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“ ‘Is that what he told you? Did he also tell you he was already married? I did some checking.’

  “ ‘He did,’ Necey acknowledged. ‘But he’s going to get a divorce so we can be together.’

  “At that point Bunnell grunted and ran up and down the cabin, waving his shotgun, a giant presence that cast a pall over the room. He stuck his head into the second bedroom, then went into our bedroom, rummaged through our closet, and came out with Necey’s luggage. A pitiful two pieces, taped together. Her whole life was in those suitcases.”

  “ ‘You were going to run away without telling me or Pa? Did your sisters know? Of course they did. You tell your sisters everything. You three are as thick as thieves. Does everybody in Confrontation know how you made me look like a fool?’

  “Necey came out from behind Moss and faced her brother.

  “ ‘Bunnell, this isn’t about you,’ she said. ‘This is my life, and I want to be with Moss.’

  “ ‘You don’t know what you want. Did he force himself on you? Did he violate you? And you just a child? He’s making false promises. Don’t yield to temptation. Sister, don’t let him exploit your weakness. Fornication is the devil’s work.’

  “The only devil in the room that day was Bunnell Brady. And his evil, ugly side was exposed. He seemed to be warring with himself, trying to exert some control over his actions, but it was a losing battle.

  “ ‘It wasn’t like that,’ Necey implored. ‘We’re in love. And I’m not a child. I’m a grown woman.’

  “Bunnell choked out a laugh. ‘You’re too young to know anything about love. I thought you was pure, the last, best thing on this mountain, and I didn’t touch you like I wanted to, but turns out you’re nothing but a whore like the rest of them women. If you wanted a man, you could have had me. I loved you, Necey. Look what you done to us.’

  “Necey was clutching Moss and crying, trying to reason with Bunnell. ‘Bunnell, you know this isn’t right. You’re not right. If you really love me, you’ll let me go. Let us go. I want to live my life.’

  “At that, he slapped Necey across the face, swatted her with the force of a grizzly bear, snapping back her neck, stinging her cheek, causing more tears to stream from her eyes.

  “ ‘Leave her alone,’ Moss shouted. He was trying to be brave, but I could tell he was scared. ‘I am going to marry her. I love her more than anything in this world.’ He pushed Necey behind him again to shield her.

  “Bunnell’s voice was chilling when he addressed his sister. ‘You git on home. Get out of my sight. You sicken me. I’m gonna think long and hard on your punishment. We’re gonna pray on it together when I get back there.’

  “Necey was defiant. ‘I’m not leaving, not without Moss. I’m carrying his child.’

  “Confirmation of his sister’s pregnancy seemed to fill Bunnell with raw anguish and a mighty rage that hadn’t worked itself out yet, and he reared up.

  “ ‘I’m going to break both of his hands for touching you,’ threatened Bunnell. ‘He’ll never paint again.’

  “ ‘Bundy, no! I won’t let you.’ Necey screamed and pleaded.

  “ ‘You won’t let me?’ echoed Bunnell. ‘How are you going to stop me?’

  “In what seemed like one motion, he grabbed Necey and flung her against the wall, raised up his shotgun, and put a bullet right between Moss’s eyes. Bunnell was an excellent shot. I’d seen him shoot birds right out of the sky. Blood spurted out of Moss’s head. Necey screamed and kept screaming and shouting his name. She ran over and held him so tight, but we could all tell he was gone. There was nothing anyone could do for him.

  “Bunnell bent down to grab Necey’s arm, and she reeled away from him.

  “ ‘Get out! You’re a monster! I never want to see you again. I hate you!’

  “Bunnell scooped up the rifle, and he was so agitated he would surely have shot Necey if Will hadn’t picked up a cast iron skillet and bashed him in the head, and he slid to the floor. Necey was moaning. I think she was in shock. I know I was. It was the worst day of my life. I tried to get Necey to move away from Moss, but she wouldn’t let him go.

  “ ‘He’s gone,’ I told her.

