couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d just turned loose a lot of howling spooks and specters.
Logan lifted the
Our Family
album off the top, shaking his head at the naive optimism that title expressed.
He turned back the cover, and felt a pinch in his heart at the inscription he found on the first page.
For Jake and Teresa, on your wedding day. With love, Cassie.
So, Cassie had been the optimist who’d bought the
Our Family
album. She’d lived in Stillwater Springs all her life, so she had to have known what Jake was like. Maybe back then, unlike now, she’d believed that wishing could make it so.
Thick-throated, Logan pulled back a chair and sank into it, knowing he wouldn’t be able to look at the pictures stuffed into that album while he was standing up.
Sidekick rested his chin on Logan’s thigh and made a sympathetic sound.
Logan braced himself, turned the first page.
Right off, he was proved wrong—there
was
at least one smiling photo of his dad. Jake, very young and bearing a strong resemblance to Dylan, clad in what he would have described as a monkey suit later in his life, gazed joyfully out of a cheap wedding portrait. Beside him, Teresabeamed, a dark beauty, proud of her new husband and her mail-order wedding dress.
Logan’s eyes smarted again.
He curved the fingers of his right hand, touched her face, almost expecting to feel the soft warmth of livingflesh. Teresa couldn’t have been older than seventeen, if that. She’d been pregnant with her first and only child, but if either she or Jake regretted that, their smiles gave no sign of it.
On that day, at least, they’d both expected to lead long, happy lives.
Teresa had probably believed her love would change Jake, inspire him to give up his wild ways.
Maybe Jake had believed that, too.
Swallowing hard, Logan turned the page.
There were more pictures of the wedding—old-fashioned snapshots with yellowing, zigzag edges, some in color, some in black and white, all of them fading, slowly disintegrating.
As painful as it was to look at those images—Logan could barely manage it without flinching—he knew he couldn’t let them be lost. As soon as his desktop and scanner arrived, he’d preserve every one, store them on a disk.
For now, all he could do was look.
Had he ever seen these pictures before? If so, he didn’t remember.
Slowly, he turned another page, and then another.
Teresa in a polka-dot sundress, posing beside a tree, magnificently pregnant.
Jake, grinning as he sudsed an old jalopy, the spray from the hose frozen forever on the paper.
And then the first baby picture.
Logan looked down at his bald and patently unremarkable infant self. Teresa was in the picture, too, still in her hospital bed, holding her baby and glowing as if she’d just given birth to a second savior.
Jake’s arm was visible—it must have been his, the hand resting on Teresa’s shoulder.
Dear old Dad,
Logan thought. Already easing out of the picture.
After that, he couldn’t turn any more pages.
He closed the album, noticing that it was jammed at the front, and empty at the back. Put it back in the box and snapped on the lid, as if to corral the ghosts again, trap them in plastic.
But there was no containing the retro-spooks now, he knew. They were out for good, and sure to haunt him.
Wishing he’d never come back to Stillwater Springs Ranch, never opened this particular can of worms, Logan pushed back his chair and stood. Ran one forearm across his face, and almost stumbled over Sidekick, who’d been lying patiently at his feet, waiting for whatever came next.
The jolt put things into perspective.
If he hadn’t headed for home, he wouldn’t have found the dog. And as short as their acquaintance was, Logan couldn’t imagine how he’d gotten along without Sidekick for company.
He frowned. Briana called her dog Wanda. Maybe he should have given the critter a “people” name, like Gus or Bob. Something, well,
chummy.
Logan still
Logan lifted the
Our Family
album off the top, shaking his head at the naive optimism that title expressed.
He turned back the cover, and felt a pinch in his heart at the inscription he found on the first page.
For Jake and Teresa, on your wedding day. With love, Cassie.
So, Cassie had been the optimist who’d bought the
Our Family
album. She’d lived in Stillwater Springs all her life, so she had to have known what Jake was like. Maybe back then, unlike now, she’d believed that wishing could make it so.
Thick-throated, Logan pulled back a chair and sank into it, knowing he wouldn’t be able to look at the pictures stuffed into that album while he was standing up.
Sidekick rested his chin on Logan’s thigh and made a sympathetic sound.
Logan braced himself, turned the first page.
Right off, he was proved wrong—there
was
at least one smiling photo of his dad. Jake, very young and bearing a strong resemblance to Dylan, clad in what he would have described as a monkey suit later in his life, gazed joyfully out of a cheap wedding portrait. Beside him, Teresabeamed, a dark beauty, proud of her new husband and her mail-order wedding dress.
Logan’s eyes smarted again.
He curved the fingers of his right hand, touched her face, almost expecting to feel the soft warmth of livingflesh. Teresa couldn’t have been older than seventeen, if that. She’d been pregnant with her first and only child, but if either she or Jake regretted that, their smiles gave no sign of it.
On that day, at least, they’d both expected to lead long, happy lives.
Teresa had probably believed her love would change Jake, inspire him to give up his wild ways.
Maybe Jake had believed that, too.
Swallowing hard, Logan turned the page.
There were more pictures of the wedding—old-fashioned snapshots with yellowing, zigzag edges, some in color, some in black and white, all of them fading, slowly disintegrating.
As painful as it was to look at those images—Logan could barely manage it without flinching—he knew he couldn’t let them be lost. As soon as his desktop and scanner arrived, he’d preserve every one, store them on a disk.
For now, all he could do was look.
Had he ever seen these pictures before? If so, he didn’t remember.
Slowly, he turned another page, and then another.
Teresa in a polka-dot sundress, posing beside a tree, magnificently pregnant.
Jake, grinning as he sudsed an old jalopy, the spray from the hose frozen forever on the paper.
And then the first baby picture.
Logan looked down at his bald and patently unremarkable infant self. Teresa was in the picture, too, still in her hospital bed, holding her baby and glowing as if she’d just given birth to a second savior.
Jake’s arm was visible—it must have been his, the hand resting on Teresa’s shoulder.
Dear old Dad,
Logan thought. Already easing out of the picture.
After that, he couldn’t turn any more pages.
He closed the album, noticing that it was jammed at the front, and empty at the back. Put it back in the box and snapped on the lid, as if to corral the ghosts again, trap them in plastic.
But there was no containing the retro-spooks now, he knew. They were out for good, and sure to haunt him.
Wishing he’d never come back to Stillwater Springs Ranch, never opened this particular can of worms, Logan pushed back his chair and stood. Ran one forearm across his face, and almost stumbled over Sidekick, who’d been lying patiently at his feet, waiting for whatever came next.
The jolt put things into perspective.
If he hadn’t headed for home, he wouldn’t have found the dog. And as short as their acquaintance was, Logan couldn’t imagine how he’d gotten along without Sidekick for company.
He frowned. Briana called her dog Wanda. Maybe he should have given the critter a “people” name, like Gus or Bob. Something, well,
chummy.
Logan still
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