eBook ISBN 1-55410-307-2
Print ISBN 1-55410-306-5

Welcome to Whiterock, Oregon,
where nothing is quite what it seems...

She raised her head at a faint sound from the road. Listening, she heard another, then a third. For a brief moment, she felt the urge to flee indoors, as she would have in Seattle, where the night was no longer safe.

But this was Whiterock. Anyone walking along its gravel streets was a resident, someone she’d probably known all her life. She was all but invisible, hidden in the shadows of her front porch. The gibbous moon’s pale light could reach only halfway up the steps.

He appeared out of the night, silhouetted against the star-studded sky. She recognized the profile--sharp, with a strong nose and stubborn chin--the shoulders, wider than most men’s. She would have known it was he, even if she hadn’t seen him, for his very presence sped her heart’s pace, robbed her of breath, sent waves of heat through her body until each nerve ending quivered, waiting to be stimulated.

Her mouth went into motion before her brain was in gear.

"Nice night for a walk," she called.

He stopped, dead still. Turned. Peered into the dark, although she didn’t know who else he expected to see sitting on her front steps at eleven at night.

"Come walk with me." His voice was velvety, enticing. "It’s too nice a night to waste."

Sally didn’t acknowledge the mental voice that told her she was setting herself up for a fall. She just smiled and said, "Just a minute, while I check on my father."

Pop was sleeping soundly. Surely, he’d be all right if she escaped for a little while. He’d never awakened once his pill took effect.

She grabbed a sweater from the hall tree and stepped back outside.

"The creek’s running high," Gus said when she joined him at the edge of the road, "and the bats are hunting in the park."

He took her hand, and once again the contact shot through her body like a jolt from a live electric wire. She did her best to ignore it, and forced her voice to remain steady.

"I used to go down to the park when I was a kid and listen to the creek sing."

"We had a brook," he told her as they walked along Fifth Avenue, "on my grandfather’s farm. It had some ordinary name--Hayden’s or Hardin’s or something--but to me it was always the Singing Brook because of the way it sounded as it bounced along on its rocky bed."

His voice was soft, thick with memories. It lacked the harsh note she’d often heard in it before.

"Hackberry Creek used to be dammed for a small grain mill," she told him. "My great-grandfather built it. The rocks that make it sing are all that’s left of the dam."

The mill had been torn down long before she was born, but somewhere, in a box in the attic, were old sepia-toned photographs of it when it ground all the grain for Whiterock, Harper and Westfall.

Their footsteps slowed as they approached Main Street. At this time of night there was no need to watch for traffic, but both stopped and looked both ways before crossing.

The elk’s antlers held sparkles of moonlight at their tips. It stood tall and stalwart, guarding the entrance to the park as it had for almost three-quarters of a century. Sally was glad someone had decided to restore it.

I wonder why I didn’t hear about it.

"Do they ever have concerts there in the summer?" Gus waved in the direction of the old bandshell.

"No, not anymore. It’s not..." Sally looked again. She would have sworn she’d seen gaping holes in the stucco facade the last time she’d been here, but the roof was intact, the facade unbroken. Oh, the paint was streaked, and the two old-fashioned light sconces held only broken globes and gaping sockets, but those could be easily fixed. "Not for a long time," she amended.

I’m not crazy. I just wasn’t paying attention!

Available in electronic formats from FICTIONWISE
and in Trade paper from Zumaya Publications.