Avery said her thanks and made her excuses. Cherry and Lilah said their goodbyes in the dining room; Buddy accompanied her and Matt to the door.
Buddy hugged her. “You broke all our hearts when you left. But no one’s more than mine. I’d had mine set on you being my daughter.”
Avery returned his embrace. “I love you, too, Buddy.”
Matt walked her to her car. “Pretty night,” she murmured, lifting her face to the night sky. “So many stars. I’d forgotten how many.”
“I enjoyed tonight, Avery. It was like old times.”
Avery met his eyes; her pulse fluttered.
“I’ve missed you,” he said. “I’m glad you’re back.”
She swallowed hard, acknowledging that she’d missed him, too. Or more accurately, that she’d missed standing with him this way, in his folks’ driveway, under a star-sprinkled sky. Had missed the familiarity of it. The sense of belonging.
Matt put words to her thoughts. “Why’d you leave, Avery? My dad was right, you know. You belong here. You’re one of us.”
“Why didn’t you go with me?” she countered. “I asked. Begged, if I remember correctly.”
Matt lifted a hand as if to touch her, then dropped it. “You always wanted something else, something more than Cypress Springs could offer. Something more than I could offer. I never understood it. But I had to accept it.”
She shifted her gaze slightly, uncomfortable with the truth. That he could speak it so plainly. She changed the direction of their conversation. “Your dad and Cherry said you’re the front-runner in next year’s election for parish sheriff. I’m not surprised. You always said you were destined for great things.”
“But our definitions of great things always differed, didn’t they, Avery?”
“That’s not fair, Matt.”
“Fair or not, it’s true.” He paused. “You broke my heart.”
She held his gaze. “You broke mine, too.”
“Then we’re even, aren’t we? A broken heart apiece.”
She winced at the bitter edge in his voice. “Matt, it … wasn’t you. It was me. I never felt—”
She had been about to say how she had never felt she belonged in Cypress Springs. That once she’d become a teenager, she had always felt slightly out of step, different in subtle but monumental ways from the other girls she knew.
Those feelings seemed silly now. The thoughts of a self-absorbed young girl.
“What about now, Avery?” he asked. “What do you want now? What do you need?”
Discomfited by the intensity of his gaze, she looked away. “I don’t know. I don’t want to return to where I was, I’m certain of that. And I don’t mean the geographical location.”
“Sounds like you have some thinking to do.”
A giant understatement. She turned to the Blazer, unlocked the door, then faced him once more. “I should go. I’m asleep on my feet and tomorrow’s going to be difficult.”
“You could stay here, you know. Mom and Dad have plenty of room. They’d love to have you.”
A part of her longed to jump at the offer. The idea of sleeping in her parents’ house now, after her father … she didn’t think she would sleep a wink.
But taking the easy way would be taking the coward’s way. She had to face her father’s suicide. She’d begin tonight, by sleeping in her childhood home.
He reached around her and opened her car door. “Still fiercely independent, I see. Still stubborn as a mule.”
She slid behind the wheel, started the vehicle, then looked back up at him “Some would consider those qualities an asset.”
“Sure they would. In mules.” He bent his face to hers. “If you need anything, call me.”
“I will. Thanks.” He slammed the door. She backed the Blazer down the steep driveway, then headed out of the subdivision, pointing the vehicle toward the old downtown neighborhood where she had grown up.
Avery shook her head, remembering how she had begged her parents to follow the Stevenses to Spring Water, the then new subdivision where Matt and his family had bought a house. She had been enamored with the sprawling ranch homes and neighborhood club facilities: pool, tennis court and clubhouse for parties.
What had then looked so new and cool to her, she saw now as cheaply built, cookie-cutter homes on small plots of ground that had been cleared to make room for as many houses per acre as possible.
Luckily, her parents had refused to move from their location within walking distance of the square, downtown and her father’s office. Solidly built in the 1920s, their house boasted high ceilings, cypress millwork and the kind of charm available only at a premium today. The neighborhood, too, was vintage—a wide, tree-lined boulevard lit by gas lamps, each home set back on large, shady lots. Unlike many cities whose downtown neighborhoods had fallen victim to the urban decay caused by crime and white flight, Cypress Springs’s inner-city neighborhood remained as well maintained and safe as when originally built.
Despite the fact that most of Louisiana was flat, West Feliciana Parish was home to gently rolling hills. Cypress Springs nestled amongst those hills—the historic river town of St. Francisville, with its beautiful antebellum homes, lay twenty minutes southwest, Baton Rouge, forty-five minutes south and the New Orleans’s French Quarter a mere two hours forty-five minutes southeast.
Besides being a good place to raise a family, Cypress Springs had no claim to fame. A small Southern town that relied on agriculture, mostly cattle and light industry, it was too far from the beaten path to ever grow into more.
The city fathers liked it that way, Avery knew. She had grown up listening to her dad, Buddy and their friends talk about keeping industry and all her ills out. About keeping Cypress Springs clean. She remembered the furor caused when Charlie Weiner had sold his farm to the Old Dixie Foods corporation and then the company’s decision to build a canning factory on the site.
Avery made her way down the deserted streets. Although not even ten o’clock, the town had already rolled up its sidewalks for the night. She shook her head. Nothing could be more different from the places she had called home for the past twelve years—places where a traffic jam could occur almost anytime during a twenty-four-hour period; where walking alone at night was to take your life in your hands; places where people lived on top of each other but never acknowledged the other’s existence.
As beautiful and green a city as Washington, D.C., was, it couldn’t compare to the lush beauty of West Feliciana Parish. The heat and humidity provided the perfect environment for all manner of vegetation. Azaleas. Gardenias. Sweet olive. Camellias. Palmettos. Live oaks, their massive gnarled branches so heavy they dipped to the ground, hundred-year-old magnolia trees that in May would hold so many of the large white blossoms the air would be redolent of their sweet, lemony scent.
Once upon a time she had thought this place ugly. No, that wasn’t quite fair, she admitted. Shabby and painfully small town.
Why hadn’t she seen it then as she did now?
Avery turned onto her street, then a moment later into her parents’ driveway. She parked at the edge of the walk and climbed out, locking the vehicle out of habit not necessity. Her thoughts drifted to the events of the evening, particularly to those final moments with Matt.
What did she want now? she wondered. Where did she belong?
The porch swing creaked. A figure separated from the silhouette of the overgrown sweet olive at the end of the porch. Her steps faltered.
“Hello, Avery.”
Hunter, she realized,