  “Bunnell was starting to come around, and I think he began to regret what he’d done, or he was figuring a way to fix it, make things right again between him and Necey. But then he got up, the light of evil in his eyes, and stared at me and your grandfather. ‘If you ever tell a living soul about what you seen here, ever, I will hunt you down and kill you and everyone in your family. I’m going to clean up this mess, and I don’t want to see you Florida people around here ever again.’

  “I pulled a sobbing Necey away from Moss, wrapped her in my bathrobe, and your grandfather and I took her with us in our car. We drove down the mountain and parked our car and sat there until we could breathe again. We had our eye on the cabin, and several hours later, when Bunnell came out, we drove back up, gathered our things together, and packed up the car.

  “ ‘You need to come with us,’ I told Necey. ‘Away from this place.’

  “ ‘No, I got to stay. This is my home.’ Necey was still in shock, but she was adamant. ‘I can handle Bunnell. Now I have this over his head, he won’t bother me. There’s nothing he can do to me. I’m dead inside already. I deserve whatever’s coming to me. It’s my fault Moss is dead.’

  “ ‘Necey, none of this is your fault. All you did is fall in love. It’s the most natural thing in the world. Your brother needs to be arrested and put in prison for what he did.’

  “ ‘Nothing will happen to Bunnell. Nothing ever does. He’s killed before. He’s even bragged about it. It makes no difference what he does. He thinks the Lord protects him.’

  “I held Necey tight. ‘Sweetheart, you’re welcome to stay in this cabin as long as you like.’ I wrote down my phone number and address in Fort Lauderdale and pressed it into her hand and told her, ‘Call me if you ever need anything.’

  “ ‘I want you to take Moss’s paintings,’ she said. ‘He has dozens of them in the closet. Take them and keep them safe. I don’t want Bunnell to get his hands on them. That’s all I have left of Moss.’

  “ ‘What about that one?’ I asked her, nodding to the painting of Necey in the living room.

  “ ‘I’m going to keep that one.’ Necey was defiant.

  “I handed her the key to the cabin, saying, ‘Don’t go back home. Stay here and stay away from your brother.’

  “Then she thanked us. That was the last time I saw her. The last time I saw our cabin. Of course we talked on the phone over the years, and she wrote me. But when I heard she had passed, that’s when I sent Amelia up to sell the place. I thought Bunnell would be dead by now, or locked away behind bars.”

  “You can’t kill a mean son-of-a-bitch like Uncle Bundy,” Alec said.

  “Do you know what happened to Moss’s body?”

  “No one knows. Bunnell removed it, wiped all traces from the cabin. Moss must be buried somewhere on the mountain, but Necey had no idea where. Bunnell never told her. As far as I know, they never spoke of it again.”

  “Alec, what are you going to do?” Amelia asked, her face etched with concern.

  Alec rubbed his jaw. “Right now I want to go back to the hotel, have some dinner, and cancel our plane tickets. We need to drive these paintings home.”

  He turned to Katherine. “Thank you, ma’am, for telling me the story. I appreciate it. When Uncle Bundy is gone, I’d like you to come back up and see your cabin before we sell it. All these years, and you’ve never been back? I’m going to fix it. Somehow, I’m going to make it right. Find my father and give him a proper burial.”

  Katherine got up and hugged Alec. “Are you okay?”

  Alec nodded. “It’s a lot to take in, but I’m glad I know. It answers a lot of questions.”

  “Your mother raised a fine young man. She would be so proud of you. And so would your father.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  “My grandmother likes you
,” said Amelia, as she and Alec sat on lounge chairs on the hotel balcony overlooking the ocean. The ocean was Amelia’s go-to place. The comforting sound of the waves crashing onto the shore soothed her down to the roots of her soul. She could listen to that melodious sound forever. Being near the ocean refreshed her. It was her constant. The sky was midnight black, and all the stars were shining like diamond pinpricks in the heavens. She couldn’t imagine living on the top of a mountain, landlocked, with no ocean, no lakes, no water for miles around. The forest provided another kind of peace, but it didn’t even come close to the magnificence and appeal of the ocean. She was unashamedly a Florida person.

