when her father had remarried, moved back and reopened her childhood home. Until now. “I came up here tonight because—”
“Thanks, but I’d prefer not to know anymore about you,” he said.
“Are you always this disagreeable?” she snapped.
“Actually, I’m trying to be on my best behavior right now.”
“Really?”
“Really,” he said, wringing the water from his shirttail. “You should see me when I’m not.”
“No, thanks.”
“Did I mention that I’m late for a dinner engagement?”
“Then please don’t let me keep you,” she said.
He started backing away from her. “And please don’t thank me for saving your life. Really.”
“No problem. I hadn’t wanted to jump but now that I’ve met you I might change my mind.”
His laugh held little humor as he turned his back on her and stalked through the rain toward the parking lot and his pickup.
She headed for her car, still gripping the chunk of wood just in case he was a psycho killer and planned to double back. He didn’t. He went straight to his pickup, climbed in and a moment later the engine turned over and the headlights came on. He drove away without looking back as far as she could tell.
Her driver’s-side seat was soaked and so was she. Not that she wasn’t already chilled to the bone from everything that had happened.
She locked her car door, feeling scared and not sure why as she kicked up the heat. There was no other vehicle. Maybe the person who’d jumped from the waterfall had hidden her car somewhere. But why do that?
As Roz pulled out of the parking lot, tears stung her eyes. She hadn’t imagined the person in the yellow raincoat. And history was not repeating itself.
Chapter Two
Rain pounded the windshield, the wipers making a steady whap-whap as Roz drove the narrow road back out to the main highway. She didn’t see the pickup’s taillights. He obviously didn’t want her following him anymore and had sped off to avoid any further contact. Fine with her.
Stopping at the intersection, she looked through the rain for the detour sign she vaguely remembered seeing earlier.
It was gone.
Had he picked it up? He hadn’t seen the person in the yellow raincoat. Was it possible he hadn’t seen the detour sign, either? She shook off the thought. Why had he turned down the road to the waterfall then?
She hit the gas, even more anxious to get to Timber Falls. The night seemed too dark, too rainy, too isolated. She couldn’t wait to see the lights of town, to get to the house, to see that her father had returned so that all her worry had been for nothing.
The rainforest grew in a dark, wet canopy over the top of the narrow, winding highway. Rain splattered down through the vegetation, striking the windshield like pebbles as mist rose ghostlike up from the pavement.
A few miles down the highway, the trees opened a little, and she dug out her cell phone, saw that she had service and called 9-1-1. She related briefly what she’d seen at Lost Creek Falls to the dispatcher and left her cell phone number for the sheriff to call her back.
When the lights of Timber Falls appeared out of the rain and mist, Roz felt such a surge of relief she almost wept. Home—the feeling surprised her given why she’d left here. This hadn’t been home for ten years. Nor would it ever be again. But right now, she was overjoyed to finally be here, the one place she’d once felt safe and happy.
She drove down Main Street past the city offices, the Duck Inn bar, the Timber Falls Courier and the Busy Bee. The No Vacancy sign glowed red at the Ho Hum Motel and Betty’s Café was packed, a half dozen cars parked out front. That was odd. She frowned, wondering why everything was so busy given the time of year—and the weather. Something must be going on.
As she turned down the once familiar tree-lined lane, she felt as if time had stood still here as well. Anxiously she awaited her first glimpse of the large old house where she’d been raised.
She’d never understood why her father had hung on to the house given the painful memories. He alone had come here over the years, paying to see that the empty house didn’t fall into disrepair.
But as the structure came into view in her headlights, she was overwhelmed with emotion and thankful that he hadn’t been able to part with it. The house stood fighting back the rainforest, the towering roofline etched black against the night sky. She caught her breath at the sight of it. As a child she thought it a castle. Even now it seemed larger than life.
This had been home for her first seventeen years. It had been a fun, rambling place with lots of space to play and great hiding places. Her mother always had flowers growing in large pots on the porch and brightly colored curtains at the windows.
But Roz saw that the pots of flowers were gone—just as the brightly colored curtains were, just as her mother was.
Roz looked away, fighting the same sorrow she had for the past ten years, and hoped to see her father’s truck and camper parked next to the other cars in the open carport beside the house.
There were three cars. The new Cadillac her father had bought Emily as a wedding present and two new sports cars, a bright yellow one and a shiny black one. The yellow one belonged to Emily’s twenty-four-year-old daughter, Suzanne, the black one to her twenty-six-year-old son, Drew.
Roz felt a sliver of apprehension to see that the whole family was here. Her father obviously hadn’t returned. Was that what had brought Suzanne and Drew all the way in from Portland? Had something happened since Roz had talked to Emily?
Even more worried, Roz parked in front of the house and made a run through the rain to the porch. She stood waiting for her father’s new family to answer the bell. It felt so strange not to be able to just open the door and walk in. But the people who lived here now were virtual strangers. She’d only been around the new family on a few awkward occasions. Even her father had become a stranger the last six months since his quickie marriage in Las Vegas.
“Give Emily a chance,” her dad had asked after the wedding. “I know this happened pretty fast.” She should say so! “But please try. For me.”
And she was trying. Really.
She rang the bell and managed a smile, relieved to see the door opened by her newly acquired stepbrother Drew, the least objectionable member of her father’s new family.
“Hey, you made it. I was starting to worry about you,” he said, flashing her a big smile. Drew was blond, blue-eyed and drop-dead handsome if you went for that type. Roz didn’t. She found his classically featured face devoid of character with no sign that he’d experienced life, although he was only two years her junior.
Drew’s saving grace was the fact that he was the only member of his family who seemed to care one way or another about her. His interest in her definitely wasn’t romantic. Roz suspected he paid attention to her because it annoyed his mother.
He
