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  A wild lawn sprung up on both sides of the driveway, more closely resembling a wheat field than a yard. Grass, weeds, and wild bushes dotted the landscape between skeletal, leafless trees. It was all at least hip-height and probably hadn’t been cut in years. The lawn jungle hid the worst of the house from the casual passerby. I got a good look at my childhood home when the grass finally parted. Angry, helpless tears sprang up and stung my eyes.

  The house was a Craftsman bungalow, two stories, with lots of front windows and a brick fireplace. I used to think it was one of the nicest houses in Franklin, even nicer than some of the homes built in town—until the hoard spilled from the inside of the house to the outside and maintenance stopped occurring with any regularity.

  The next thing I saw was a VW bus parked beside the house, without wheels and mounted on cinderblocks, its interior packed with junk. The front porch was listing and the roof collapsing. A blue tarp had been erected over the front door to protect it from leaks, and more boxes and plastic containers stood beneath that, sentries to the front door. All the windows were blocked, either with curtains or boxes. Beyond the house, scattered in piles, were parts and appliances and bicycles and things I just didn’t recognize for the rust and weeds.

  It was both better and worse than I’d expected.

  The structure seemed sound, but I hadn’t seen the interior of the house yet and I dreaded it. I pinched my nose and dispelled the tears, unwilling to cry over this mess any more than I already had, and got out of the car. It was warm for December, but I zipped up my coat anyway—for mental protection as much as physical. I already had on a pair of boots, jeans tucked in, and three pairs of rubber gloves stuffed into my coat pockets. I snapped a pair on as I trudged up to the front door.

  I had a key, but it wasn’t necessary. The police had broken the front door down to get at my mother’s body. The door leaned in its frame, barely held up by strips of police caution tape.

  My mother hadn’t died of any particular illness or malady, beyond her own mental disease. She’d tripped one day, hit some boxes, and they fell over on her. Trapped both her legs, and being both sixty-two and overweight, she hadn’t been able to get up or get them off. She died of dehydration twenty-four hours before the mailman noticed she hadn’t collected in a few days and called the sheriff.

  Her cause of death had been my worst nightmare come true. Even worse than discovering, at this critical time in my own personal life, that she’d willed her entire mess to me. And why everything I owned was in two suitcases in my car next to my mother’s ashes.

  The smell hit me when I reached the tarp. Pungent, sweet, cloying—the odors of death and decay and of rotting things. My rational brain knew the stink had existed long before my mother died on the floor, but it didn’t stop a flicker show of images from assaulting my mind. Images of Debbie Alston, my mother, dead and bloated, lying in her own waste in the same sea of rot she’d lived in for more than three decades.

  That wasn’t quite right. The rot didn’t really happen until I went away to college, escaping their hoarding problem by disappearing into something else—something that became much, much worse. Then the dishes stopped getting washed, the refrigerator stopped being cleaned out, and no one could be bothered to haul trash bags to the town dump. The first time I returned to visit during Christmas break at college, freshman year, I cleaned and hauled trash. Then again during spring break. Between freshman and sophomore year, I stayed in Michigan for the summer, working and taking classes, so I didn’t see them again until the following Christmas. It was the last visit before I met Martin.

  After that I didn’t go back until Dad’s funeral two years ago. I just couldn’t stand the memories, even if I’d thought it was safe to come to a place Martin could track me to. Home was gone. A disaster had taken its place.

  I couldn’t walk under the tarp. And I really didn’t want to go inside that house.

  Tires crunched up the seashell driveway, and I spun around, heart pounding. I wasn’t expecting anyone. The only people who knew I was in town were Penny Connor, the realtor, and the very grumpy woman at the crematorium.

  “Oh God,” I said to no one. Martin had found me—he’d been trying for six months. He knew where I grew up. If he’d seen the obituary somewhere, he’d put two and two together, and he’d know where I was. My guts clenched.

