Page 59 of A Song for Another Woman

"I have a face. Most people do."

"The one where you look a little constipated."

I push the invoices away. "Everybody keeps talking about the house."

"I'd be lying if I said I hadn't heard things."

"Did you see it?"

"No."

Too fast.

"June."

She sighs and closes the office door. The diner noise softens to plates clinking and voices droning. "I drove by," she says.

Something hot and foolish flashes through me. "When?"

"Yesterday."

"And you didn't tell me?"

"I didn't know how."

That's the first honest thing anyone has said to me all day, and I'm not ready for it. I sit back. "Is it really..."

June looks down at the pencil in her hand, rolling it once between her fingers. "Yeah," she says softly. "It is."

My throat goes tight.

June steps closer. "You don't have to go look."

"I have the show tonight," I say.

June studies me. "That's not an answer."

"It is if you respect evasive language."

"I don't."

Her gaze drops to my stomach before she catches herself. "You feeling okay?"

My hand moves low, pressing over the small curve beneath my sweater. There's not much there, not enough for anyone else to notice unless they're June. "I'm fine," I say.

"You don't have to prove anything by making yourself hurt."

I stand carefully. "I'm not going because I owe him. I'm going because if this town is going to keep putting a ghost in front of me, I'd rather see whether it has walls."

I wait until dusk. Dusk is kinder and half-hidden, the hour when people are home eating dinner or pretending they remembered to thaw chicken.

Mill Creek Road curls away from town, past the old feed store and the church with the signs that make sense every other week.

Then the trees open, and there it is.

For a second, I can't make sense of it. The house is bones. Framing, subfloor, temporary stairs, and skeletal walls rise against a lavender sky. There's no siding yet, no paint, no windows, and no life tucked into the corners. It's just wood and nails.

And still, I know it.