A Charmed Place

by Antoinette Stockenberg

  Too hot, surely, for the neighbor she saw approaching the house carrying a large casserole in her hands and walking with halting steps.

  "Miss Widdich, let me," said Laura, rushing to help.

  "It's just that my cane is in the car," said the gray-haired spinster, turning carefully and nodding toward the big black Ford that she'd parked in front of the house. "So I'm a little unsteady on my pins."

  "Please—wait right there and I'll get you your cane and then carry that inside for you."

  "I can carry it; but, yes, if you would just fetch my stick," she said politely.

  The arthritic woman, whose unfortunate last name sounded so much like "witch"—and who was regarded by the town kids accordingly—had been one of the few to attend the funeral of Oliver Shore. She came, not because of Oliver (who more or less agreed with the kids and had always considered Miss Widdich a little "off"), but because she had formed a quiet but enduring friendship with Corinne.

  It was a natural fit: Miss Widdich was an herbalist, and Laura's sister sold herbs. The affection between the two was so obvious that Laura had felt a little wistful when she witnessed it at the wake. In Laura's line of work, she had little contact with anyone over her own age.

  Laura managed to coax the casserole out of Miss Widdich's grip, after all, and the two women walked into the house together, exchanging chat about the weather.

  "I had hoped to do something about that fog yesterday," Miss Widdich announced. "It can be so gloomy, and I didn't want you children to feel any sadder than you did."

  Do something? As in, control the weather?

  "Well, that's awfully nice of you, Miss Widdich," Laura said vaguely. "But at least we all have one another."

  "For now," said the elderly woman, her smile wistfully sweet.

  An unexpected chill passed over Laura, as it often did when she was in the other woman's presence. She chalked it up to childhood memories and concentrated instead on the woman's kindness. Setting the glass dish on the kitchen counter, she said, "Still warm, and it smells wonderful. Thank you so much; we'll have it for lunch. What's in it?"

  "Cheese; noodles," said Miss Widdich. "A little of this, a dab of that."

  What, like eye of newt and heart of toad?

  "Yum, a secret recipe," Laura said, quailing inwardly. "I can hardly wait to dig in. Speaking of which, I really ought to wash my hands; look at them!"

  She walked over to the sink, mostly to avoid having to make eye contact, and began a hearty scrubdown.

  Although herbs were not her field of expertise, Laura knew enough about them to understand that they could be powerful influences, on personalities as well as in stews. Many herbs were drugs, pure and simple. It was an unnerving and entirely unwished-for thought.

  And a silly one. At her father's wake, Laura had overheard Miss Widdich and Corinne making small talk about tarragon, of all things. Surely their shared interest in herbs was no more than culinary.

  And yet, Corinne seemed so fond, so attached to Miss Widdich ....

  But surely not because of drugs. More likely, Corinne had simply transferred her longing for their mother to Miss Widdich after their mother's death. After all, it couldn't have been easy, living in a house with only Oliver Shore for company. A surrogate mother might have filled a real need in Laura's shy and lonely sister.

  "Corinne should be back here any minute, if you'd like to wait for her," Laura ventured as she dried her hands.

  "But ... don't you hear her?" Miss Widdich cocked her head and fixed her penetrating blue eyes on Laura; the expression in them was intense. "She's talking with someone—somewhere in the house."

  "I don't hear a thing," said Laura, shaking her head.

  "Of course you do, dear. She's talking to a man."

  To humor her visitor, Laura walked out of the kitchen and into the adjacent sitting room of the high-ceilinged, rambling Victorian house and made a pretense of straining to listen in the direction in which Miss Widdich was jabbing her bamboo cane.

  And darned if she didn't pick up faint echoes of her sister talking.

  Seeing Laura's face, Miss Widdich smiled. "Corinne has a very pretty voice," she explained. "I'm very attuned to it."

  "I guess," said Laura, blinking. Miss Widdich might not have the best knees in town, but her hearing was downright preternatural.

  Laura invited her to have a seat while she found out how long Corinne would be, but Miss Widdich waved Laura's invitation away with a flutter of a gnarled hand. "This is a bad time, bad time," she said darkly, and off she toddled, as fast as her knees would let her, leaving Laura mystified.

  Curious about the voices, Laura tracked them down and was surprised to find that they weren't coming from the house at all but from the back porch, a small, utilitarian affair with a wasted view of the Atlantic.

  Built off a summer kitchen that was no longer used, the back porch was merely a place to slough off muddy shoes or hang a wet oil slicker. It was the porch on the front of the house—overlooking the nursery and facing away from the sea—that was large enough to hold their assortment of half-broken beach chairs and the punched-in wicker loveseat.

  Boy, someone had had their priorities so reversed, Laura thought, not for the first time. From the inside of the screen door, she caught her breath all over again at the grand expanse of bright blue ocean. It was the one thing her charmer cottage in Portland lacked, that view of the sea.

  Unwilling to disrupt the conversation between Corinne and her visitor, who together were now strolling away from the house, Laura opened the screen door quietly and let it close gently behind her. She wanted to eavesdrop: it wasn't every day that they had a visitor who came in a suit.

  He was no one she knew. Someone from the funeral home, maybe, asking if they were satisfied with the new headstone? It couldn't be the director. This man was much younger, with thicker hair, broader shoulders, and a more relaxed style, despite his spiffy threads. He was standing with his hands in his pockets, apparently willing to let Corinne do the talking.

  He was nodding, as though he'd heard it all before. They definitely knew one another. Laura couldn't imagine who the guy was; Corinne had never spoken to her about anybody who could have afforded a suit like that.