  Over the sea of grass, I spotted a blue work van heading toward me, growing larger by the second. I dashed back to my car on shaky legs and grabbed the keys out of the ignition. The keychain had a small can of mace attached, and I tucked that end carefully into the palm of my hand. Instinct told me to hide. I had plenty of places to burrow into and disappear, but I couldn’t seem to move.

  The van parked perpendicular to my car. A door opened and shut, and a man came around the front. It wasn’t Martin Palone. My entire body felt lighter, like someone had lifted a wet blanket off me and let me breathe again. But this man was still a stranger on my land, and I didn’t let my guard down. He was in the neighborhood of my age, a little taller than me, with a shock of dark-brown hair and wide, thickly lashed eyes. He wasn’t handsome, exactly, but had a boyish charm to him, especially when he smiled. It released a pair of dimples that were incredibly appealing.

  “You must be Cole Alston,” he said. His voice was lightly accented but not local to this part of North Carolina. It was more northern and hard to pinpoint on only five words.

  “Yes, I am,” I said.

  “Jeremy Collins. I own Lost Treasures Antiques in town.”

  I shook his outstretched hand, tempted to relax a bit under that beguiling smile. Tempted, but I didn’t. He seemed like someone perfectly at ease in his own skin, which made me all the more self-conscious of the mess in and around me. “Nice to meet you.”

  “I’m sorry about your mother. She came into the store sometimes. She was… a nice lady.”

  His hesitation made my lips twitch. “She was definitely interesting, and thank you for your condolences, but I’m sure you didn’t drive out here just to offer them.”

  “No, you’re right. I wasn’t sure how long you’d be in town, and I wanted to talk to you.”

  “About?”

  “This.” He waved his hand at the hoard, and his eyes lit up. He didn’t see the tragedy in it, or the horror.

  “What about it?” I waited for the insults, for the inevitable slew of “how could you let this happen?” tirades I knew were waiting for me. I’ve heard variations on them my entire life.

  “Like I said, I own an antique store, and I’ve come out here a few times trying to buy things from your mother.”

  I burst into laughter, unable to help myself. Trying to buy something from my mother, whether it was a diamond tiara or a bag of rotten apples from the Big Bag grocery, was like trying to pan for gold in the Atlantic—pointless.

  At least Jeremy seemed to see the humor in it, because he never stopped smiling. “Yeah, exactly. But folks in town still talk about your father and what a keen eye he had. There are treasures on this property, some things that could make you a decent pot of money, and I want to help you sell them. For a commission, of course.”

  “I was just going to have a yard sale or something.”

  “You could do that, but I’ve got connections to dealers in three states. Depending on what we find, you could get a lot more money for the antiques by going through me.” He cocked his head to the side like we were buds sharing a joke. “You can still yard sale the other stuff.”

  I studied him; he seemed sincere in his loose jeans and cowboy boots and brown cotton coat. The solution to one of my biggest problems had just driven up in a big blue van. All I had to do was ask the Wizard for my courage and trust Jeremy not to screw with me.

  Not an easy task, considering I’d spent eight years being screwed with on a daily basis by someone who was supposed to love me.

  “What kind of money are we talking about?” I asked.

  “I’ll show you.”

&nbs
p; We walked through the weeds to a pile of machinery near the barn, twisted and rusted, and I didn’t see much to be saved. Jeremy tugged on a pair of work gloves, reached in, and spent a few minutes wrestling something out of the mess. He produced a bicycle frame, missing its seat and chain and tires, but otherwise intact.

  “Do you know what this is?” he asked.

  “Enlighten me.”

  “It’s a Columbia from the 1950s. Intact, it would be worth a lot more, but some collectors will shine up parts and restore them. This frame alone could get you a hundred dollars.”

  I stared at him. “For that?”

  “For that. And this is only the first thing I saw. Who knows what else we could uncover in that barn, or those sheds?”

  I saw the hunger in his eyes, the desire to go hunting for other treasures. It made him seem almost boyish, a kid on the verge of a trip to his very favorite amusement park. I just saw the dollar signs and an extra pair of hands getting me out from under this hoard.

  “Okay.”

  He blinked. “Really?”

