“It’s possible to serve without presidential ambition, you know. I’m happy where I’m at. And it’s not like we’re a bustling metropolis.” He rolled his eyes and opened the front door.

“Until summer.” I paused, my gaze drawn to the mat under my feet. I’d sworn never to cross it again.

“Yeah, those extra fifty thousand people who pop up tend to complicate things, but that income keeps the town running the rest of the year, so I’d call it an even trade. Now, were you thinking of coming in, or were you going to sleep on the porch?”

I’ll never go back to Alba.

I’ll never get out of the service.

I’ll never listen to Dad blame me again.

I’ll never again lay eyes on Willow Bradley.

Compared to breaking that last promise I’d made to myself, the act of stepping over this threshold was cake.

I walked in before my common sense could stop me. After all, how the hell was I supposed to help Dad if I wouldn’t go in the house?

Xander shut the door behind me as I stood in the entryway, taking in the changes around the house I’d grown up in. Home. It had been one while Mom was alive. Little by little, the feeling had drained from the house in the way water dripped from that slow leak in the upstairs bathroom. We’d all been too distracted by other things to grab a wrench. The love had bled out in a steady trickle that we’d left unchecked out of sheer apathy.

Sullivan had cared.

Sullivan had died and taken the last sluggish heartbeats of this corpse of a house with him.

“I’m going to put this back in the safe.” Xander motioned to the shotgun.

“Does he still have the key?”

“He handed it over after we left the clearing. You know, he’s only lucid about fifty percent of the time anymore. You should go talk to him while he’s really…him.”

“Right.” Because the real him was a peach.

Xander bounded up the stairs, disappearing at the landing.

I kicked off my shoes out of habit and put them against the wall.

How can I keep these floors clean when you boys insist on tracking in half the mountain?

I smiled at the memory before my eyes caught on the rug just down the hall that hid the bloodstain we’d never been able to scrub out of the hardwood. The place Dad sat, holding Mom as she’d bled out after the cougar had gotten the best of her. She’d begged him to stay with her, to let her die where they’d made a life.

He’d respected her wishes and said it was a miracle she’d lasted while he’d carried her home, that she’d never make it down the mountain to the hospital.