by Nora Roberts
As he crested the hill he saw the couple at the edge of the east garden. The sun was slanting over them, turning Jo’s hair into glittering flame. Her body was angled forward, balanced against the man’s with a kind of yearning it was impossible not to recognize.
The Delaney boy, Sam thought, grown up to a man. And the man had his hands on Sam’s daughter’s butt. Sam blew out a breath, wondered just how he was supposed to feel about that.
Their eyes were full of each other, and with a fluid shift of bodies their mouths tangled. It was the kind of hotly intimate kiss that made it obvious they’d been spending time doing a lot more to each other.
And how was he supposed to feel about that?
Time was, young people wouldn’t neck right out in the open that way. He remembered when he’d been courting Annabelle, the way they’d snuck off like thieves. They’d done their groping in private. Why, if Belle’s daddy had ever come across them this way, there’d have been hell to pay.
He walked on, making sure his footsteps were loud enough to wake the dead and the dreaming. Didn’t even have the courtesy to jerk apart and look guilty, Sam thought. They just eased apart, linked hands, and turned toward him.
“There’s guests inside the house, Jo Ellen, and they ain’t paying for a floor show.”
Surprised, she blinked at him. “Yes, Daddy.”
“You want to be free with your affections, do it someplace that won’t set tongues wagging from here to Savannah.”
Wisely, she swallowed the chuckle, lowered her eyes before he caught the gleam of laughter in them, and nodded. “Yes, sir.”
Sam shifted his feet, planted them, and looked at Nathan. “Seems to me you’re old enough to strap down your glands in a public place.”
Following Jo’s lead and warned by the quick squeeze of her hand, Nathan kept his tone sober and respectful. “Yes, sir.”
Satisfied, if not completely fooled, by their responses, Sam frowned up at the sky. “Storm coming,” he muttered. “Going to give us a knock no matter what the weatherman says.”
He was making conversation, Jo realized, and shoved her shock aside to fall in. “Carla’s category two, and on dead aim for Cuba. They’re saying it’s likely she’ll head out to sea.”
“She doesn’t care what they say. She’ll do as she pleases.” He turned his gaze on Nathan again, measuring. “Don’t get knocked by hurricanes much in New York City, I expect.”
Was that a challenge? Nathan wondered. A subtle swing at his manhood?
“No. I was in Cozumel when Gilbert pummeled it, though.” He nearly mentioned the tornado he’d watched sweep like vengeance across Oklahoma and the avalanche that had thundered down the mountain pass near his chalet when he’d been working in Switzerland.
“Well, then, you know,” Sam said simply. “I hear that you and Giff got a mind to do that sunroom Kate’s been pining for.”
“It’s Giff’s project. I’m just tossing in some ideas.”
“Guess you got ideas enough. Why don’t you show me then what y’all have in mind to do to my house?”
“Sure, I can give you the general layout.”
“Fine. Jo Ellen, I suspect your young man figures on finagling dinner. Go tell Brian he’s got another mouth to feed.”
Jo opened her mouth, but her father was already walking away. She could do no more than shrug at Nathan and turn to the house.
When she stepped into the kitchen, Brian was busy at the counter de-heading shrimp. And singing, she realized with a jolt. Under his breath and off-key, but singing.
“What’s come over this place?” she demanded. “Daddy’s holding full conversations and asking to see solarium plans, you’re singing in the kitchen.”
“I wasn’t singing.”
“You were too singing. It was a really lousy rendition of ‘I Love Rock and Roll,’ but it could be loosely described as singing.”
“So what? It’s my kitchen.”
“That’s more like it.” She went to the fridge for a beer. “Want one of these?”
“I guess I wouldn’t turn it down. I’m losing weight just standing here.” He swiped the back of his hand over his sweaty forehead and took the bottle she’d opened for him. He took a long swallow, then tucked his tongue in his cheek. “So, is Nathan able to walk without a limp today?”
“Yeah, but I bloodied his lip.” She reached into the white ceramic cookie jar and dug out a chocolate-chip. “A brother with any sense of decency would have bloodied it for me.”