  “Yes, okay. We’ll need to arrange some sort of contract, though. I don’t want any confusion over your commissions or labor or whatever.”

  “That’s fair. Why don’t we hammer it out over dinner at the Sow’s Ear.”

  “Dinner?”

  This was my first dinner offer in years, and I had no clue how to take it. No one in this town knew I was gay. I hadn’t come out before I left for college, and I hadn’t told anyone on my occasional visits since. Not even my parents. Martin had been a “friend from school” and then “my roommate.” And Jeremy didn’t strike me as being particularly queer.

  Then again, I’d spent the last decade perfecting the art of not looking, so my own personal gaydar was pretty damn inaccurate.

  “You do eat dinner, don’t you?” Jeremy asked.

  “When I can afford it” very nearly slipped out. Instead, I said, “Yes.”

  “Good. It’ll give you time to decide what you need me for, and I can make some phone calls. I know a few guys in Ohio who’d love to come down and pick through—”

  Panic set my heart fluttering. “Wait, no.”

  His eyebrows arched. “What?”

  “Look, I don’t… this is all, um—”

  “Overwhelming?”

  “Shameful.”

  I couldn’t believe I’d just said that. Out loud. To a stranger.

  Jeremy nodded, more thoughtful than anything else. At least he wasn’t blatantly judging me for my family’s awful secret. “You don’t want a lot of strangers poking into your personal life.”

  I didn’t know if he was really that observant, or if he’d seen hoarding shows on television. All that mattered was he got it—even if he didn’t know the comment extended far beyond the hoard in front of us. “Right, I don’t.”

  “This is a lot of stuff for one person to haul out on their own.”

  “Welcome to my world.” I jacked my thumb at the house and the countless hours of work waiting for me inside.

  He slipped his hands into his rear jeans pockets and rocked back on his heels, head tilted to the sky. “How are you going to haul all of this to the dump on your own?”

  “I hadn’t really thought about it.” Truth—and something I didn’t know how to solve without more money in my pocket. Some of those bags would be filled with rotten food, and they weren’t going anywhere near my car.

  “Then meet me for dinner at the Sow’s Ear, at six o’clock, and I’ll have a proposal for you.”

  “Jeremy—”

  “If you don’t like my ideas, you won’t hurt my feelings. Promise. Just give me a chance to make this work for both of us.”

  Something in his manner made me want to trust him. He seemed completely genuine, open, and reassuring. I didn’t trust him, but I wanted to. And it was just a proposal over a working dinner at the best barbecue place in town.

  A little voice in the back of my mind said it was only fair to tell him his dinner companion wouldn’t be joining him in ogling the waitresses. I told that voice to shut the hell up, because it wasn’t really any of Jeremy’s business. “Okay, dinner at six.”

  “Excellent.” He stood straighter, hands coming out of his pockets. “See you then.”

  “Hey, wait,” I said as he turned to go. “Don’t forget your bike frame. If dinner doesn’t work out, it’s yours to keep.”

  With a dimpled grin worthy of any movie star, he hefted the rusty frame and stowed it in his van. I stood by my car until he’d driven away. Even if Jeremy only found half a dozen valuables in that sea of junk, his help would be worth it. Worth it to help buy me out of the financial noose slowly tightening around my neck and get me far, far away from Martin Palone.

  Chapter Two

  JEREMY’S visit gave me a new perspective on the junk piles outside and in the exterior buildings, and I spent the next two hours investigating. I found more bicycles, more tools than I could name or understand the need for, boxes of car and motorcycle parts, oil cans both full and empty, metal signs advertising everything from gas stations to pickles. With no idea how to sort the valuables from the trash, I mostly succeeded in spreading the hoard into a wider mess around the yard. It was almost fun.

  Almost. In the back of my mind, I knew this wasn’t my only job. Sooner or later, I’d have to brave the house, and nothing about that task would be fun.

  Another problem reared its head when that morning’s coffee started banging at my bladder, insisting on release. I stared at the back door to the house for half a minute. Even if I got into the house, the chances of finding a working bathroom were slim to none. And on the off chance I could get to the bathroom, I couldn’t imagine I’d be able to go through the door, much less that I’d find a working toilet.