  “I like her, too,” Alec said. “I appreciate all the help she was to my mother. She knew both of my parents. She witnessed their love story. I feel a special connection to her.”

  “And now my dad wants to move her to Eternal Gardens. I mean, it sounds all shiny and great, and they call it independent living, but it’s only one step up from assisted living, and then it’s a straight shot to a nursing home.”

  “And she doesn’t want to move?”

  “No. Her life has been at her condo. She lived there with my grandfather. It’s going to be strange for her to be all alone somewhere else, even though she’ll be closer to my dad. He worries about her all the way out here. If she’s closer to my parents, they could visit her more often.”

  “Have you seen the place?”

  “No, but my dad says they have everything there, all in one building. Doctors and physical therapists come to you. They even take blood in your room. She’ll get all her meals there. There are round-the-clock activities, a piano player, a pool, and a gym, even a library. Anything a senior could want.”

  “But it’s not home. Is she going to go?”

  “She doesn’t see that she has a choice. I feel bad for her. I hear that once an elderly person moves, the change is often too much to handle, and they start a downward spiral.”

  “Could she move in with your father?”

  “I think they’d kill each other the first day. You took care of your mother and lived with her for the last years of her life. How was that?”

  “It wasn’t easy. I was at work all day, so I had help from the relatives. That’s why I don’t feel I can leave Confrontation. Everyone pitched in and helped me care for my mother. I can’t just desert them. And they helped raise me. I owe them a lot for that.”

  “If you could go off somewhere, live somewhere else, where would you go?”

  Alec looked out at the ocean wistfully. “It is beautiful here. I can see why you love the ocean, but I wouldn’t want to live any other place except Confrontation.”

  Amelia sighed. She sensed something big might be happening between them, but that was a deal breaker. There was no way under heaven she was ever going to live in Confrontation. Whenever she pictured her life, it was here, near the ocean. Confrontation was out of her comfort zone in every way.

  Alec took her hand, and she felt a definite spark, a warmth, a connection like they could tell each other anything, especially sitting in the dark, staring anonymously out at the ocean.

  “I always thought there was something unnatural about the way I was conceived,” Alec began. “You know, all those jokes people make about hill people. That somehow there was some truth to them. You’ve made them yourself.”

  Amelia bit her lip. “I’m sorry for saying those things. I was wrong.”

  “Whenever someone, a woman, got too close, I shied away because in the back of my mind I thought I was somehow less of a man or that I was tainted, you know what I mean? That I couldn’t or shouldn’t bring children into the world, with my background. That I’m not good enough.”

  Amelia’s grip tightened. Her heart was breaking for Alec.

  “I mean, I didn’t think my mother had an ongoing relationship with her brother, but I did think that maybe one night something happened, that he snapped and forced himself on her, and that I was the unfortunate result of that unholy union. Whenever my uncle came around, my mother always made excuses to be somewhere else. She feared him. You could see it in her eyes. The fear and the loathing and the sorrow. And now I understand why.”

  “Oh, Alec,” Amelia whispered, her voice hardly audible under the sound of the relentless surf.

  “But now that I know, I feel like I have the right to ask you to stay with me, to see where this thing between us goes.” He gripped her hand tighter. “That is, if you feel it too.”

  Amelia broke contact and looked out at the ocean but continued their talk.

  “Alec, there is something between us,” Amelia admitted, but she had to be honest. “It’s just that I can’t see myself living in Confrontation or raising a family there.” Maybe if she had met him in another place, almost any other place. She couldn’t reconcile living the rest of her life there. Lovers isolated in paradise was one thing, but all she felt was stuck, in Confrontation.

  Even in the shadows, Alec’s face reflected defeat. “If you love someone enough, couldn’t you live anywhere with them? Love conquers all, isn’t that what they say? Isn’t that the way it’s supposed to work?”

  She turned to him. Even love couldn’t conquer Confrontation. “Could you ever see yourself living in South Florida?”

  Alec shook his head. “I would never want to, with all the traffic congestion and the stifling heat. I need open space, cool, clean air. Room to breathe. I feel confined here in the city.”

  “Well, then, I’d say we’re at an impasse.”