“You always said you preferred fighting your own battles. How in God’s name can you chase cookies with beer? It’s revolting.”
“I’m enjoying it. You want any help in here?”
It was his turn to experience shock. “Define ‘help.’ ”
“Assistance,” she snapped. “Chopping something, stirring something.”
He took another pull on his beer as he considered her. “I could use some carrots, peeled and grated.”
“How many?”
“Twenty dollars’ worth. That’s what you cost me.”
“Excuse me?”
“Just a little wager with Lexy. A dozen,” he said and turned back to his shrimp.
She got the carrots out, began to remove the peels in slow, precise strips.
“Brian, if there was something you believed all your life, something you’d learned to live with, but that something wasn’t true, would you be better off going on the way you’d always gone on, or finding out it was something different? Something worse.”
“You can let a sleeping dog lie, but it’s hard to rest easy. You never know when it’s going to wake up and go for your throat.” He slid the shrimp into a boiling mixture of water, beer, and spices. “Then again, you let the dog lie long enough, it gets old and feeble and its teeth fall out.”
“That’s not a lot of help.”
“That wasn’t much of a question. You’re getting peelings all over the floor.”
“So, I’ll sweep them up.” She wanted to sweep the words up with them, under the first handy rug. But she would always know they were there. “Do you think a man, a perfectly normal man, with a family, a job, a house in the suburbs, a man who plays catch with his son on a Sunday afternoon and brings his wife roses on a Wednesday evening, could have another side? A cold, dark side that no one sees, a side that’s capable of doing something unspeakable, then folding back into itself so he can root at the Little League game on Saturday and take the family out for ice cream sodas afterward?”
Brian got the colander out for the shrimp and set it in the sink. “You’re full of odd questions this evening, Jo Ellen. You writing a book or something?”
“Can’t you just tell me what you think? Can’t you just have an opinion on a subject and say what it is?”
“All right.” Baffled, he tipped the lid to the pot to give the shrimp a quick stir. “If you want to be philosophical, the Jekyll and Hyde theme has always fascinated people. Good and evil existing side by side in the same personality. There’s none of us without shadows.”
“I’m not talking about shadows. About a man who gives in to temptation and cheats on his wife one afternoon at the local motel, or who skims the till at work. I’m talking about real evil, the kind that doesn’t carry a breath of guilt or conscience with it. Yet it doesn’t show, not even to the people closest to it.”
“Seems to me the easiest evil to hide is one with no conscience tagged to it. If you don’t feel remorse or responsibility, there’s no mirror reflecting back.”
“No mirror reflecting back,” she repeated. “It would be like black glass, wouldn’t it? Opaque.”
“Do you have any other cheerful remarks or suppositions to discuss?”
“How’s this? Can the apple fall far from the tree?”
With a half laugh, Brian hefted the pot and poured shrimp and steaming water into the colander. “I’d say that depended entirely on the apple. A firm, healthy one might take a few good bounces and roll. You ha
d one going rotten, it’d just plop straight down at the trunk.”
He turned, mopping his brow again and reaching for his beer when he caught her eye. “What?” he demanded as she stared at him, her eyes dark and wide, her face pale.
“That’s exactly right,” she said quietly. “That’s so exactly right.”
“I’m hell on parables.”
“I’m going to hold you to that one, Brian.” She turned back to her grating. “After dinner, we need to talk. All of us. I’ll tell the others. We’ll use the family parlor.”
“All of us, in one place? Who do you want to punish?”
“It’s important, Brian. It’s important to all of us.”
“I don’t see why I have to twiddle my thumbs around here when I’ve got a date.” Looking at her image in the mirror behind the bar, Lexy fussed with her hair. “It’s nearly eleven o’clock already. Giff’s liable to just give up waiting and go to bed.”
“Jo said it was important,” Kate reminded her. She fought to make her knitting needles click rhythmically rather than bash together. She’d been working on the same afghan for ten years and was bound and determined to conquer it before another decade passed.
