Sand Castles

by Antoinette Stockenberg

  Like a cat who smells fear, Abby pressed on with the hunt. "Why don't we have more pictures of my birth father? Only one tiny photograph of some people sitting around a couch. And it's overexposed. It sucks."

  "Oh, Abby. I've explained it to you so many times. There was a fire in the apartment we lived in, and my shoebox of photos was burned."

  The fire had been a small grease flareup, and Abby had slept peacefully in her crib through the whole thing, but never mind; at least there'd been a fire. As for a so-called photo collection, there'd never been one of those. There'd only been the one snapshot, which Sara had kept tucked in her wallet for years. The only reason she had shown it to Abby at all was because it was so overexposed.

  Sara locked gazes with her bright, calculating offspring and felt suddenly exposed. And more than a little uneasy. She added in a tiptoe voice, "Doesn't it matter to you at all that we have a thousand pictures of you and me together?"

  Sensing weakness, Abby lashed out. "You don't know who my father is, do you. You don't have a clue."

  "Abby!" The swipe of her cat-daughter's paw was swift and deep. But yes, Sara did know: Nick McElwyn, an up-and-coming attorney, had been run over as he dashed across the street against the light, in the rain, at twilight. It was a terrible, terrible tragedy, and he was dead. That was Sara's story, and by God, she was sticking to it. She took a step backward and began to turn, ready to run.

  Too late. Abby pounced.

  "You're lying! You've been lying to me, like, all my life. You never married my father. How could you, if you don't even know who he is?”

  Sara was forced to defend the indefensible. She turned back to her daughter and tried to look bored. Impatient. Indignant. She failed in all three and fell back on the tired old refrain: "I've told you: Your father is Nick McElwyn."

  "Then why can't I find him anywhere? I wrote to city hall in Norfield, and they don't have any death record for a Nick McElwyn."

  "You wrote to them!"

  "E-mailed," Abby said with a lift of her chin. "They emailed back that they don't have a record of death. So you lied. And by the way, I haven't tracked down a record of marriage, either."

  "I can't believe you went behind my back," said Sara, stunned. She closed the door behind her in an effort to muffle the coming brawl.

  "Admit it, Mom! I'm a one-night stand."

  "No. I told you."

  "Oh, you told me!" Abby said. Her voice was high, loud, and clear. "You haven't told me anything. Where did he die? What street corner? What kind of car ran him down? What hospital did they take him to? What cemetery is he buried in—and don't try telling me you scattered his ashes at sea. I'm not a little girl anymore."

  She was a little girl, going on forty. There was such betrayal, such fury, such disillusionment in her eyes that Sara had to look away. Where was the darling girl who'd always adored her?

  Sara focused on a red paisley pillow, bought for the shop, that she had recently decided would be perfect instead for the overstuffed chair of her daughter's room. During that brief space of time, her resolve faltered. "When you're older," she said, "you'll understand."

  That's all it took.

  "I knew it!" cried Abby, jumping up in shrill, panicky triumph. "I am a one-night stand!"

  She was exactly that.

  In the single most collossal indiscretion of her life, Sara had managed to get high, get laid, and get pregnant, all in the space of a single torrid encounter with a stranger. She carried a list of excuses for her reckless behavior that was as long as her arm. She was eighteen, inexperienced, a casualty of booby-trapped brownies. He was not much older, damnably good-looking, damnably charming, damnably carefree. They were a volatile mix, and they had exploded. And Sara had been forging through life with a limp ever since.

  Her resolve returned; it was a habit by now, not easily abandoned. "You are not a one-night stand, Abby."

  "I'll never believe you! Never! And I'll never forgive you for having me!" Abby sprinted to the bed, threw herself across it, and burst into tears.

  It was bitterly ironic: Sara had friends who were trying for years to get pregnant, presumably so that they could raise children like Abby who would one day make their lives misery. Sara, no slouch, had managed to get the job done in a few short hours.

  How could she possibly be a good example to a daughter who finally knew the truth behind her conception? "I would never hurt you, Abby," Sara said, sitting on the side of the bed. "Never. I'd sooner cut off my arm. Please believe me."

