"I'm the one who couldn't make it into the church."
"You went in," she said.
"Only because you did."
Suddenly she became hyper-aware of the intimacy of what they'd shared, and she pulled away, plunging both hands into the pockets of her coat. She was about to ask him if he needed a ride to his hotel when a tall, slim, graying man approached them.
"Well, if it's not the luck of the Irish at work." His voice was deep and musical, touched with a trace of brogue. "And how grand is it to find you two together like this?"
Meg glanced at the dark-haired man next to her, who shrugged his shoulders.
"I see my smiling face means nothing to you fine people," the older man said easily. "I'm Patrick McCallum, Anna's attorney, and you're Joseph Alessio and Margarita Lindstrom." They said nothing. McCallum looked from one to the other and his smile widened. "You can't deny it," he said, pulling two photos from his inside breast pocket and extending them toward Meg and Joe. "You both might be a little older, but time hasn't done any damage at all."
Meg barely recognized the face looking up at her from the grainy black-and-white photo. It wasn't that she had been that much younger—five years made little difference—but the look in her eyes was one of such innocence, such enthusiasm, that she turned away and reached for the other picture.
"This is you?" she asked, looking from the flat, one-dimensional image to the living, breathing original next to her."You look so. . . so—"
"Angry." Joe snatched the picture from her, glanced at it, then handed it back. "I was." He pulled another cigarette from his coat pocket. "Very angry."
It wasn't a professional shot. No pro would ever have allowed his strong-boned face to disappear into shadow and yet the anger in his eyes still singed her fingers as she held the picture. He was thinner in the photo, less muscular, his denim work shirt open at the neck. Nestled in the thick chest hair was a medal of some kind, and below that dog tags. His black hair was long; its straight strands covered his brow and brushed below the collar of his shirt. Most of his face was hidden by a beard and moustache that lacked the lushness of maturity.
He was sitting on a window seat, lighted cigarette in two fingers of his left hand, which rested on his right knee. His eyes, a brilliant deep green in reality, seemed dark and mysterious in the photo. Through the bay window behind him, Meg could just make out the figures of people playing with a Frisbee in Anna's Lakeland House backyard.
"I know that room," she said, handing Joe the photo. "That was where the dancers practiced."
Joe passed the photo to McCallum, who was quietly observing the two of them. "When I was at Lakeland, there were no dancers."
"I thought Anna catered to all the arts," Meg said. "When I was there, she—"
"Mrs. Kennedy opened her doors to dancers three years after Joe's stay," Patrick McCallum broke in, sliding the two snapshots into his coat pocket. "Which is a good five years before you arrived."
Meg turned to Joe and quickly assessed him.
"I'm not as young as you thought," Joe said with a quick grin.
"I thought you were around my age."
"Which is?"
"Twenty-six years and three months," McCallum volunteered. "Margarita was born July sixth and you, Joseph, were born July seventh—a difference of seven years and one day."
Next to her, Joe bristled. "How the hell do you know so much about us?"
McCallum's face, lined and friendly as a basset hound, lit up. "I was Anna's lawyer and I know everything about the people she cared most for."
"I'm flattered," Meg said, "but I don't really see why it—"
"Matters," Joe broke in.
McCallum's sigh was long and low. "I hadn't wanted to bring this up until we got to Lakeland House."
"We weren't planning to go back to the house," Meg said.
McCallum stepped between them and draped an arm around each one of them. "Oh no, no, no, my dear people. That can't be."
"The hell it can't," Joe said, temper clearly getting the better of him. "I'm driving back to Princeton tonight."
The intense young man in the photo sprang to life in front of Meg. She was fascinated but poor McCallum seemed cowed.
"We just said goodbye to someone we loved. It's been a shitty morning and I don't think either I or-" He fumbled for her name.
"Meg," she said.
His look was one of thanks and apology. "I don't think either Meg or I want to be strong-armed into—"
"Strong-armed?" McCallum released Meg so quickly it was like she'd caught fire. "Strong-armed, is it?" His pale blue eyes were filled with concern. "Good God, but it has been a difficult morning, hasn't it?" He rubbed his square chin absently. "Didn't I make it clear? You, Joseph, and you, Margarita, are both requested to be present."
"Requested by whom?" Joe still sounded wary.
"By Anna."
"I beg your pardon?" Meg's voice rose an octave.
"I spoke with Anna a few hours before she died," McCallum explained. "She said the will cannot be read except in your presence." He favored them with another smile. "Your presences."
"This is the first I've heard of anything like this," Meg said as an uncomfortable fluttering began in the pit of her stomach. "You'd think Anna would've mentioned it."
Joe shook his head. "Not the Anna I knew. She delighted in surprises."
"Now you get the idea." McCallum, satisfied that he was finally understood, draped his arms over their shoulders once again and propelled Meg and Joe back toward the church and the waiting cars. "This is going to be a very interesting afternoon all around."
Second Harmony – a contemporary romance
The storm brought them together . . .
But will love tear them apart?
