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shedding any light on the events that had led to Seamus landing up on the farm.
    The truth was, Seamus would never understand how he arrived at Zachariah’s.
Seamus walked through the dusty, shuttered house, opening windows and trying to take stock of what was now his. Since Mother’s Day, he’d been mostly ignoring this place, even if he’d made a couple of day trips to Cornfield and traipsed around the property. Now summer had arrived, and he had three weeks’ vacation. He was going to stay put and decide what to do with this sudden and surprising legacy.
How odd to be here without Zachariah. He’d died three months ago, and Seamus hadn’t known. There’d been no funeral. No visitation. The only thing Seamus could do was visit the grave—the plot Zachariah had arranged beforehand—and place wildflowers by the small gravestone.
Then Seamus returned and checked out the barn more thoroughly. During the years he’d worked for Zachariah, it had been filled with chickens. Eventually that had become too much work for him over the winter, and he’d sold them.
The vegetable garden was a mess, run wild with weeds, and Seamus’s first duty was getting one going for the summer. There were still a few things he could plant in July for a fall harvest. He also needed to fix up the fence that surrounded the garden and kept the animals, especially the deer, out.
Seamus sighed. He would probably have to sell, but it felt like a betrayal of sorts. Leaving the farm to Seamus must mean something, as if Zachariah had drawn him back here for a reason, and it was up to Seamus to figure it out.
That evening, after a day of cleaning and gardening—and that didn’t touch any of the heavy lifting, he knew—he fell asleep on the couch. He couldn’t bring himself to use Zachariah’s bed yet. The lumpy couch had been where he’d always slept. When he closed his eyes, he could imagine Zachariah was in the bedroom, snoring lightly.
Seamus dozed off.
It wasn’t noise that woke Seamus, he didn’t think, but a kind of awareness as his eyes flew open and his body turned rigid in the dark. The softest of breathing could be heard. Out of seemingly nowhere, someone loomed over him.
Seamus leapt up, or tried to, his feet getting tangled in blankets. The shadow didn’t attack. It retreated swiftly and silently. Seamus reached under the couch for that hammer he never failed to sleep with here—Zachariah had suggested it long ago, when echoes of the night of terror made Seamus uneasy. When he raised the hammer, the shadow responded by demanding, “Where is my grandfather?”
The question shocked Seamus fully awake, and he froze, trying to make sense of the intruder and his words. Instead of an answer, Seamus wheezed, unable to articulate anything, still wondering if an attack was plausible. When the shadow stayed where it was, unmoving, waiting, Seamus found himself lowering his weapon, and the only thing he could think to say was “Can we turn on the fucking light?”
The voice turned harsh. “ Why isn’t Zachariah here?”
Seamus gripped the hammer more tightly. Zachariah hadn’t said anything about grandsons—apart from that damned horse, maybe—but on the other hand, the concern in that voice sounded genuine.
Clearing his throat, Seamus pitched his words as casually as possible. He wanted everything to remain calm. “I’m going to turn on the light, okay? Because I’m finding it real hard to have this conversation with a near-invisible stranger in the dark.”
Silence was his answer, which Seamus took as a yes, and he reached for the lamp by the couch. When it produced its circle of light, he squinted at a man standing across from him, long arms hanging at his sides, shoulders bent with grief, face set to receive bad news.
The intruder guessed Zachariah was dead but somehow hadn’t heard it officially. He needed confirmation, perhaps hoped for a reprieve. A reprieve was not something Seamus could give.
He swallowed and spoke