have a dog.”
“You do now.”
“I can’t have a dog.”
Bennett shrugged, the movement sharp and economical.
“That’s not his problem,” he said. “Try explaining it to him.”
Moose let out the saddest sigh Aubrey had ever heard.
“He hasn’t been eating much since the ambulance took her away. Had to sit on the kitchen floor with hamburger meat like he was a damn puppy to get anything in him.”
Moose’s ears twitched at Bennett’s voice, his gaze flicking briefly toward the doorway before sliding back to the bed.
“He sleeps in here,” Bennett added, glancing toward Mabel’s pillow and the dog bed. “Or right there beside her side of the bed. Been doing it ever since.”
Aubrey looked down at the huge white dog.
He looked utterly broken. Something painful tightened unexpectedly in her chest.
“His food’s downstairs,” Bennett said. “Laundry room off the kitchen. Big silver bin with his name on it. Leash is hanging by the mudroom door if you ever need it.”
She opened her mouth. “I don’t know anything about—“
“Yeah,” Bennett cut in, not unkindly but with zero patience. “Moose doesn’t care what you know. He cares that Mabel’s gone and you’re what’s left.”
Aubrey looked down at Moose, and for once, no argument came.
Bennett gave a short huff that might have been the ghost of a smile.
“Doubtful you’ll need the leash much. He’s a good boy. Did everything Mabel ever told him to.”
Moose thumped his tail once, a half-hearted echo of agreement.
Aubrey glanced toward the dresser and picked up the thick manila envelope she’d dropped there earlier.
“Eleanor asked me to give you this,” she said. “Your copy of the land documents. And a letter Mabel left you. Eleanor thought you’d want the paper copy.”
Bennett’s brow creased.
“For me?”
“Apparently.”
He took the envelope from her hand, his fingers brushing hers for the briefest second.
Something shuttered in his face.
“I told you,” he said quietly. “I don’t want it.”
Aubrey folded her arms.
“Then don’t take it.”
The muscle at the corner of his mouth ticked.
For a second, she thought he might say something sharp.
Instead, he looked down at the envelope like it weighed a hundred pounds. Then he shoved it under his arm.
“Anyway,” he said abruptly, stepping back toward the hall, “you should lock the doors at night. One of the side porch latches sticks.”
At the word latch, Moose lifted his head.
A low sound moved through his chest.
Aubrey frowned. “Why would I need to—“
“Because you don’t know this house yet.” His voice came out flint-hard.
Then something shifted in his expression.
“Mabel got jumpy toward the end,” he said quietly. “Checking locks before bed. Asked me twice if I’d seen strange trucks near the ridge road.”
Aubrey thought of the man by the maintenance truck, the way he’d slipped between the vines the moment she noticed him.
Aubrey’s stomach tightened.
Bennett gave a short shrug.
“I think she’d lived on this mountain long enough to know when something felt off.”
Then, as if he regretted saying even that much, he reached down and scratched Moose once behind the ears.
“Be good,” he muttered to the dog.
Moose whined softly, his gaze flicking from Bennett to the empty space on Mabel’s side of the bed.
Bennett straightened.
“Funeral’s at two,” he said quietly. “First Baptist on Main.”
Moose lifted his head again at the sound of his voice, watching him like he might follow.
Bennett glanced once around the room—at the photographs, the balcony doors, the untouched side of the bed.
He walked out, leaving Aubrey alone in the enormous house with a grieving dog and a stranger's life.
She stood there a long moment after he left, staring at the bed. At Mabel’s pillow. At the dent Moose’s body made in the rug beside it.
There was no universe in which she was sleeping in that room tonight.
Somewhere down the hall, there had to be a guest room. A neutral room. A room that didn’t feel like a deathbed.
A room where she could lock the door, close the blinds, and pretend that she was anywhere else but here.