  The lesser of two evils was watering a tree in the December chill. Toilet arrangements hadn’t occurred to me before beginning this project, just like figuring out how to haul all that trash hadn’t crossed my mind. I came into the project with blinders on, hoping to escape my own personal shit storm for a few days, and I was paying the price.

  Jeremy’s assistance and the potential earned income might well be a godsend.

  I spent the rest of the afternoon sorting the mass of boxes and plastic tubs by the front door, working until I’d exhausted myself. Ninety percent of the contents were garbage. I piled the cardboard boxes to one side for disposal—watermarks, the stink of mildew and mold, and sagging sides were all I needed to see. The tubs took a little longer, because they were full of clothes. Half of them ended up in the trash pile; the rest became the base of my yard sale pile. All in all, it was good progress, even if I did look up in a panic every time the hum of a car engine passed on the main road, one word looming in my head like a warning klaxon: Martin.

  Therapist number two said that one day I’d stop jumping at shadows and expecting him to show up out of nowhere. She didn’t know, even back when I was seeing her, that he was still following me, calling me. He tried to find me for a solid year after I left, and then silence for six months. I’d actually settled into a job and rented a room in Pittsburgh. Until he called me out of the blue five months ago, begging to talk to me. I packed up what fit in my car and ran.

  Again.

  I never got to tell the therapist that I still jumped because there really was someone in the shadows.

  Four o’clock loomed. I added my gloves to the trash pile, sanitized my hands, then headed back to town. The only motel within twenty miles was an old, family-owned setup half a mile outside of town. It had twelve rooms, all along a single, narrow lot, and a big Traveler’s Inn sign reminiscent of Route 66 neon gaudiness. I’d called yesterday to reserve a room—one thing I wasn’t taking a chance on was having to sleep at my mother’s house—even though there wasn’t much need. One car sat in the lot when I pulled up, and I bet dollars to donuts it belonged to the manager.

  I got a key with no fuss. The girl at the desk didn’t know me or recogn
ize the last name on my license, so she probably didn’t connect me to Debbie Alston. My room was in the middle, number six. The décor was straight out of The Golden Girls, complete with wicker headboard and pastel bedspread, but it was clean and smelled like Lysol. My two suitcases, my mother’s ashes, and the box of books went into the motel room. I had enough time to lock myself in the bathroom so I could shower off the smell of the hoard and then change into clean clothes before my dinner meeting with Jeremy.

  Most of my clothes were chosen out of necessity—warmth, long-lasting, neutral colors, easy to wash, their ability to hide bruises—or stuffed into the suitcase in haste, so I didn’t have many nice choices. I didn’t want to stand out, but I also didn’t want to look like I’d put too much effort into looking nice. This might be a working dinner, but it was the first time in a long, long time that I’d had dinner with a good-looking man. I chose my best jeans—the only pair without holes or worn spots—and a simple green button-up. The girl at the thrift store where I purchased it had said it brought out the green in my hazel eyes, and I had agreed. Two dollars well spent, even if I’d had to admire the effect solo. I combed my short blond hair into a simple style—it was so much easier to maintain than the longer hair Martin insisted I keep.

  He liked to grab and yank. Now my hair was much too short to do either.

  The motel was within walking distance of the Sow’s Ear and, despite the chill in the air, I walked. It sprawled through a large, airy building with its own barbecue pit in the back. Everything was cooked on-site, year-round, and the pulled pork had been featured in a cooking magazine a few years ago. As soon as I stepped outside, the scent drew me forward, stomach rumbling. I hadn’t eaten since breakfast.

  The parking lot was full, the dinner crowd already there. Half the dining room was on a screened-in porch, half inside the building proper. In the summer, it was kept cool by a dozen ceiling fans. Since it was winter, the screens were covered with canvas tarps, and two stone fireplaces had been lit. One fan at each end circulated the warm air, but the dining room still held a slight chill.