Devlin's Light

by Mariah Stewart

  I probably did not need that dessert, she told herself. I feel like a total glutton.

  She leaned back against the sofa, but the fancy hardwood carvings on the arms dug into her back. An elegant little settee, it had not been designed for comfort. She piled some cushions closer to the fire and pulled the afghan up to her chin and snuggled under it.

  Just for a minute or two, she promised. She’d go back to work in just a few minutes …

  India opened her eyes with a start. There was a whisper of movement, of some soft uncertain sound, a sense of a presence there in the house. She sat up slowly, cautiously. The charred end of a log fell and hit the brick firebox with a thud, causing her to jump nearly out of her skin. She tilted her head to listen. No, whatever had awakened her was more subtle than the falling log. The hairs on the back of her neck stood straight up as she strained to listen. Something—some hushed something—there in the hallway, there on the steps leading to the second floor, no louder than the sound made by furtive eyes watching in the dark.

  As quietly as possible, India stood up and backed to the fireplace, reaching behind her to grab the black wrought-iron poker. A vague bump from overhead, an indistinct but dull sense of disquiet from the second floor sent her skin to gooseflesh. Her fingers tightened on the cold metal, and she took small, muted steps toward the stairwell. One by one, holding her breath, she took the steps upward, leaning into the dark, all of her senses on total alert. The muscles in her neck and shoulders soon began to protest the prolonged tension, burning to remind her she had stood motionless for far too long.

  Taking a deep breath, she turned on the hall light and listened. Nothing.

  Slowly, as quietly as possible, India went from one bedroom to the next, turning on the lights, looking in the corners. Nothing.

  She locked the attic door from the outside and checked the bathrooms. Nothing.

  There was nothing. No sound. No longer any sense of anyone in the house except herself.

  With an unconvinced sigh, she went back down the steps to return the poker to its place, wondering if she had just experienced what Corri had referred to as a ghost. She paused on the landing to study the faces of several generations of Devlins who were immortalized there in paintings and in photographs.

  “Okay, folks,” she said aloud, “which one of you was it?”

  None, she knew. All the years she had lived in that house, surrounded by the spirits of her ancestors, she had never once sensed anything even remotely sinister. The feeling she’d had tonight had caused her skin to crawl.

  When, she wondered, had a less than benign spirit taken up residence on Darien Road?

  “Is Corri awake yet?” India dropped her suitcase, already neatly packed, near the back door.

  “I don’t expect her to wake up until ten,” August told her. “So much excitement last night, you know. She slept all the way home in the car—as did I part of the way—but it was such a big night for her.”

  “Was the ballet wonderful?” India searched in the refrigerator for cream for her coffee.

  “Always.” August sighed. “The Nutcracker always enchants. The music always enthralls.”

  “’Floaty’ music, Corri called it.” India smiled.

  “And ‘floaty’ it was. Georgia made a wonderful Snow Fairy. She’s just lovely, as are all of Delia’s children.”

  “Speaking of which, Nick asked me to the Twelfth Night Ball.” India tried to sound as casual as possible.

  “Really?” August attempted to match her niece’s nonchalant tone, but it wasn’t easy.

  “Umm-hmmm.”

  “Well, it’s been a few years since you showed up at that affair.” August turned her back to hide her little smile of satisfaction.

  “More than a few. I haven’t gone since high school. It is still costume, isn’t it?”

  “Of course.”

  “I’ll have to find a dress.”

  “Well, start by looking in the attic. There’re all sorts of things stored away up there. Darla wore one of your great-great-aunt Priscilla’s gowns last year. Fit her like it was made for her. She looked so beautiful.” August turned and smiled. “There’s a picture on my dresser, if you haven’t already seen it, of Darla and Ry standing on the verandah of the captain’s house. Touched by moonlight, they were.”

  “Maybe we should talk Darla into going with us this year.”

  “That’s a lovely thought, dear. If it wouldn’t be too painful for her, it would be lovely.”

  “Didn’t Priscilla have a twin sister?”

  “Yes, Prudence.”

  “Maybe Darla and I can go as Priscilla and Prudence. We could do our hair the same way, just like we did when we were in high school.” India smiled, thinking back to those days that, in retrospect, seemed so simple.

  “And flirted with all the same boys, making them all crazy.” August chuckled. “Don’t think I didn’t hear about it. It seems like years since those days.”

  “Aunt August, it has been years since we were in high school.”

  “Sometimes it seems like only yesterday that your father came back and brought his babies home. After Nancy died.” August shook her head. “Things were never quite the same for anyone after your mother died.”

  “You know, I don’t remember her at all,” India told her. “Even when I look at her picture, it’s almost the same as looking at the pictures of Gramma Logan. I never knew her either.”

  “I always thought you must have missed her so, growing up.”

  “I guess in some ways I missed knowing her, but I had you.”

  “Not quite the same as having your mother, India.”

  “I don’t know that I knew the difference,” India said softly.

  “Thank you, India. Those may be the most loving words I have ever heard.” August’s eyes unwittingly filled with tears, and she brushed them away with the back of her hand.