  Abby lifted her head in a teary-eyed look of contempt. Without a word, she got herself back under control, sat down in her computer chair, and swiveled it around to face the screen again.

  Her mother was dismissed.

  Coming soon for your Nook

  KEEPSAKE Sample

  Antoinette Stockenberg

  "Wonderful, witty, humorous writing"

  --The Romance Reader

  KEEPSAKE ... a postcard-perfect town in Connecticut. When stonemason Quinn Leary returns after seventeen years, he has one desire: to prove his father's innocence of a terrible crime committed when Quinn and Olivia Bennett, town princess, were high-school rivals. Class doesn't matter now but family loyalties do, and they're fierce enough to threaten the newfound passion between two equals.

  Prologue

  The women of Keepsake were afraid.

  Young mothers moved cribs into their bedrooms for the night, and grandmothers jammed kitchen chairs against their back doors. Teenage girls agog with terror talked late on the phone with their very best friends, while their older sisters who lived alone made their boyfriends promise to stay over. The news that morning had sent shock waves of anxiety from Elm to upper Main: Alison Bennett's death was no suicide at all, but cold-blooded murder.

  If Alison wasn't safe, who was? Her father was strict, her uncle was rich. She was the last girl in Connecticut anyone would have expected to find hanging from a rope above a quarry on a cold October night. That was the consensus as people turned off fewer lights than usual and tried to sleep.

  No one wanted to believe that the murderer was one of Keepsake's own—but everyone knew which way the investigation was heading. Only one man in town had been questioned twice by the police about Alison, and that was her uncle's gardener.

  As Keepsake tossed and turned, Francis Leary scanned the single shelf in his bedroom in the gardener's cottage at the foot of the Bennett estate, trying to decide which books to pack. It was an impossible dilemma, like choosing which of a litter of kittens not to drown. Tired, confused, overwhelmed by events, the gardener reached for his Gertrude Jekyll, a signed first edition, and then wondered: Could he fit the Olmsted, too?

  His son suffered no such agonies of indecision. With a lightly packed duffel bag slung over his shoulder, Quinn Leary poked his head into his father's room and said, "Dad, let's go." He was seventeen and more decisive than his father would ever be.

  Francis Leary fully understood his own weaknesses and his son's strengths, but he dreaded the thought of what lay ahead: a stolen truck, a bus ride to nowhere, a life on the run. "Quinn, I know this is my idea, but... now I'm not so sure."

  His son felt a surge of hope, tempered by exasperation. "You want to stay and take your chances? Fine with me. But the police will be here by morning. You won't have time to change your mind again, Dad. Understand that."

  Put that way, the plan to run became more compelling. The gardener took a last look around and said nervously, "Let's go."

  They locked up the cottage and waded through a sea of unraked leaves to the pickup truck, registered in the name of Alison's uncle up the hill.

  Up the hill, in a bedroom with high ceilings and a marble fireplace, the dead girl's seventeen-year-old cousin and classmate lay awake in her four-poster bed as she listened to the trees bend to the moaning wind. Olivia Bennett was despondent over the loss of her cousin and shocked at the news of her cousin's pregnancy—but Olivia, who lived closer than anyone to the suspe
ct, had no fear of him. Francis Leary had been her parents' gardener for ten years, and Olivia was convinced that she knew him well: good men didn't kill.

  At seven-thirty, Keepsake dragged itself out of bed after a night of no sleep, only to find that the man it feared had fled in the night with his son. Part of Keepsake was relieved; but the other part, the bigger part, spent the next seventeen years sleeping with one eye on the bedroom door.

  Chapter 1

  The reindeer were a hit, no doubt about it. Trekking through falling snow and fading light up the far side of Town Hill, Quinn could see a moblet of young children pressing up against a temporary pen and pitching kernels awkwardly to a pair of tame deer within.

  Borrowed from a petting zoo, he figured. Leave it to Keepsake to do Christmas proud. He got a clearer view of the town's copper-roofed gazebo at the top of the hill and saw that Santa, holding court within, had a fair-sized crowd of his own: The line of kids waiting to read him their lists was impressive for a town so small.

