Mind Games

He stopped, looked at his overcrowded, makeshift studio. “Well, it’s given me something. Yeah, I’m sure I don’t want to record any of them myself. Do that, sure. Thanks. Later.”

When he set the phone down, he thought the hell with the laundry, the hell with setting up books or anything else.

He sat down at the piano, and got to work.

* * *

Thea never watched when Rem beta tested one of her works in progress. First, he never shut up when playing, and his constant commentary unnerved her. And last, making herself scarce gave them both space.

Instead, she put on hiking boots, clipped on a water bottle, and packed a can of bear spray as a precaution.

“I’ll be back in an hour,” she called out.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. What the … Frigging snakes? You know I hate frigging snakes.”

Because she did, she smiled as she went out the back door with Bunk.

“Gotta face your fears, right, Bunk? And if he gets out of the snake pit, he’ll gain a power boost.” She pulled her braid through the back of her ball cap, snugged it on. “He’s going to need it.”

The howl, the spate of curses that followed her out the door turned her smile to a grin.

Snakebite, she thought. Better find that antivenom.

As she walked by the coop, the girls clucked at her, their heads tipping, turning. A downy woodpecker pecked greedily at the suet in the feeder. The wings of a spotted yellow butterfly spread as it drank from one of her flood of purple coneflowers.

“Look what we’ve got,” she said to Bunk as she turned.

Her not-so-little cottage with its windows open to the day, the porch swing ready whenever she was. Flowers just everywhere, exactly as she’d always wanted.

The thriving vegetable garden meant she’d need to harvest some, do some canning over the weekend. Cook up some red sauce, too, for fall and winter.

She’d take baskets in to Maddy at the clinic to share the bounty. And to Ty.

Maybe she’d see if Braydon wanted to help her harvest. She’d always loved filling a basket from Grammie’s garden as a child.

He was young for it, but she could make it fun.

She heard him having fun often enough the way his laugh carried up on the air. Sometimes a mix of laughs that told her he had his friends over.

She’d heard Ty’s music, the piano, charging notes or drifting ones. Or the undeniably sexy slash and clash of an electric guitar.

In the steaming early days of August, she’d walked with them twice, when the timing meshed, to her grandmother’s. And once, in the blazing sun near where they’d first met, shared another long, lovely kiss.

But between his work and her own, with little boys and obligations, they remained, primarily, neighbors.

Probably for the best, she decided, as she climbed the beaten trail. He had complications, she had complications. And while his brought joy, hers cast long shadows.

While she knew she could tell her grandmother anything, she held back on the subject of Ray Riggs.

Why spread those shadows over people she loved?

He couldn’t touch her, not really. However many times, in however many ways, he planned escapes, dreamed of finding her and doing to her what he’d done to her parents, and worse, she didn’t believe he could or would travel beyond those prison walls with anything but his mind.

He’d never walk out of these woods as he had in her dream.

He could only taunt her, make her afraid. He could only spread shadows like a shadow himself.

“Head games,” she muttered to herself. “That’s all he has. And I’m better at games.”