The Lights on Knockbridge Lane (Garnet Run 3)

Adam had found his love for them by accident. Their elderly neighbor next door in Boulder had died, and her children hired a company to run a sale. Adam had gone over to offer his condolences to her daughter and instead found a new passion.

The world of estate sales was as particular as any, and as he went more often he learned the conventions of bargaining, of putting together a lot, of paying cash, of going on the last day of the sale for cut prices.

He also began to recognize many familiar faces at multiple sales. They were mostly, though not exclusively, white women in their fifties and sixties, and white men in their seventies, so he stood out.

But Adam had always stood out, so he was used to it.

Gus came crashing downstairs with several reusable totes on her arm.

“Ready!” she said, forgetting that she’d been feigning a lack of enthusiasm.

She skipped outside to the car and Adam followed her. His eyes were immediately magnetized to Wes’ house and he shivered at the memory of his orgasm the night before.

How perfectly firm and gentle Wes had been. Brutal and caring. Adam shuddered again, hoping he wasn’t flushing visibly.

“Daddy, let’s invite Wes!”

“Oh, honey, Wes sleeps really late. It’s only nine.”

Gus pouted at Wes’ house, and as if it saw her, the paper covering an upstairs window fluttered aside.

“Look, he’s awake!” She pointed. “Unless that was one of the snakes,” she mused.

“Oh god,” Adam muttered.

“Let’s ask. Can we please just ask?”

Adam really did want to see Wes. He wasn’t proud of letting his kid do the dirty work for him, but he also wasn’t above seizing the opportunities presented to him. Sometimes they were all you had.

“Well,” he began.

“Yay!” Gus cried, sensing his imminent capitulation.

Then off she ran across the street, after exaggeratedly looking both ways.

Adam sighed and followed her, texting a warning to Wes as he went.

“You didn’t ring more than once, did you?” Adam asked as he caught Gus up on the porch.

She blinked up at him. “Well. Twice.”

“We’ve talked about this,” Adam began, but before he could remind Gus, the door opened.

Wes was dressed and he was wearing sunglasses. He was holding a book and something that Adam, as a hardware store employee, really should’ve been able to identify, but could not.

“Hi,” Wes said. And even though Adam couldn’t see his eyes behind the sunglasses, somehow he knew Wes was looking right at him.

Gus bounced in place.

“Wanna come treasure hunting with us?” She held up the tote bags like they were a map where x marked the spot.

Adam opened his mouth to explain, but Wes said, “Yes.”

“You do?” Gus sounded as surprised as Adam felt and Wes looked. But unlike him, his daughter knew when not to question a good thing. “Yay, come on!”

And then she grabbed his arm to pull him outside.

“Sweetie, he might need a minute.”

Wes held up one finger and disappeared inside.

“Yay!” Gus crowed again, and hugged Adam.

Adam squeezed her tight and stroked her soft hair and tried to pinpoint why his heart was racing.

Excitement at spending time with this intriguing, lovely man? Yes.

But also...fear. In the space of two weeks, Gus already admired him. Already automatically included him in their plans.

And Adam—well, Adam knew what it was to fall fast and hard. He knew what it was to have a heart that gave itself away. And he knew what it was to have that heart treated without care.

You slept together one time! Don’t turn a hot night into a lifelong commitment.

But then Wes came outside, navy blue peacoat perfectly showcasing his broad shoulders, mouth looking like sweet temptation, and all Adam could do was cross his fingers that this didn’t end in devastation.

* * *

The first estate sale was a bust, but the second was gold. A farmhouse full of Western antiques and a two-story barn that was a picker’s paradise. Or, in their case, paradise for an eight-year-old who fancied herself a scientist and an actual scientist who seemed to see possibility in everything.

Adam left them to rummaging through the tools, screws, and bits of twisted metal in the abandoned barn and wandered back into the house.

The joy of estate sale-ing for Adam didn’t lie in buying. It lay in seeing someone’s life laid out before you in objects and their arrangement. Imagining, as you ran reverent fingers over their belongings, the months, years, decades that assembled this collection in this configuration.

Each one was the museum of a life, and Adam was a happy tourist.

Though he wasn’t a big buyer, there was one thing he always looked for: Royal China Jeanette ceramic pie plates printed with recipes. His grandmother had once had a whole set of them: apple pie, strawberry pie, rhubarb pie, pumpkin pie—each with a picture and recipe painted on them.

He didn’t know what had happened to them when she died—for all he knew, the plates he’d once eaten cherry pie off of in her cozy kitchen had found their way into this very house.