Taryn shrugged and took another bite. "Not a good one. He didn't come across as very likable. But then, would you if you were being accused of murder? Besides, he can be an a.s.shole. That doesn't make him guilty."

"True. I don't know. I've never met a murderer before," Matt mused.

Taryn snorted, nearly sending ice cream up her nose. "I have. And believe me, they come across a lot more normal than you'd think."

"Yeah, well, I am seriously considering not letting you out of the house again."

They were quiet, lost in companionable silence, the events of the night between them. Taryn still shuddered at the sight of Cheyenne's body in the raging fire. She'd been lying down, lifeless. Maybe it was symbolic. Or maybe it was a different fire. She was sure of one thing, though: she'd seen something she was supposed to.

"Maybe another trip through the house?" she suggested at last. "I know I've been through it a dozen or more times, but I can't help but feel like I'm missing something. Maybe I'm just not looking hard enough."

"I don't know. You're trying awfully hard. Don't stretch yourself too thin," Matt warned her, his eyebrows creased in concern.

"Yeah, yeah. I know."

"Did you see or feel anything?"

Matt stared at the ceiling light. It flickered off and on, a short in it or maybe a bulb trying to burn out. Taryn knew he'd have it fixed by morning. "I didn't see anything, but I felt something. Most of it came from you. I could feel you burning up, like you had a fever. And I couldn't let go. Not that I would," he added hurriedly, "but I don't think I could've even if I'd wanted to."

"I think it was because of you that it happened. I don't know if I could've done it on my own," Taryn admitted.

Matt was right, though. As much as she wanted to talk to someone else about what she'd seen and heard, it was probably best to keep it to herself for now. She'd never been good at playing it close to the vest but there was something off about the whole thing, and she didn't want to end up somewhere she shouldn't be. Again.

Chapter 21.

The Halloween party was in four days. She'd talked Matt into dressing up; he was going as a superhero. She didn't know which one. In fact, she kind of thought he'd made it up. She'd talked him out of baking up a storm, which was his reaction to getting any kind of invitation. Instead, he'd settled on some kind of handheld chocolate dessert thing and wine.

Taryn's cla.s.s ended at Thanksgiving break. After the party she'd have four weeks left. She was already itching to move on. She enjoyed teaching a lot more than she thought, but she also enjoyed moving around a lot and seeing new things. The students were all kind of doing their own things now, with her simply supervising. They were going on a field trip the next dayan old antebellum house on the outskirts of town that had partially crumbled from neglect. Most of them were looking forward to getting off campus.

Taryn was also nervous about the fact that she and Matt were settling into the cabin. She had to keep reminding herself that it wasn't their home, that it was as temporary as a hotel room. The confusion surrounding their relationship continued to grow. The night before he'd talked about quitting his job and moving to Nashville, but it had been in jest. At least, she thought it was. There was nothing for him to do there that came even close to his current job, and she didn't want to feel responsible for uprooting him and him possibly being miserable. She wasn't even sure she counted Nashville as her home anymore; she was rarely there.

Then there was the fact that when she looked into the future, she wasn't sure what she saw with him. Kids? She didn't think so. She knew she wanted them, eventually, but Matt was so organized and strict in his routine she didn't know how he'd react to a baby or toddler. He had five-year plans and ten-year plans. She barely knew where she was going to be from one month to the next. He hadn't mentioned marriage at all, although that was understandable considering his ex-fiancee had left him at the altar just two years before.

That morning, at breakfast, they'd gotten into an argument over their vague future. "I don't know where this is going," Taryn complained. It was hard to complain when the person you were directing your annoyance at had just cooked your breakfast, but she managed all the same.

"Why does it have to go anywhere?" he'd asked gently. "Can't we just have a good time and enjoy where we're at now?"

But Taryn wasn't sure she could. She liked knowing where things were going and what the future held, despite the fact she generally worked in the past.

"When we leave here," she pressed, "I'll go back to my apartment, and you'll go back to Florida."

"And it will make me sad to be apart from you when I'm used to having you around," he agreed.

Yet he offered no alternative and she didn't feel like his suggestion of moving to Nashville to work in a bakery, when he was currently making six figures, legit.

"Have you thought about getting married? Maybe making this permanent?" But as soon as it was out of her mouth she regretted it. Now he'd think she was pushing it and he might want to do it, for no other reason but that she'd suggested it. And she certainly didn't want that.

"I just don't know if I am ready to go through all that again," he explained. "I tried it once before, and it didn't work out."