  Corinne pointed to her right and he followed her direction, partly revealing himself in profile to Laura. She realized that he did look familiar, after all, and yet she wasn't able to place him. Her sense was that he was—and yet was anything but—a local.

  Before Laura could analyze the vaguely negative reaction she was having to him, he turned and gave her a sharp look, as though she'd beaned him on the back of the head with a spitball. Embarrassed to be caught staring, she shifted her gaze to Corinne, who was still blithely chattering away.

  "Sorry to interrupt," Laura said, yanking her sister out of her monologue. "Rinnie, Miss Widdich just stopped by to see you. She was behaving a little oddly, and—"

  She saw the visitor barely suppress a smile; obviously he, too, was familiar with the odd Miss Widdich. Who the hell was he? She marched up to him and, over Corinne's belated effort, began to introduce herself. "I'm Corinne's sister—"

  "Laura. Of course. I'd know you anywhere," he said, his smile broadening.

  When she looked blank, the visitor added quickly, "Ken. Ken Barclay? We went to the same grade school?"

  Laura was speechless. She blinked and stared and finally said, "Kendall?"

  "One and the same. How are you?"

  Skinny, geeky, brainy, rich, and haughty Kendall?

  "You're him?"

  He laughed and said, "Last time I looked at my driver's license, anyway."

  She wanted to see that license. The man standing in front of her was six-foot-something, solidly built, and knockdown, drag-out sexy. Not to mention devoid of braces and a bumpy forehead. Those fierce blue eyes: something about them looked vaguely the same, but even there ....

  Kendall Barclay.

  The effect he had on her was dizzying, almost
violent. Laura's cheeks went hot with the recollection of their fateful encounter. Suddenly she was thirteen and ill-dressed, with dirt under her fingernails and surrounded by a group of cruel, taunting boys grabbing and pawing and tearing her shirt.

  No wonder he'd been able to recognize her so easily. Damn it, she still looked the same!

  Her cheeks fired up even hotter with embarrassment when he extended his hand and she was forced to extend her own, with its bloody, bruised knuckles and dirty fingernails. She kept the handshake firm, though, as she explained, "I'm working the greenhouse detail today."

  "So I see. Nice to have you back. Corinne tells me that you're working like gangbusters on the West Coast as a computer consultant?"

  It was that question mark, coupled with a furtive glance at her clown-sized pants and her belt of rope, that instantly got under Laura's skin. It was so obvious that he found the idea of her success a hard one to swallow.

  "Well, you know what they say about the self-employed," she said, recovering enough to give him a very dry smile. She gestured with both hands toward her pants. "Every day is casual Friday."

  He followed her gesture, looking blank for a second. "Oh. You mean—" He dipped his head in a nod at her getup. "I never even noticed."

  "Well, thank you for that."

  Even worse. To someone like Kendall Barclay, she would always be one of the Shore urchins, beneath notice. It didn't help that his neck was turning red. Clearly he felt that she was putting him on the spot, taking everything to a personal level.

  Which she was. For God's sake, she hadn't actually talked to him in, what, twenty years? Surely she could handle a chance encounter better than this!

  But she couldn't. All she could see was a blurry circle of boys around her, taking turns grabbing at her breasts and at her crotch.

  "Laura? What, um, was it that you were saying about Miss Widdich?" Corinne's voice was faint with fear, as if she were watching her sister standing in a pit with a cobra and poking it with a stick. You are messing with the man who holds the key to our survival.

  Maybe yes, maybe no. In an almost wrenching act of self-control, Laura swept away the memory of the circle of cruel boys and said to Corinne, "I think Miss Widdich would like to talk to you whenever you have time, Rinnie."

  And then, still feeling fierce about the cruel note she'd got from Kendall all those years ago, she said in a fiercely pleasant voice, "Miss Widdich brought us a huge casserole for lunch. Cheese and noodles. You're welcome to join us in our peasant fare."

  He backpedaled from the invitation as fast as politeness allowed. Shooting an arm through the sleeve of his jacket, he glanced at his watch. "Ah-h, thanks very much, but I have another appointment. I'm running a little late as it is, so I'd better get going."

  With a friendly smile to Corinne, he said, "I'll see you on Wednesday, then."

  When he shifted his attention back to Laura, his manner changed. He cleared his throat. Compressed his lips in a tight smile. Gazed doggedly at her chin. "Well. Good seeing you again after all—"

  He had to clear his throat again. "These years."

  It was obvious to Laura: he remembered. He remembered, and he was embarrassed about it. He should be, damn it. If she had not been a Shore, would he have been so arrogant and unfeeling in his note back to her?

  You shouldn't be writing to me.

  Don't do it again.

  And don't ever try to see me.

  Laura was a big girl now, but those scribbled words still cut like razorblades across the thin surface of her self-esteem.

  "Good to see you, too—after all these years. But I'm sure I'll be seeing you again," she said coolly.

  Not only that, but she was already planning what she'd be wearing when she did.

  ****

  As he walked back to his car, Ken pulled irritatedly at his tie: he felt too buttoned up by half. The way his blood was pumping, he was ready to burst a blood vessel.

  And it wasn't because of the heat of the day. Seeing Laura so unexpectedly had set his pulse roaring along, trying to keep up with his libido. Even now, he was at a loss why: she had just done everything but cross her forearms at him.

  Maybe he shouldn't have been surprised. Maybe he should have been willing to let old ghosts lie. But he wasn't. Damn it, he was not willing. One look into her gray eyes—as dark and as threatening as a squall in July—and he was ready to take her on. There were issues here, issues between them that were unresolved.

  One way or another, he planned to resolve them.

  A Month at the Shore, available for your Nook April 2012.

  Keepsake Sample Prologue and Chapter 1

  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 suspect, 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.