  From his vantage on the hill, Quinn studied the intersection—controlled by a traffic light now—that was the center of Keepsake, quintessential New England town. The four corners were anchored by the same historic white-steepled church, granite town hall, one-story library and sturdy brick-front bank as before. Quinn searched for, and found, the little drugstore where he'd hung out during his high school years. It was a CVS now, which meant the soda fountain would be long gone. He could almost taste the strawberry shakes that were the old place's specialty; it hurt to think that they were no more.

  He scanned for more landmarks and was jolted by the perky pink-and-white logo of a Dunkin' Donuts. Like the CVS, it was a jarring reminder that time had passed. He was thirty-four now, not seventeen, and on a quest more grim than hopeful. He sighed heavily, then surveyed the crowd gathered to light the town tree.

  Plunge right in, or hang around the edges?

  Plunge.

  The crowd was thickest near the unlit tree. Several hundred citizens were drinking hot chocolate while they waited, as they did every December, for the mayor to plug in the cord and kick off the holiday. The first familiar face Quinn saw belonged to a beefy citizen wearing a jacket in the town's high-school colors. The man had been there awhile: his green cap was white with snow. When he saw Quinn, he did a double take.

  "Leary ...? Leary! What the hell are you doing here?"

  "Coach," Quinn said, greeting him with a wary nod. "It's been a long time." He held out his hand.

  Coach Bronsky stared at it as if it were a bloody stump. "You've gotta be kidding," he said with loathing. He swivelled his head left and right. "Where's your old man?"

  "Beyond your reach now," Quinn shot back. "He died last month." He had wondered how he'd break that news to Keepsake. Now he knew.

  "Dead!" The coach's face congealed into a dark pudding of anger and resentment. "You have a hell of a nerve, in that case. You think you can stroll up here ... announce that he's kicked the bucket ... and what? Have us carry you around on our shoulders again? You ran, Leary! You left us in the lurch. Left your team ... your town ... everyone. The two of you ran like a couple of scared dogs."

  Quinn stood ramrod stiff under the attack, as if he were still a quarterback in the locker room after a so-so half. He didn't have to ask whether Keepsake High had won the state championship that year. The answer was a bitter, resounding no.

  Offering no excuses, he said, "I'm not here either to apologize or to explain. I'm sure not here to gloat."

  "Oh yeah? Then what are you here for?"

  Quinn's response was a snort. To find out who killed Alison. Shouldn't that be obvious?

  "To look up old friends," he said after a deadly pause.

  "You won't find any in Keepsake. Get the hell out. Now."

  "Thanks for the advice—but I think I'll stick around."

  With a snarl the coach said, "Vickers may have other ideas," and brushed past Quinn with the force of a fullback.

  Caught off balance by the shove, Quinn staggered, but he managed to say cheerfully, "Sergeant Vickers! He's still around?''

  "'Chief Vickers now, pal." The coach muscled his way into the crowd, undoubtedly to spread the word.

  Not exactly the welcome wagon, but it was about what Quinn had expected. He brushed heavy snow from his bound hair and the back of his neck and wished he'd bought a hat. Too many years in La-La Land, he realized. He'd forgotten what a New England winter was like.

  The cold wet snow set the mood for his next three encounters, the first of which was with the assistant librarian. When Quinn last saw her, she had been a thirty-year-old single woman who always had enthusiastic words of praise for a quarterback who actually read the novels and not the Cliffs Notes. The lady whom he approached was easily recognized as a grayer version of herself, but any enthusiasm was in short supply.

  Quinn gave her a tentative smile anyway. "Hi, Miss Damian. Read any good books lately?'' It used to be a standard greeting between them.

  The librarian stared over the rim of her uplifted paper cup. Her eyes got wide and she choked on her hot chocolate, then recovered enough to gasp, "It's you! My God, how did you get here?"

  "American Airlines and Hertz," he quipped.

  Her voice dropped a scandalized octave. "So your father's turned himself in! All these years people have been waiting, and now—"

  "They'll have to keep waiting, I'm afraid. My father passed away last month."

  She stared at him. Her distress seemed to increase. "Oh, but ... but how can we be sure?" she blurted out. "He could be a fugitive still!"

