The rain had been coming down for five days now, and the creek behind his house crested last night. By dawn, the brown, churning water had encroached another twenty feet into his backyard. If the rain didn’t let up soon, he figured by midnight it would overtake the deck, where in summer, he kept the barbecue and lawn chairs. It was hard to believe that roaring monster was the same creek he’d swum in with his kids when they were young. The same creek where he caught that eight-pound largemouth bass—the one no one had believed him about. The same creek where he and his wife had gone skinny-dipping after getting drunk the day their last child went off to Ohio State. That had been ten years ago now and he still smiled every time he walked by that deep swimming hole. He figured if he was going to die, he’d just as soon it be here, where he’d raised his family.

He’d found the second note last night when he came home from his Lions Club meeting. It was on plain notebook paper and had been left in his mailbox. You’re guilty. He’d known it was coming; he hadn’t been surprised. What had surprised him was the fear. He was only fifty-four years old, and frankly, he wasn’t through living yet. But what could he do? Go to the police? Tell them a dead woman was sending him notes?

He hadn’t seen her since that night in his driveway. He’d never admit to it, especially to the others, but he believed in ghosts. In fact, he knew they existed. He’d been seeing little two-year-old Tessa for years. On occasion, he still saw his wife, too, only the way she’d looked before the cancer ate her up. And so when he saw Wanetta Hochstetler, standing in the driveway, looking at him with that accusatory expression, he hadn’t questioned his eyesight, blamed it on the bad light, or even doubted his sanity. He accepted it as truth because he’d always believed that sooner or later, a man paid for his deeds.

That didn’t mean he wasn’t going to go down easy. He was a fighter by nature, and by God he’d just as soon live for another twenty or thirty years. He wanted to pass this house and property on to whichever of his children came home to Painters Mill, once they realized the Holy Grail wasn’t in Dallas or Sacramento or Atlanta. So far none of them had been takers, but they would. Sooner or later, everyone came home.