"But that wasn't me," she'd sputtered. "And I've always been around." Well, except for those few years when they'd parted ways, angry at one another. But she would've gone to him at the drop of a hat if he'd needed her.

"I don't know. I'll think about it."

So Taryn had stomped off, angry and frustrated. He'd "think" about it? Like he had complete control over the relationship and got to make the decisions? But what did she even want anyway? With Andrew it was much simpler. They'd met, dated briefly, and both decided to get married simultaneously, laughing as they drove to the jewelry store where he'd picked out a ring after careful deliberation and proposed on the very same day. They were married four months later without much fanfare in a ceremony that was sweet and fun. There'd been no hesitation, no qualms, no cold feet, and no questions. She'd never doubted what she wanted to do and how she felt.

With Matt, she questioned it every day. Half of her wanted to say "this is it" and devote the rest of her life to him, the other half was disappointed in the fact that she didn't feel the bells and whistles and certainty she expected. But maybe she was just expecting too much. It happened.

With the day off, Taryn was making her last trip to the farmhouse. At least, the last trip to carry out any "research." She'd be back for the party and it was a nice walk, unrealistic to think she might not wander over there again over the course of the next few weeks. Miss Dixie was charged with a new SIM card. She was ready; Taryn made sure of it by giving her a strong pep talk before they left.

'I haven't been very successful at this, old girl. You're going to have to work a little harder, I'm afraid," she apologized to her camera before setting out. "But you can do it. If there's anything there, you'll find it!"

Miss Dixie had presented her with her usual droll expression, giving nothing away.

Matt was out on a supply run. In addition to the groceries and toiletries she'd asked him to pick up some more Tylenol for her. He was concerned that she'd already gone through the box of sixty he'd bought a week before. So was she, for that matter. The pain in her hips and legs was stronger; the pain in her head was sometimes unbearable. And she was uncharacteristically grumpy, probably from the lack of sleep she'd been getting.

Luckily, it was a pleasant day, almost sixty-five degrees, and the sun was high in the sky. The farmhouse looked inviting, the spot where they'd tried their ritual was unmarked. If anything horrible had truly taken place on the grounds, there were no visible signs of it now.

Feeling achy, but enthusiastic, she marched towards the front porch, Miss Dixie out and on and ready for action. Taryn aimed to walk through every room, snapping her photos in every single corner. She'd cover the entire house, twice if she had to, if it meant picking up on something she hadn't found before.

The front door opened immediately into a long hallway. A winding staircase rose up in front of her, with rooms on either side of the hall. A kitchen was at the end. She started with the foyer, snapping pictures the length of it and even poking her head inside the coat closetfull of spider webs and dust bunnies but little else.

The living room was large, with wide hardwood floors and a wood burning stove. The floors were stained and scuffed, but appeared st.u.r.dy enough. An old sofa, most likely a leftover from the eighties, sagged up against a wall. A couple of foldout chairs were scattered in front of it. The floor was littered with beer cans and paper plates that wild animals had cleaned off a long time ago. It was a sad sight, but it didn't appear as though the room had been vandalized. Taryn stood in the middle and slowly turned in a circle, snapping pictures as she moved, focusing on the sofa and chairs. If Cheyenne had come inside at all, there was a very good chance she'd been in that room.

The room on the other side of the hall was a bedroom. With the windows boarded up, it was dark and difficult to see, the only light being a few pale rays streaking in from the windows in the foyer. It was entirely devoid of furnishings, although there was some garbage in the middle of the floor. It looked like someone had taken the trouble to bag it up, but animals had gotten into it and ripped the bag open, scattering the contents. Miss Dixie's flash illuminated the room with each click, momentarily igniting it like a strobe light.

She closed her eyes, trying to let herself pick up on any negative energy in the room but felt nothing. It was just an empty room.

Moving on upstairs, she stopped at the top in the small landing and took some more shots. The floorboards up there were painted a murky ivory. Maybe they'd been white at some point. It was a nice little area and she could imagine a small bookcase, an easy chair in front of the window, a little library of sorts. The house wasn't in that bad of shape and could probably be fixed. Of course, Taryn thought every place could be fixed.