  “You were always there for Ry and me.” India found her own throat constricting with emotion, and she knew no further words were necessary.

  India cleared her throat and sought less poignant ground. “Do they still do all of those dances?”

  “Yes, certainly. It’s a ball, India.”

  “Do the Websters still give lessons?”

  “Yes, I believe so. Were you thinking about brushing up on your fancy steps?”

  “Yes. Nick said he’d go too, so that we could dance.”

  August closed her eyes and saw India swirling around the dance floor in Nick’s arms. The vision was so real to her, so vivid, she could almost hear the orchestra, almost smell the gardenia tucked into India’s hair, right there behind her ear.

  “Well, I’m glad to hear that you will attend. It would have been the first time in, oh, I don’t know how many years that there was no young Devlin to lead the grand march.”

  “Ry went every year,” India recalled.

  “I can’t remember one year that he missed. Even the year that Maris died. He took me as his date.” August’s face softened, remembering. “He was so handsome, my boy. He wore a Victorian-era dinner jacket he found in the attic. Every lady in Devlin’s Light lined up to dance with Ry that night. Oh, they all said it was so that he wouldn’t be without a partner—him being a young widower and all, that was their excuse—but not a one of them fooled me. You could see it in their faces when they danced with him, young and old, they all looked the same way.”

  “What way was that, Aunt August?”

  “Beautiful,” she said simply. “As if waltzing with a beautiful man made them beautiful too.”

  She was lost for a moment, remembering.

  “Even me.” She smiled.

  “Was that the year he took Darla home?”

  “Yes. And they were inseparable from that night on.” August shook her head sadly. “It was Darla he had belonged with all those years. He was never meant to be with anyone else. Destiny shifts when you try to change it.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” />
  “There are some things that are meant to be, India, in order for things to be right. Pretending that you know better, trying to rearrange the natural order of things, throws it all off.” August turned her back and began to fuss with the toast. “It’s important to recognize who you are and where you belong, and with whom.”

  “What if you don’t know where you belong?” India asked softly.

  “Everyone knows, India. Deep inside, it’s there, though some choose to ignore or, worse, think they can outsmart fate. Well, you can’t.” August’s chin squared and she rattled a drawer for a knife and proceeded to butter her toast. “Only thing worse than dodging it when you’re young is wanting it when you’re old, when it’s too late to call it all back.”

  August poured her coffee and looked out the back window, and her eyes clouded with what might have been regret, as if seeking a glimpse of those wasted years. India wondered what it was that her aunt had let slip through her fingers so long ago that she sorrowed for now.

  India sat on the edge of the dark blue leather chair in the big bright office of the district attorney of the city of Paloma, across the desk from the Man himself, and watched as the first glimmer of understanding crossed his well-worn face.

  “It’s out of the question, India.” He leaned back in his chair. “I can’t do without you for three months.”

  “Then I’m afraid that you’ll need to begin looking for my replacement,” she said gently.

  “Now, hold up there.” He waved a navy blue and gold ballpoint pen loosely in her direction. “What’s this all about, India?”

  “I need to be home for a while,” she told him, “home in Devlin’s Light.”

  “This has to do with your brother’s unfortunate death, I am assuming.”

  “Partly, yes. But there are other considerations.”

  He tapped the pen on the desk with beefy, well-manicured hands.

  “What guarantee do I have that you’ll be back in three months?”

  “None I’m afraid,” she replied.

  “Let me see if I understand this.” His head moved slightly from side to side as he appeared to ponder the situation, a habit that fooled neither of them. They both knew he understood perfectly. “I have a choice between letting you take your leave and maybe coming back in three months, or I could know definitely, right now, that you will not be back at all.”

  “That pretty much sums it up.” India did her best not to blink.

  He shook his head. “What’s that saying, ‘What goes around, comes around’?”

  “Pardon?”

  He stood up and paced to the window. “For five years now, I’ve been bragging about how tough you are. I even encouraged you, went so far as to feed your tenacity to the press to make that reputation stick. But I never thought I’d have that ‘no deals’ attitude turned on me.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “No, you’re not, India.” He sighed. “You’re not sorry at all. When did you plan on leaving?”

  “I’d like to be in Devlin’s Light by the eighteenth of this month.”

  “That gives me roughly three weeks to go through your caseload, figure out what can be postponed, what needs to be reassigned.”

  “That’s done.”

  “Hmm. And it would be nice to have your input.”

  “There will be a summary in every file before I leave.”

  “Looks like you’ve thought of everything.” He crossed his arms over his chest, signaling that the conversation was over. She had been dismissed.

  “I tried to. Thank you.” She extended her hand and he took it with both of his, holding it for just a second.

  “India,” he called to her as she reached the door. “Keep in touch.”

  Chapter 20

  Packing up her office had been easier, and somewhat less painful, than India had anticipated. With Roxie’s help, she was able to clear her space in a little under two hours.

