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Annie reht It had been abandoned then; every brokenhad held jagged bits of shadow and ht She and Nick had ridden their bikes here, ditched the, broken house

I’onna own this house someday, Nick had said, his hands shoved deeply in his pockets

He’d turned to her, his handsoht She hadn’t even seen the kiss co, hadn’t prepared for it, but when his lips had touched hers, as soft and tentative as the brush of a butterfly’s wing, she’d started to cry

He had drawn back, frowning Annie?

She didn’t knoas wrong, why she was crying She’d felt foolish and desperately naive It was her first kiss—and she’d ruined it

After that, he’d turned away fro time, he’d stared at the lake, his arone up to hiet home It was the first and last time he’d ever kissed her

She brushed the hts on the here and now

Nick and Kathy had fixed up the old house—the ere all in place, and sunshine-yellow paint coated everything Hunter-green shutters bracketed each , but still the whole place lookeduntended

Last year’s geraniums and lobelia were still in the flower boxes, now a dead, crackly bunch of brown stalks The grass was un to fur the brick ay A dirty ceantuan rhododendrons

And still it was one of the rass was as green as emeralds and as thick as chinchilla fur; it swept away froe of the lake Behind the house, swollen clouds hung suspended in a sky hammered to the color of polished steel

Annie tucked her purse under her ar the white porch steps At the oak door, she paused, then took a deep breath and knocked

No answer

She was just about to turn ahen she heard the slow shuffling of feet Suddenly the door swung open, and Nick was standing in front of her

She would have recognized him anywhere He was still tall, over six feet, but time had whittled the football star’sa shirt, and the dark, corrugated muscles of his stomach tapered down into a pair of bleached Levi’s that were at least two sizes too big He looked as tough and sinewy as old leather, with pale, lined skin stretched across hollowed-out cheeks His hair was ragged and unkerief—had sucked its color away, left it the silvery hue of a nickel when struck by the sun

But it was his eyes—an eerie, swiaze flicked over her, a cop’s look that missed no detail, not the brand-new tomboy haircut or the newly purchased small-town clothes Certainly not the Buick-size diamond on her left hand “Annie Bourne,” he said softly, uns “Lurlene told me you were back in town ”