“Then where is she?” Lexy demanded, whirling around. “I don’t see anybody here but you and me. Brian’s probably snuck off to Kirby’s, Daddy’s holed up with his shortwave tracking that damned hurricane—and it isn’t even coming around here.”
“They’ll be along. Why don’t you fix us all a nice glass of wine, honey?” It was one of Kate’s little dreams, having her family all gathered together, cooling off after a hot day, sharing the events of it.
“Seems like I’m always waiting on somebody. I swear, the last thing I’ll do to keep the wolf away from the door when I go back to New York is wait tables.”
Sam ducked his head and stepped in. He glanced at Kate with amusement. That blanket never seemed to grow by much, he thought, but somehow or other it got uglier every time she dragged it out. “You know what the girl’s got on her mind?”
“No, I don’t,” Kate said placidly. “But sit down. Lexy’s getting us some wine.”
“Sooner have a beer, if it’s all the same.”
“Well, place your orders,” Lexy said testily. “I live to serve.”
“I can fetch my own.”
“Oh, sit down.” She waved a hand at him. “I’ll get it.”
Feeling chastised, he lowered himself to the couch beside Kate, drummed his fingers on his knee. He looked up when Lexy held out a brimming pilsner. “Guess you want a tip now.” When she arched a brow, he nodded soberly. “Recycle. The world is your backyard.”
Kate’s needles stilled, Lexy stared. As color crept up his throat, Sam stared into his beer.
“My God, Sam, you made a joke. Lexy, you be sure to remind me to mark this down on my Year-at-a-Glance calendar.”
“Sarcastic woman’s the reason I keep my mouth shut in the first place,” he muttered, and Kate’s laugh tinkled out.
She patted Sam’s knee affectionately while Lexy grinned down at them.
That’s what Jo saw when she came in. Her father, her cousin, and her sister sharing a moment together while Kate’s laughter rang out.
Her heart sank. It was an image she’d never expected to see, one she hadn’t known could be so precious to her. Now she, and the man who stood behind her, could destroy it.
“There she is.” Kate continued to beam, and when she spotted Nathan, her idea of what Jo had wanted the family to hear took on the hint of orange blossoms and bridal lace. Fluttering, she set her knitting aside. “We were just having some wine. Maybe we should make it champagne instead, just for fun.”
“No, wine’s fine.” Her nerves screaming, Jo hurried in. “Don’t get up, Kate, I’ll get it.”
“I hope this won’t take long, Jo. I’ve got plans.”
“I’m sorry, Lexy.” Jo clinked glasses together in her hurry to have it done.
“Sit down,” Kate hissed, rolling her eyes, wiggling her brows to try to give Lexy a hint. “Make yourself comfortable, Nathan. I’m sure Brian will be right along. Oh, here he is now. Brian, turn up the fan a little, will you? This heat’s just wilting. Must be cooler at your place by the river, Nathan.”
“Some.” He sat, knowing he had to let Jo set the pace. But he looked at Sam. They’d spent twenty minutes together that evening, outlining plans, discussing structure and form. And all the while Nathan had tasted the bitter tang of deceit.
It was time to open it up, spread it out, and accept the consequences. “I’m sorry?” he said, realizing abruptly that Kate was speaking to him.
“I was just asking if you’re finding it as easy to work here as you do in New York.”
“It’s a nice change.” His eyes met Jo’s as she brought him a glass of wine. Get it done, he asked her silently. Get it finished.
“Would you sit down, Brian?” she murmured.
“Hmm.” She’d interrupted his daydream about wandering over to Kirby’s shortly and waking her up in a very specific and interesting manner. “Sure.”
He settled into a chair and decided he’d never been more relaxed or content in his life. He even gave Lexy a quick wink when she sat on the arm beside him.
“I don’t know how to begin, how to tell you.” Jo took a bracing breath. “I wish I could take the chance and let sleeping dogs lie.” She caught Brian’s eye, saw the flicker of confusion in his. “But I can’t. Whether it’s the best thing or not, I have to believe it’s the right thing. Daddy.” She walked over, sat on the coffee table so that her eyes were on a level with Sam’s. “It’s about Mama.”
