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in each other’s arms, with Joni’s head resting on Ed’s broad chest. As his fingers idly twisted her hair and stroked her ear just the way she liked it, she said, “You do remember that you promised to give Marty a job if they ever moved here, don’t you?”
    “Oh, Christ,” Ed groaned, but it was a far more exaggerated groan than he would have uttered if he was really angry. “That was years ago! You’re not going to hold me to that, are you?”
    “A promise is a promise,” Joni said, snuggling closer and running her fingers down her husband’s naked thigh.
    “Not fair,” Ed protested. “Not fair at all.” But as she rolled over and kissed him, he knew it didn’t matter if it was fair or not.

Chapter 5
    ETH BAKER GAZED AT THE HOUSE THAT HAD STOOD at Black Creek Crossing for more than three hundred years, his eyes fixed on the second story window that had shown up blurred in the photograph he’d taken only a few hours ago. But now, in the fading light of the early evening, it looked perfectly normal; just an ordinary window in a house that, though one of the oldest in Roundtree, didn’t look that much different from any of its neighbors.
    Not that it had many neighbors. Even though the actual address was 122 Black Creek Road, there weren’t many other houses this far out. Everyone in town merely called this one the house at Black Creek Crossing because it was supposed to be the house where the man who ran the ferry lived back when the stream was wide enough and deep enough that horses and wagons couldn’t just ford it. An overgrown path behind it still led through the forest to the old crossing spot, and there were even a few rotting timbers near the stream that could have been the remains of an old ferry landing.
    Black Creek Road itself was a narrow lane that had never been completely developed, even after more than three centuries, which was one reason it had always been one of Seth Baker’s favorite places. There was natural beauty to the area, with the dense forest and the meandering stream that ran through it. But even more important to Seth was that few people lived in the area and there were no families at all with children his age. When he was playing along the banks of the stream, or exploring the thick undergrowth of the maple forest, he didn’t feel lonely. Ever since kindergarten—maybe even longer—Seth had always felt like he wasn’t part of the crowd, that somehow he was set apart from the rest of the kids.
    It hadn’t helped that he’d always been so shy he could barely bring himself to talk to anyone who didn’t speak to him first.
    Or that he’d always been small—even most of the girls in his class were taller than he was.
    Or that he’d hated sports.
    So while the rest of the boys played soccer, softball, football, and hockey, first in the Pee Wee League, then Little League, then on school teams, he had played alone. During the winter months, he lost himself in the books in the old Carnegie Library, which had dominated the north side of the town commons for more than a hundred years; when the weather was good, he’d explore the woods that surrounded the little town.
    But no matter how much exploring he did, he always found himself coming back to Black Creek and the Crossing. He knew almost every inch of the area—where the best swimming hole was, in which pools trout were most likely to be lurking, which rocks were the turtles’ favorites for sunning on summer days. He’d caught turtles and frogs and polliwogs, and every variety of fish that lived in the stream, and taken them home to put in aquariums and terrariums. Once, he’d taken an old enamel bowl and put it in the backyard, filled it with stream water and grasses he’d pulled from the stream bed, then stocked it with polliwogs and waited for them to metamorphose into frogs. He hadn’t thought it would take long, since they’d already been sprouting legs when he caught them, but two months later, as summer