  Alec took her hand again, but this time he faced her. “Couldn’t we just agree to disagree for tonight? Pretend we might have a future together?”

  Amelia smiled. “I think I could do that.” She desperately wanted to give it a try.

  Alec pulled Amelia up with both hands, walked her back into the hotel room—he had splurged on a suite with an ocean view—and led her over to the bed.

  He started undressing her. “Tonight, we’re on neutral ground. We’re not in Confrontation and we’re not in Florida. We’re just two people falling in love.”

  “Careful, counselor. You just used the L word.” Amelia’s heart was doing somersaults in anticipation.

  “I’m aware of that,” Alec said, touching her naked body, causing her to shiver in the air-conditioned room. Alec’s body heat was warming her, and she was moist and ready for him. He managed to remove his clothes between drugging kisses as he levered himself above her.

  “I love you, Amelia Rushing, weather issues and all,” he chanted before he drove inside of her. She responded with equal need and passion.

  Amelia was caught up in the moment, the “L” word on the tip of her tongue. And Alec was doing glorious things to her with his tongue, driving all coherent thoughts out of her head. It was more than just great sex, more than the fact that Alec was a great guy. Was it love? Or lust? Or both? All she remembered was screaming his name. She’d never done that before.

  Making love with Alec was so much more than she’d ever imagined. And, she realized now, she was in love with him. How had it happened so suddenly? So completely?

  Alec collapsed on top of her, and then he rolled off, but he never let her go. He wrapped his legs around her in a tight cocoon and fell asleep under the duvet cover.

  She relaxed to the sound of his steady breathing, punctuated by the ebb and flow of the ocean, and she thought this room must be the most perfect place on the planet.

  What’s-His-Name wasn’t a snuggler, she could remember thinking as she drifted off to sleep.

  Chapter Eighteen

  It was a sunny day. Blue skies covered Confrontation like a soft blanket, which put her in a positive mood. Not a rain cloud in sight. The air was cucumber crisp and daisy fresh. No humidity hovering like the oppressive heat in Miami. That’s one thing she wouldn’t miss about the city. She hadn’t consulted her weather app once on the way back to Confrontation. She didn’t need to. She had Alec.

  Dragonflies were lazily diving. B
irds were serenading from the surrounding trees. What was that song by The Carpenters, “Close to You”? Amelia was feeling lazy, too, relaxed, and satisfied, because she and Alec had just had delicious sex before breakfast and because she was near him. Those silly love songs weren’t so silly after all. Everything seemed brighter and more in focus when you were in love. There was no help for it. She had fallen hopelessly in love with a hillbilly. The next thing she knew, she would be romanticizing Confrontation.

  But what would it be like years from now, when the afterglow wore off, when she was haggard from hanging out the wash and cooking and cleaning with two or three “young’uns” hanging onto her tattered skirt hem? She could glorify it and pretend she was Daisy Mae Scragg and Alec was Li’l Abner. He certainly had the body for it. And she had explored every yummy inch of his 6-foot, 3-inch frame last night and again this morning. They had only been together a few times, but each time they learned more about each other—bodies and mind—and fell deeper in love. Each knew what the other wanted. Each knew the rhythm of the other. Alec was sexy as hell, and they couldn’t keep their hands off each other. But one day she’d wake up from her post-coital haze and realize she was a worn-out mountain woman, more like Ma Kettle than Elly May Clampett. And then she’d have regrets.

  Their ride back to North Carolina had been smooth and uneventful. They had talked and laughed the entire way like they’d been friends and lovers for life. They shared meals and found they had a lot in common. Spending all that time in the car only cemented their relationship. And they couldn’t wait to get back to the cabin to stretch their tired muscles and make love. Amelia didn’t remember ever being this happy, not with her former fiancé, not with anyone.

  Alec checked his email as they sat side by side in companionable silence, daydreaming in their matching Adirondack chairs on the front porch of the cabin. Alec broke the reverie.

  “We’ve got some nibbles on the property. We should probably follow up.” His melodic voice signaled, “I really don’t want to do anything about this, but—”