She saw his mouth harden and, though he didn’t move, felt him pull back from her. “There’s no point in stirring up old waters, Jo Ellen. Your mother’s been gone long enough for you to deal with her going.”
“She’s dead, Daddy. She’s been dead for twenty years.” As if to anchor them both, she closed a hand over his. “She didn’t leave you, or us. She didn’t walk away from Sanctuary. She was murdered.”
“How can you say such a thing?” Lexy surged to her feet. “How can you say that, Jo?”
“Alexa.” Sam kept his eyes on Jo’s. “Hush.” He had to give himself a moment to stand up to the blow she’d delivered. He wanted to dismiss it, slide over or around it. But there was no evading that steady and sorrowful look in her eyes. “You’ve got a reason for saying that. For believing it.”
“Yes.”
She told him calmly, clearly, about the photograph that had been sent to her. The shock of recognition, the undeniable certainty that it was Annabelle.
“I worked it out a hundred different ways in my head,” she continued. “That it had been taken years later, that it was just a trick of the camera, just a horrible joke. That I’d imagined it altogether. But none of those were true, Daddy. It was Mama, and it was taken right here on the island on the night we thought she left.”
“Where’s the picture?” he demanded. “Where is it?”
“It’s gone. Whoever sent it came back and took it while I was in the hospital. But it was there, I swear it. It was Mama.”
“How do you know? How can you be sure of that?”
She opened her mouth, but Nathan stepped forward. “Because I’ve seen the photograph. Because my father took it, after he killed her.”
With a storm raging in his head, Sam got slowly to his feet. “You’re going to stand there and tell me your father killed Belle. Killed a woman who’d done him no harm, and then took pictures of it. He took pictures of her when he’d done with her, and showed them to you.”
“Nathan didn’t know, Daddy.” Jo clung to Sam’s arm. “He was just a boy. He didn’t know.”
“I’m not looking at a boy now.”
“I found the photographs and a journal after my father died. Everything Jo told is true. My father killed your wife. He wrote it all down, locked the journal and the prints, the negatives in a safe-deposit box. I found them aft
er he and my mother died.”
When the words trailed away there was no sound but the whisk of the blades from the ceiling fan, Lexy’s weeping, and the harsh breaths Sam pushed in and out of his lungs.
He could see her now, shimmering at the front of his mind, the wife he’d loved, the woman he’d cursed. All the lights and shadows of her shifted together to form rage. To form grief.
“Twenty years he kept it to himself.” Sam clenched his fists, but there was nothing to strike. “You find out and you come back here and put your hands on my daughter. And you let him.” He burned Jo with a look. “You know, and you let him.”
“I felt the same way when he told me. Just the same. But when I had time to think it through, to understand ... Nathan wasn’t responsible.”
“His blood was.”
“You’re right.” Nathan moved so that Jo no longer stood between him and Sam. “I came back here to try to find a way through it, or around it, or to just bury it. And I fell in love where I had no right to.”
Brian set Lexy aside so that she could weep into her hands instead of on his shoulder. “Why?” His voice was as raw as his soul. “Why did he do it?”
“There’s no reason that can justify it,” Nathan said wearily. “Nothing she’d done. He ... selected her. It was a project to him, a study. He didn’t act out of anger, or even out of passion. I can’t explain it to myself.”
“It’s best if you go now, Nathan.” Kate spoke quietly as she rose. “Leave us alone with this for a while.”
“I can’t, until it’s all said.”
“I don’t want you in my house.” Sam’s voice was dangerously low. “I don’t want you on my land.”
“I’m not going until I know Jo’s safe. Because whoever killed Susan Peters and Ginny Pendleton wants her.”
“Ginny.” To steady herself, Kate gripped Sam’s arm.
“I don’t have any proof of Ginny, but I know. If you’ll listen to the rest of it, hear me out, I’ll leave.”
“Let him finish it.” Lexy sniffed back her tears and spoke in a voice that was surprisingly strong. “Ginny didn’t just run off. I’ve known that in my heart all along. It was just like Mama, wasn’t it, Nathan? And the Peters woman, too.”
