Whispers by Erin Quinn

husband?”
    He’d meant to ask in a more roundabout manner. Maybe start with a casual, Does she look like your husband? or Can you see her father in her? But somewhere in the passage from thought to words, the question became what it was: blunt and insistent. It was none of his damn business, but when had that ever stopped him?
    “ I don’t have a husband,” she said.
    And then she turned and began switching off lights, followed closely by her canine sentry. She checked the door and then started up the stairs. End of conversation. He got it.
    “ It’s wild being back here, isn’t it?” he said, picking a safer topic as he followed her and the enormous dog up.
    She glanced at him from over her shoulder. “It’s hell.”
    There was no subtlety to the subtext that went with her words. Her eyes said it all. She hated his guts and wanted him out of her house. Who could blame her? If he’d known she was going to be here, if he’d known about her grandmother, her daughter, maybe he wouldn’t have come. Maybe. But he hadn’t known, and now that he was here, now that he’d heard Eddie’s wild account of what had happened at the ruins, he had no intention of leaving.
    He didn’t believe in all the psychic bullshit Chloe dealt; the only spirits in Diablo Springs came from a bottle at the Buckboard. Yet, his instincts told him that there was a story here and even though he’d admitted to himself that he’d come to settle his past, if he happened to stumble over inspiration and a viable story—hell, he’d take it.
    So what if Gracie Beck didn’t want him to write it? His name was already blackened as far as she was concerned. Nothing he could do about it now. Obviously, she hadn’t moved on—honestly, he never thought she would. She had every right to think he was shit. But he planned to stay until he got what he wanted—whatever that might be.
    “ What happened to your music, your group?” she asked, lowering her voice as they reached the upstairs landing where everyone would be asleep.
    He looked up, surprised that she’d known about it, surprised that she’d asked. “Basically, we sucked.”
    “ You had one hit.”
    “ One being the operative word.”
    He paused, wavering between letting the casual conversation continue or grabbing the bull by the balls and bringing up the one topic that he knew was on both their minds. He went for the balls.
    “ Matt’s dead.”
    The look on her face made him wish he’d thought it through better. But she had to know, and there was no nice way of saying it. Better to get it out in the open than dance around it for however long they were together.
    “ He’s dead?” Her voice managed to sound injured and impregnable at once.
    “ Shot himself out at the springs a few months ago.”
    She didn’t say, “good,” but she thought it. He knew she thought it. And even though she had the right, it pissed him off. His brother had been an idiot. He’d been selfish and, God help him, he’d done things ... he’d done horrible things. But he wasn’t born that way; he hadn’t begun as a monster. There was no explaining that. It sounded like a bleeding-heart excuse even to him. It was the truth, though. The bad in Matt had been forged, not inherent.
    “ He’d only been back in town for a few weeks. He spent most of the past ten years behind bars.” Robbery, assault, parole violations. Matt couldn’t live by the rules. He couldn’t even acknowledge their existence.
    Her eyes widened, but he saw no sympathy in them. Again, he didn’t expect there to be. Reilly rubbed the back of his neck, looking anywhere but at her face. An awkward pause filled in the shadowed spaces between them. He figured the best thing he could do was leave it at that. But he couldn’t. He caught his lower lip between his teeth and glanced up at her from beneath his lashes, still wanting to say something—something that wasn’t so damned volatile. But there were no words that could make up for