  Quinn blinked. He hadn't anticipated that one. "Trust me," he said dryly. "He died in my arms on November twelfth."

  "Yes ... yes, I'm sure you're right," she stammered. Then she threw down her cup and hurried away.

  Quinn indulged in a wry smile. Freddy Krueger couldn't have frightened her more.

  He reached down to the brown stain on the fresh-fallen snow and picked up the paper cup. Come the January thaw, he wouldn't want litter popping up all over the quaint town green. He was a gardener's son, and he'd been trained well.

  He was at a loss during the next encounter. The woman clearly knew him—she was sneaking looks from the edge of the crowd—but he wasn't at all sure about her.

  Finally he turned directly to her, a matronly woman whose apple-cheeked face was tightly wreathed in fake fur. "Myra? Myra Lupidnick?" he ventured.

  "Myra Lancaster now," she said, coming forward with a nervous smile to shake his hand. "I thought it was you. How are you, Quinn?"

  "Not bad. It's good to see you, Myra," he said with nostalgic affection. "Really."

  Myra was the first person in Keepsake to befriend Quinn after he and his dad moved into the gardener's cottage on the Bennett estate. Quinn had just turned eight. He had made out with Myra under the bleachers shortly afterward; it was Myra who had taught him how to French kiss. For at least a year after the Frenching episode, he'd convinced himself that he wasn't a virgin anymore.

  "You settled in Keepsake, then?" he asked. She had always gone on about moving up and out of it.

  "Sure! I got married—George Lancaster, remember him?"

  "Tall guy, red hair?"

  "He's a plumber now, and doing really good. We have four kids. And a four-bedroom house in Greenwood Estates."

  "Hey, that's great," he offered gallantly.

  She didn't ask Quinn what he had been up to all those years, which was hardly surprising. He could see the struggle in her face as she debated what to say. Suddenly she seemed to give up the effort. She shrugged and murmured, "Well, I've got to go. The kids'll be wondering where I got lost. I'll ... see you," she said.

  She fled from him as well, with only slightly less panic than Miss Damian, the librarian.

  Shit. At the rate he was alienating people, he wouldn't find a friendly ear in the entire town. He had based his whole mission on the belief that after seventeen years, the citizens of Keepsake would have let th
eir guard down about the scandal that had rocked the town like a West Coast earthquake; that they'd be mellowed to the point of apathy. So far, apathy was the only response he hadn't got.

  He made his way through more of the crowd, searching for people he'd known. Near the cocoa-and-cookies table were stationed half a dozen carollers wearing Victorian capes and top hats. They had been alternating between Santa songs and Christmas hymns and at the moment were belting out a peppy rendition of "Let It Snow." As they sang, Quinn circled behind the listening audience, scanning their faces, looking for anyone who might be sympathetic to his side.

  Instead he found the barber. Quinn practically knocked him over as he was making his way toward the gazebo. Tony something? Tony Assorio, that was it. The man looked the same, exactly the same: small, gray, and contained, like one of the bottles of mystery liquid that he kept lined up in front of the mirror on the narrow marble counter in his one-chair shop.

  "Mr. Assorio—Quinn Leary," he said, shaking his hand. "You used to cut my hair when I lived in Keepsake." Why Quinn expected the barber to remember him as a customer rather than as the son of a fugitive wasn't clear, even to him.

  The barber scrutinized him, then said, "I remember. You always did have a good head of hair. Looks like you could use a trimmin' up," he added, eyeing Quinn's ponytail. "Come in tomorrow. Two-thirty. I have an opening."

  "Uhh... yeah, well—thanks. I may do that."

  The barber moved on, greeting people like a Rhode Island politician. Quinn made a mental note to drop in on him the next day. No one had his fingers on the pulse of a town more often than a barber.

  Quinn paused where he was, not at all surprised that furtive glances were beginning to be cast his way. He had wanted people to know he was back, and he was succeeding; but he was surprised at how alienated he felt from them all. By the light of the nearby gas lamp, he was able to make out the time: four-seventeen. Soon the tree would be lit and people would begin to disperse. He was, he had to admit, disappointed. He'd hoped to meet a friendly face before then. Any friendly face.