There were only three other rooms on the second leveltwo bedrooms and an unfinished attic s.p.a.ce. The bedrooms were small with low ceilings, the floorboards had large s.p.a.ces between them thick with grime and dust. One room was painted a bizarre neon green, the other a very dark brown. The brown room contained a dilapidated mattress, stained and threadbare. There were candles set up around it, their wax melted in puddles on the floor. She couldn't imagine some girl giving in to a guy and actually fooling around on the thing, but hormones would be hormones she guessed. Now that she'd turned thirty, she wasn't as adventurous as she used to be. Even the couch was pushing it.

Feeling a little queasy and hoping Miss Dixie didn't pick up on any kinky action she'd have to look at later, Taryn headed back down the stairs. A sound had her stopping in her tracks and she hesitated, one foot inches from the second stair. Holding her breath, she listened, waiting to hear it again. The house was silent, though, with nothing but her own breathing filling the empty s.p.a.ce. Had she really heard laughter? The tinkling of a female's voice floating through the downstairs rooms? She thought she had, but perhaps her mind was just playing tricks on her.

There were two rooms left downstairs, an extremely long kitchen and bathroom. She'd seen nastier things in her life, she was sure, but it was hard to remember them after peering into the bathroom. The old claw foot tub was stained and cracked, the toilet caked with a dark substance she hoped was mud and rust and not excrement. It was hard to imagine someone ever bathing their children in this room, using the peeling mirror to get ready for a party, or the old wallpaper ever being new and freshand Taryn had a pretty good imagination. If anything horrendous had occurred on the property, she truly hoped it wasn't in that particular room. n.o.body deserved that.

Standing back in the foyer, Taryn took a deep breath and gazed at the interior of the house once again. It was an old, simple farmhouse. There was nothing unique or interesting about it. She didn't feel any bad vibes or terror in the walls. But, yet, when she looked outside into the yard, something still felt off.

What was she missing?

Chapter 22.

All in all, Taryn had taken over one hundred fifty photos inside the old house. She hadn't realized she'd gotten so trigger happy in there. It took her more than two hours to sort through all the pictures on her laptop and, by the time she was finished, her lap was burning from the heat of the machine.

"Hey, those are pretty good," Matt remarked, peering over her shoulder. "Seriously. You should consider doing something with your photography."

"That's all the world needs, another person with a camera who thinks they're a professional photographer just because they can point and shoot," she grumbled. Taryn was a stickler for education; she reckoned it came from her parents who had both been academics. Although she had natural talent as an artist, she'd attended college and honed her skills and believed in higher education to cultivate whatever it was you had. These days it felt like a lot of people just wanted to take the easy route and go straight to millionaire or professional without putting in the legwork.

But she was thrilled, of course, that he liked her pictures.

"Anything?"

"Yes and no," she replied, going back to a folder she'd created with the images that bore a second look. "Pull up a seat, and I'll show you."

Matt scooched in next to her on the couch and peered into the computer screen. "Yeah, okay, I see what you mean about that one. Looks like it could be a girl there?"

The photo in question was taken in the living room, the angle pointed at the old sofa. Although it was very faint, there did appear to be an outline of a person lying flat on the sofa, gazing up at the ceiling. At first glance it could've been male or female and any age. The longer and harder you looked, though, the clearer the long strands of hair and swell of b.r.e.a.s.t.s became.

"Looks like it could be Cheyenne," Taryn agreed. "But it's hard to tell if she's okay. Her eyes are closed, but she could've been resting. Or it could mean nothing."

"What about the others?"

"Well, here's another one I took upstairs in the bedroom with the mattress. You can't see anybody or anything suspicious, but the candles are lit which leads me to think that has something to do with Cheyenne."

Sure enough, when she clicked on the image, the bedroom was illuminated by the flashing of the flames. The candles were newly lit and much taller than they'd been when Taryn saw them, leading her to suspect that they'd been taken to the house for that occasion and not items left over from a previous party.

"I don't know why she would've laid on that filthy thing, but there you go..."

"Maybe she didn't," Matt pointed out. "Maybe that's why she's not in the picture."

"Yeah, that's a good point. And here's the last one."

The last shot was taken in the living room again. There was nothing unusual about it to someone who had recently been in the house. Nothing was out of place, no ghostly bodies writhed in the middle of the floor, no puddles of blood seeped through the cracks in the boards, and no murder weapons were carelessly left behind. It was a wide shot of the room, taken from the foyer, and all you could see were the five chairs and the sofa.

"You're going to have to help me out here," Matt said after a minute of staring hard. "I don't know what I'm supposed to be looking at."