He was the bad boy with the raging heart
She was the good girl with the big dreams
Now he is a master stonecutter with a broken marriage and a son he would move heaven and earth to keep safe from harm, while she is a success at everything she touches . . . everything except love
And then, seven years after they said goodbye forever, fate finally found a way to bring them back together and give them one last chance to get it right.
~~Chapter One~~
With the back of her hand, Mother Nature had managed to obliterate most of the signs of modern civilization and send Long Island plummeting back into the darkness of another time.
On Harvest Drive, a twisting, hilly road off the Sound near Port Jefferson, residents peeked out their windows into the gathering darkness and wondered how they would be able to hack their way through the tangle of fallen trees and collapsed roofs the next morning.
While a lot of Long Islanders professed a love of the great outdoors, most liked it best when the great outdoors gently splashed against their twenty-five-foot sailboats or rustled the wind chimes hanging over their redwood decks.
Hurricane Henry was Mother Nature's way of thumbing her nose at progress and reminding everyone exactly who was in charge here.
Five neighbors, all men, labored at the far end of Harvest Drive, trying to make the roadway passable. The night air was alive with the sound of wood splitting beneath an ax, the brittle crunch of leaves underfoot and the mumbled curses and shouted directions of the men who worked by the light of a kerosene lamp and the high beams of a Jeep.
Four of the men were out there because it was expected of them, and because they were men of accomplishment who believed in always meeting the expectations of others.
The fifth man didn't give a damn about what others expected. He was there because storms were his natural element, the raw beauty of untamed nature, his food and drink. He was bigger than the other men—taller and more powerfully made – but it wasn't his size that marked him as a leader. Rather, it was something indefinable, a sense of power, of certainty, that made others give way.
"Hey, McKay!" The voice belonged to an attorney whose list of triumphs could have filled the Manhattan Yel
low Pages. "Enough already. Haven't you noticed it's dark out?"
Michael McKay raised the axe overhead one more time and brought it slicing down on the trunk of a once-beautiful oak tree.
"It's been dark for almost an hour," he called out, as he wiped the sweat from his eyes with the back of his hand. "If I get this one out, we'll at least have one lane open."
Jim Flannery, the attorney, took the opportunity to grab the axe away from Michael. "Forget it, pal. You're swinging blind, and I don't think Bernstein over there is in the mood to do any microsurgery tonight."
Michael adjusted the beam of the kerosene lamp on the ground near them. "I'm not a desk jockey like you, Flannery. Hard work doesn't scare me."
Flannery turned to Sid Bernstein, the surgeon. "I think he just insulted us, Bernie. What do you think?"
Bernstein feinted a quick right jab toward Michael's jaw. The other men – a psychologist and an engineer – joined in the good-natured ribbing.
"Hard work doesn't scare any of us, McKay," Bill Hughes, the psychologist, said, "but how in hell can I dial 911 when you keep over if the phone lines are down?"
In answer, Michael retrieved the axe and raised it overhead again, as the other men quickly stepped backward.
"Can't convince you to stop?" Frank DeMarco, the engineer, called out.
The axe whistled as it cut first through the air, then the oak tree, freeing the last piece to be cleared from the street.
"You finally convinced me," said Michael.
With one motion, he picked up the tree limb and tossed it onto the pile near the driveway to Sid's house.
"So now the problem is food," He turned to the rest of the men. "Any suggestions?"
"Marilyn refuses to open the freezer," Sid said."Says she's conserving energy."
Jim laughed. "We already polished off all the ice cream in there, Bernie. What else could be left?"
A few of the families were going to pool the contents of their refrigerators and have a barbecue, and the consensus was that an impromptu block party wasn't such a bad idea.
Michael rested the axe handle on his shoulder and started walking back with them in the general direction of his house. With David visiting his maternal grandparents, he hadn't bothered to shop for anything more substantial than a dozen eggs and some chocolate-covered doughnuts. In fact, if it hadn't been for the storm, he wouldn't have been on Long Island at all; he would have been in Upper Manhattan working on the gargoyle for the north side door of the cathedral.
This heavily mortgaged house on Harvest Drive was something he'd bought for David, and within his five-year-old son around it seemed echoingly empty.
"You're joining us, aren't you, Mike?" Sid asked.
The talk of franks and filet mignon was tempting, but not tempting enough to lure him into an evening of such concentrate conviviality.
"Not tonight." He stopped at the foot of his driveway and tossed the axe into the back of his four-wheel-drive. "I think I'm going to go out and do some exploring."
Bill shook his head. "You need counseling, friend. Anyone who ventures out farther than his own fireplace tonight is either a madman or –"
Sid Bernstein started to laugh. "Or a medievalist like our pal McKay."
It was an old joke, and one Michael was able to accept with good grace. For the three years he'd been there, he'd tried in vain to explain the difference between a medievalist and one who practiced a medieval trade.
To these men, rooted firmly in the next-to-last decade of the twentieth century, technology was king and speed the crown prince.
Why a man like Michael McKay would want to spend his life chipping away at two-ton blocks of stone with instruments his cave-dwelling ancestors would have found backward was beyond their comprehension.
"They barbecued in the Dark Ages," Jim Flannery was saying as he leaned against the fender of the Jeep. "In fact, if you happen upon a wild porterhouse out there, bring it back and we'll grill it."