  “Have you lost your mind? India, you’re on the top of the damned heap. The Man almost likes you.” Roxie had utterly gaped when India first announced her plans.

  “Roxie, there’s a little girl in Devlin’s Light who not only likes me but needs me,” India replied.

  “I don’t believe this.” Roxie stood in the doorway to India’s office with her hands on her hips. “There has to be something else to this. You don’t walk away from what you have done here just to play mommy. You don’t leave behind four years worth of work and your whole career for… Wait a minute, India, there’s a man in this equation, isn’t there?”

  India just smiled and continued to clean out her bottom desk drawer.

  “That’s it. Little girl plus man. That’s the combination that did it, isn’t it? Now, who would ever have thought that India Devlin’s head could be turned?”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “It means that I have watched you stare down the devil in open court. I have seen you better the best. But I have never seen you fall in love, India.”

  “First time for everything.” India shrugged.

  “She admits it.” Roxie grinned. “I’ll be damned, the rumor’s true.”

  “What rumor might that be?”

  “The one going around the detectives’ lounge. Someone suspected that underneath it all, you might be human. Now Herby, he said he couldn’t see it, but I said I was still on the fence.”

  India laughed.

  “You want me to follow up with trying to track down the Byers World scam?” Roxie opened a file box and held it open for India to throw in some copies of the transcripts from a case she had tried two years earlier.

  “I would really appreciate it, Roxie. We’ve just run into one dead end after another. The attorney who represented Maris at settlement, this Patricia Sweeney, is not a member of the New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland or New York bars. The title company that issued the report and passed clear title on to Byers World doesn’t even exist. Lucien Byers has had a P.I. trying to track down this Shuman for the past couple of weeks and hasn’t been able to get so much as a cold trail. I just don’t get it.”

  “Well, we both know that if someone doesn’t want to be found, there are ways to not be found.”

  “I guess that’s true. Still, you’d think something would turn up.”

  “Something will. Sooner or later, one of these birds will slip up.” Roxie bent to pick up a poorly tossed wad of paper that hit the floor instead of the trash can. “I guess, all kidding aside, you’ll use the time off to track your brother’s killer.”

  “If we don’t resolve it now, it’s not likely that it will ever be resolved. I need to know, Roxie.” India pulled up the sleeves of her gray sweater as she prepared to tackle the last desk drawer.

  “I understand. In a way, I’m surprised that it took you so long.”

  “I really have been torn between going back and just doing what I’m doing.” India pitched a pile of old notebooks toward the trash.

  “Hold up there, Indy, are those your notes on the Elliott trial?”

  When India nodded, Roxie retrieved them from the trash, saying, “That was one of the best summations I ever heard. Unless you have serious objections, I’d like to keep those. You never know when they’ll come in handy.”

  “Help yourself.”

  “So, who is he?” Roxie asked.

  “He?” India frowned as she poked through a file drawer. Why had she kept so much paper?

  “The guy responsible for you finally going home.”

  “It’s not just him, Roxie. There’s Corri.”

  “India, you could have left here any time since August. There were some people around here who were surprised that you even came back at all after the funeral. Now all of a sudden, you’re hot to trot your buns back to Devlin’s Light. I’m just curious about the man who is special enough to take you away from all this.”

  “It wasn’t really ‘all of a sudden.’ I’ve been fighting going back since Ry died. It’s jus
t taken me a while to realize that I should, and can, go back. But I’d be lying if I said that Nick had nothing to do with the decision.”

  “Well, it’s good news and bad news as far as I’m concerned. I’ll miss you a lot. You’ve been a good friend, India. And from a professional standpoint, I’d have to go a very long way to meet someone else as good at this game as you are. On the other hand, I’m not sorry to see you go back home. I think we all knew—all but the Man, anyway—that that was where you belonged.”

  India smiled, recalling Aunt August’s words. Know where you belong, and with whom.

  “It’s taken me a while, but I may have come to the same conclusion. I figure I’ll know for sure before the three months are up whether I’ll stay or come back.”

  “Oh, there’s a pool on that too,” Roxie told her. “Odds are five to one.”

  “On what?”

  “On you staying in Devlin’s Light.” Roxie lifted the box that India was taking with her and set it near the door next to the stack of diplomas, personal photographs and Aunt August’s needlepoint that they had removed from the walls.

  India looked around the office, now stripped of everything that had made it hers. It looked much the way it had that day, now almost five years ago, that she had first arrived, nervous and unsure of herself. How had that untested lawyer, fresh from passing the bar, developed into what many criminal defense attorneys in Paloma feared as their toughest adversary?

  Lizzie, she told herself. It was love for a lost friend that had brought her here, to do this job. But it was love of another kind that would take her home.

  Maybe Nick was right. Maybe the woman had atoned for the sins of the child. Maybe she could finally forgive herself.

  Maybe she could go home, and stay home.

  Only time would tell.

  “India, you’re just in time.” August, having heard India’s car pull into the gravel driveway, had opened the back door and stepped onto the porch to greet her niece. “I was hoping you’d be here earlier, but we still have time.”