"Yeah, neither did I at first but I kept coming back to this one because something was bugging me. And then I figured it out." Using her finger, she pointed at each of the chairs. "See these? One, two, three, four, five. There are five chairs here."

"Yeah?"

"Well, in real life now there are only four. One is missing," she quipped smugly.

"Huh. Well, maybe someone brought their own and took it home afterwards? Just trying to play devil's advocate."

"I don't think so. See how the chairs all look alike? You have four regular matching dining room chairs and then this oddball here. The oddball is still there in the house. It's one of the matching ones that's gone. I mean, it's possible that it got broken or someone stole it. But I think there's a significance there. If there's one thing I've learned from Miss Dixie's pictures it's that she tends to show me things I am supposed to see, even if I don't understand it at the time."

"So you leaning towards any theories yet?"

"Maybe," Taryn contemplated. "Maybe. But I have to talk to a few people first."

"I never hooked up with anyone at a party," Emma insisted.

"Oh, okay. Is that what happened in the farmhouse?" Taryn asked, feeling like the older, pushy sister.

"Yeah, we called it the 'hookup house.' I never had a reason to go in there. I mean I've been, but just to kind of step in and look for someone. I didn't go in there that night," Emma explained.

Lindy was in cla.s.s so it was just the two of them on Emma's reclaimed couch. Emma had a litter of papers scattered around her, homework. She said she was preparing for an exam, and Taryn was sorry for disturbing her. She didn't plan on staying long but the female companionship was nice.

Emma had George Strait playing again, a nice change from the songs Taryn kept picking up on the radio. Although, in an earlier conversation when Lindy and Emma had asked Taryn what her favorite music was and she'd replied "country," they were confused when she began naming artists they'd never heard of. She'd spent fifteen minutes explaining her "holy trinity of female artists" (Tift Merritt, Allison Moorer, and Kelly Willis). The division between the radio artists and the alt-country artists seemed to be getting stronger.

"So how's college life treating you," Taryn asked, changing the subject from Cheyenne.

"Good I guess," Emma shrugged. "I think the second semester is easier. It's funny because I've lived here all my life but haven't had much to do with the college. They don't really have things for the community to be a part of."

"Have you met other people or do you mostly hang out with the kids you went to high school with?"

"I've met a few. I went out with some girls the other night. We had to go over to Jasper, you know, because our county is dry. I didn't get home until four in the morning," she giggled.

Taryn couldn't remember the last time she went out with "the girls," much less returned home at four in the morning. In college she'd done nothing but study and work.

It was on the tip of her tongue to blurt out the missing chair and burnt-out candles she'd seen, but something held her back. Emma acted as though Taryn's gift was not only okay but fabulous, but it still made her nervous to talk about it.

"Brad went in to talk to the detective in charge of the case," Emma said at last.

"Yeah, why?"

"He follows Travis on the social media stuff. Apparently Travis has been going on about how stupid local law enforcement is and some of his posts sound like he's bragging about a crime. Brad just thought the police should know."

"Yeah, that's probably a good idea," Taryn agreed. "Why would he do that, though? That's incredibly stupid."

"Yeah, well, welcome to our world," Emma laughed.

Driving back to the house, Taryn popped in her Bruce Springsteen CD and cranked up "I'm on Fire," as she sped down the town's small, quiet Main Street, past the county's single high school, and the abandoned cinema. She tried to imagine a thriving community, with people walking out on the sidewalks, teenagers lined up to buy tickets and popcorn, businesses with busy storefront windows instead of dusty "for sale" signs. It was difficult to see it.

The urgency of the music and pull of the desire made her drive faster, back to Matt. She really did feel like her skin was on fire, a pulsing in her head began to throb, whether from the headache she'd been having earlier or the thought of just seeing someone who knew her and loved her. For reasons she didn't understand, she felt desperate, frantic.

By the time she'd pulled into the long driveway and the Boss had long since moved on to "Dancin' in the Dark" she didn't feel like herself at all. There was a tingling in her arms, a weakness in her legs, and she felt like she was being lifted out of her body. Concentrating on the gravel in front of her, she willed herself to stay rooted to her seat, half-heartedly singing along with the music in an attempt to stay grounded to her body.

When, at last, she pulled up to the house she let out a tremendous sigh of relief. Matt was out on the porch, halfway down the stairs before she was even out of the car. The look of happiness on his face was immediately replaced by something she'd never seen on him before. But before she could open her mouth, or even take a step, the whole world turned black in front of her, and she could feel nothing but the continuous feeling of falling into total darkness.