We have an exclusive excerpt of Joely Skye‘s upcoming MM release, Running Wild.
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“Seamus!”
He made it a point not to roll his eyes at his mother’s call. “Up here, Mom.”
“Where’s Lanie?”
“On my lap while I read a book to her.”
His mother came into the bedroom to smile dotingly upon her only granddaughter. “You’re so good with children.”
He set his jaw.
But his mother had learned not to lament that Seamus was not going to marry a wife and have two kids and two cars and two jobs. She smiled brightly. “Such a good uncle.”
“If I was such a good uncle, you wouldn’t be checking up on me when I’m looking after my niece.” He sometimes thought his mother expected him to forget what he was doing and leave Lanie to wander out into traffic or off a cliff—if cliffs existed in Manitoba.
An impatient two-year-old tugged his hair, and he went back to reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar and the days of the week. As he spoke, his mother talked over him, saying he was a good brother to take Lanie on Mother’s Day and a good son…
“Mom. Enough! I feel appreciated. Thank you very much.” They didn’t talk about him being gay often, and he’d only ever brought one boyfriend home. In the years since he’d “run away” as his mother described it—he’d considered it more of a going-on-an-adventure disaster—his mother went to excessive ends to assure him he was part of the family.
Which became a bit wearying at times.
“On Thursday…” he continued, and his mother retreated to her kitchen. Once Lanie fell asleep and was settled in the traveling crib, Seamus also made his way downstairs.
His mother looked up from her baking. “Oh, I forgot to tell you. A letter came for you this week.”
He raised his eyebrows. He’d moved out three years ago, and apart from some alma mater junk mail, Canada Post had stopped delivering here.
She handed him a thick brown envelope, and it looked official. When his gaze fell on the address, his heart sank.
“Cornfield.” What an appropriate name, he thought vaguely, for the town surrounded by farms, many of them indeed growing corn. As he ripped the envelope open, he hoped he was wrong, that this didn’t mean what he thought it meant.
“Oh, honey, is it bad news?”
He swallowed as he scanned the letter that announced the death of Zachariah Smithson. While he wondered why he was getting this official announcement and regretted that he hadn’t visited there for two years, he kept scanning the letter until his eyes locked on his own name, Seamus O’Connor.
His brow furrowed, he shook his head as if his eyesight was wonky, and he read it again.
His name was still there.
His father stomped into the kitchen, took one glance at Seamus and landed a palm on his son’s back. “What’s wrong?”
It was hard, but he forced out the words. “Zachariah died.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” said his father while his mother repeated, “Oh, honey.”
“But.” Seamus frowned, trying to make sense of the words and failing. “There’s some mistake.”
“Oh?” said his mother.
Seamus turned and looked at his parents, feeling at a complete loss. “It says he’s left the farm to me.”
Why would Zachariah do this? The question came to Seamus again and again. Sure, he’d spent three summers working at the farm after their strange meeting. And sure, they’d had a good rapport. But they’d drifted apart afterwards, Zachariah deciding he didn’t need any more summer staff, as he described Seamus, and Seamus taking a job in the lab.
Seamus should have made more effort to see him, but Zachariah hadn’t been that welcoming at the end. Seamus’s presence had agitated the old man, which became quite the deterrent to visiting, and Seamus had stopped coming by the farm at all. Had tried to learn to love his job.
He didn’t love it. Didn’t hate it either. However, he couldn’t keep the farm and the job, and he needed to support himself. The commonsense thing to do was sell Zachariah’s land. Yet something in him balked at that.
After getting the news, Seamus had tried to find out if Zachariah had any relatives and came up empty-handed. He’d also searched for the damned horse that Zachariah wouldn’t admit had anything to do with the night they’d met, but who had visited a few times in the summer, to Seamus’s utter fascination.
Horses aren’t only wild in Alberta, Zachariah had claimed, as if that explained anything at all. For the black stallion had seemed tame, if independent.
He’s fond of you, Zachariah would add with satisfaction because the horse would gaze at Seamus in some apparently meaningful way. Seamus rather doubted the horse had any feelings for him whatsoever, given their always brief meetings and given the horse wouldn’t allow itself to be patted by him, had shied away from contact.
The horse had on occasion seemed to pay close attention to Seamus’s voice and his questions—since the horse was the only creature Seamus was comfortable talking to about The Night—but it wasn’t capable of 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?”
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This book is available from Samhain. You can buy it here or here in e-format.