Michael's baritone laugh rang out in the silence of his front yard. "You wouldn't know what to do with anything that wasn't wrapped in plastic and meant for the microwave. I can't wait to see what happens if the power company doesn't get us back up tonight.
"When the juice comes back on, you'll be the first one to turn to the Sports Channel, McKay. With the Yanks in the pennant race, you're not about to pretend they haven't invented the wheel yet."
Michael glanced up at the maze of cable-television wires that had been attached to his roof before Hurricane Henry came along. "Can I blame the existence of all that paraphernalia on David?"
Jim Flannery snorted. "Hell, no. You were wired and watching long before you got custody of your kid."
Michael reached into the pocket of his pants and pulled out his car keys. "This place is worse than Knot's Landing," he said with a grin.
They all knew about his ex-wife's death and his ongoing custody battle with her parents; their quiet support had made the legal hassles more bearable.
"Abandoning ship?" asked Frank.
Michael climbed behind the wheel. "You got it."
"Coward." Jim ruffled the hair of his eldest daughter, who'd come out to tell everyone that the impromptu barbecue was ready. "Can't take ghost stories around the old campfire?"
"Not when the old campfire is on the deck of a four-hundred-thousand-dollar house, Flannery." The truck's engine roared to life. "Maybe I'll be back before you roast the marshmallows." He adjusted the headlights and backed slowly down the driveway.
"Guy's crazy." Jim's voice, tinged with curiosity and affection, floated down the street after him. "Doesn't know enough to come in out of a hurricane."
Maybe not, Michael thought as he steered around the split trunk of what had once been a beautiful weeping willow.
But there was one thing he did know: he'd rather be out there in the aftermath of a killer storm than back, safe and secure, in that empty house of his. He could protect himself against the elements but there was no protection against loneliness.
#
She had to admit it was one hell of a homecoming.
For six years Sandra Patterson had imagined how it would feel to return to New York in triumph, the city kid from the rough streets of Queens, with no advantages but a sharp brain and a lot of ambition, coming back with the keys to a new house on Long Island Sound in one hand, and the assistant-vice-president's job in the other.
Long Island had seemed like Shangri-La to kids from the city streets when she was growing up, and having a 516 area code had been the ultimate status symbol.
How great it would be to see the old crowd again, to know that at last she was their equal in every way. Oh, maybe she didn't have the husband and the children, but she'd managed to play the best hand possible with the cards she'd been dealt.
It had seemed as if the years of hard work and loneliness, the years of sacrificing things other women took for granted, were finally going to pay off.
Another gust of wind rocked the cliff house overlooking Eaton's Harbor. Sandra shivered, and for the hundredth time she imagined she heard footsteps along the driveway.
What a joke.
In the three weeks since she moved back, she'd discovered that the members of her old crowd had divorced and remarried, gone to jail, gone to seed, opened law offices and closed movie theaters. They'd gone into analysis and come out of the closet. Some of them had moved to Florida, others to Connecticut.
And the one she thought of late at night when her defenses were down had married and vanished to Virginia, obviously forgetting his old dream to live on the Island one day.
He'd managed to forget her. Why should it surprise her that he'd forgotten his other dreams as well?
Not one thing had stayed the same — herself included.
She glanced at the huge stack of computer printouts on the makeshift desk in her family room. Thank God, assistant vice-presidents in charge of mortgage planning had precious little time to be lonely.
Sandra was us
ed to hard work, but the degree of tension at this level was higher than she'd expected. It was as if US-National Bank were bound and determined to get its money's worth out of her, even if it got it in blood.
The latest bill for her mother's medical care caught her eye, and she shoved it farther under the pile of computer sheets. Anything she knew about self-reliance she'd learned from Elinor Patterson, the woman who had stopped dreaming so that her daughter could start.
Maybe she wasn't getting the ego boost out of her professional triumph that she'd anticipated, maybe there were nights when she wondered why it had seemed so damned important to come back home, but there was a deep satisfaction in knowing that the help her mother needed could be had – and that she could pay the price.
In a way, she was thankful for the demands US-National made on her time; it gave her less opportunity to think about the disease that was slowly but surely killing her mother.
So when Sandra heard the crunching sound beneath her window for the third time in ten minutes, she chalked it up to overwork and to the way the hurricane had jangled her nerves. She hated storms – she had hated them since childhood – and surviving Henry's brutal battering had obviously taken more out of her than she'd realized.
Then she heard it.
"She's in there." A man's voice, right beneath the side window. "I can hear her."
Sandra's pen clattered to the floor, and she gave up pretending that the footsteps she'd heard crunching along her gravel driveway were a trick of the wind blowing off the Sound.
"There are no lights on in there." A woman's voice this time. Equal-opportunity employment had apparently reached all sectors of the work force, felons included.
"Idiot," said another woman. "We just had a hurricane. There are no lights anywhere."
A few hours ago, after the worst of Henry had passed, she'd thought spending a candlelit evening alone in her new house with only a stack of ledger sheets for company would be a rustic adventure, one of those experiences that would make for great cocktail conversation at US-National Bank networking sessions.
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