The Key Trilogy

by Nora Roberts

  “We have great sex.” She shrugged, sipped her coffee. “That’s not enough for me. Or maybe it’s too much for me. Either way it doesn’t work. You ripped me to pieces once.”

  “Dana, let me—”

  “No, that’s just it.” She stepped back from him. “I won’t let you, not again. I’ve got a good life, all in all. It satisfies me. I don’t want you in it. I don’t want you here, Jordan. I can’t have you here. So I’m telling you to go while there are no hard feelings. I’m telling you while we still have some chance of being friends.”

  She moved past him quickly. “I’m going to shower. Don’t be here when I come out.”

  HE was still in a daze when he walked into Flynn’s. Was this what she’d felt like? he wondered. Was this what he’d done to her? Had he left her feeling hollowed out and numb?

  And what happened when the numbness passed? Was it pain, or anger, or both?

  He wanted the anger. Christ, he wanted to find his anger.

  Trailing the leash that Jordan forgot to unclip, Moe dashed back toward the kitchen, and Flynn’s cheerful greeting followed the sound of thumps.

  “A boy and his dog.” Malory jogged down the stairs, morning fresh in khakis and a navy sweatshirt. “You’re back early this morning,” she began, “or I’m running behind.” Then she stopped, stared at him. “What is it? What’s wrong?” A bubble of fear came into her voice. “Dana—”

  “No, nothing. She’s fine.”

  “But you’re not. Come on. Let’s go sit down.”

  “No, I need to—”

  “Sit down,” she repeated, and taking his arm, pulled him toward the kitchen.

  Flynn was at the card table, a temporary measure in the evolving kitchen. The walls had been painted a strong teal blue that set off the golden wood of the new cabinets. The floor was stripped down in preparation for the hardwood Malory had selected. A piece of plywood sat on a stretch of base cabinets as a makeshift countertop.

  Flynn was eating cereal, and from the guilty look on both his and his dog’s faces, he’d been sharing it with Moe.

  “Hey, what’s up? You want food, you’ve got about fifteen minutes before the crew gets here.”

  “Sit down, Jordan. I’ll get you some coffee.”

  Flynn studied his friend’s face. “What’s the deal? You and Dana have a fight?”

  “No, no fight. She just told me to go.”

  “Go where?”

  “Flynn.” Malory set a mug of coffee in front of Jordan and laid a hand on his shoulder. “Can you possibly be that dense?”

  “Well, Jesus, give me a minute to catch up. If you weren’t fighting, why did she kick you out?”

  “Because she didn’t want me there.”

  “So you just left?” Flynn tossed out. “Without finding out what pissed her off?”

  “She wasn’t mad. If she’d been mad I could’ve handled her. Handled it. She just looked . . . tired, and sad. And finished.” He rubbed his hands over his face. So it wasn’t going to be anger after all, he realized. It was just pain.

  “Whatever she felt, Jordan, whatever’s behind it, you have to find out.” Malory gave his shoulder a quick shake. “Doesn’t she mean anything to you?”

  He shot her a look storming with emotions, and with a sigh she moved in to wrap her arms around him. “All right, then,” she murmured. “All right.”

  “She means enough,” he managed, “that I’m not going to put that look on her face again. She wants me gone, I’ll go.”

  “Men are such morons. Haven’t you considered that she wants you gone only because she already expects you to go?”

  ZOE met Malory at the front door, then nudged her back out. “I’ve been watching for you. Dana’s in there, painting your side. Something’s wrong. I can see it. But she won’t talk about it.”

  “She broke up with Jordan.”

  “Oh. If they’ve had a fight—”

  “No, it’s something else, and nothing as simple as an argument. I’m going to see what I can do.”

  “Good luck.” Zoe went back in.

  “What’s that noise, anyway?”

  “Just one more complication. Bradley’s over in Dana’s section with an electric floor sander. He won’t let me use it. Yes, it was very nice of him to lend it to us,” she continued when Malory lifted her eyebrows. “But I’m perfectly capable of sanding the floors. With him here, it’s that much harder to get Dana to open up.”

  “Keep him busy, I’ll deal with Dana.”

  “I don’t want to keep him busy. The last time I was alone with him for ten minutes, he put the moves on me.”

  “Which moves?”

  Zoe glanced over her shoulder toward the sound of the sander. “The night we were at his place, after everyone else left. I was having a simple conversation with him, then he kissed me.”

  “He kissed you? That perverted maniac! Get the rope.”

  “Oh, ha, ha.”

  “Okay, did you have to fight him off? Was it a scarring experience?”

  “No, but . . .” She lowered her voice, though she could have shouted and not been overheard. “He really kissed me, and my head went wonky for a minute, so I kissed him back. I’ve got entirely too much on my plate for fun and games right now. Besides, he makes me nervous.”

  “Yeah, great-looking guys who take time out of their day to sand floors for me always make me nervous. Listen, I’ve got to talk to Dana. When I’ve taken care of her, I’ll run over and, if necessary, save you from Brad’s nefarious clutches. Unless, of course, you don’t think you can handle yourself.”

  “Okay, that was low. Very low.”

  “Just make sure he doesn’t wander over while I’m talking to Dana. Scoot.” She waved Zoe away, then headed in the opposite direction.

  Her first thought was: Oh! Her walls were coming to life with that pale, delicate burnt gold she’d chosen. It was right, just so right. Already she could see what a perfect backdrop it would make for art.

  Her second thought was how set and blank Dana’s face was as she worked.

  And that was wrong, just so wrong.

  “It looks wonderful.”

  Obviously jolted out of long thoughts, Dana turned her head. “Yeah. You’ve got a knack for bull’s-eyeing color. I figured this would look bland, even a little dingy. Instead it has this nice, quiet glow.”

  “You don’t. You don’t have any glow at all today.”

  Dana shrugged, and continued to work. “Can’t be Mary Sunshine all the time.”

  “I saw Jordan this morning. He wasn’t glowing either. In fact,” she continued as she walked to Dana, “he looked devastated.”

  “He’ll get over it.”

  “Do you really think that, or do you need to think it because it gets you off the hook?”

  “I’m not on any hook.” She stared hard at the wall as she painted. Gold over white, gold over white. “I did what was right for me. It’s none of your business, Malory.”

  “Yes, it is. I love you. I love Flynn, and he loves you.”

  “We’re just one big, gooey family.”

  “You can be angry with me if you want, if it helps. But you have to know I’m on your side. Whatever happens, I’m on your side.”

  “Then you should understand why I broke things off and you should support my decision.”

  “I would, if I thought it was what you really wanted.” Malory rubbed a hand over Dana’s back. “If it made you happy.”

  “I’m not looking for happy yet.” Her friend’s comforting stroke made her want to sit down on the floor and wail. “I’ll settle for a little stretch of smooth road.”

  “Tell me what happened between yesterday and today.”

  “I remembered—with a little help from Kane.”

  “I knew it.” As she snapped it out, Malory’s face went bright with anger. “I knew he was behind this.”

  “Hold on. He took me on a trip down memory lane. That makes him a son of a bitch, but it doesn’t cha
nge the facts.” God, she was tired. She just wanted to be left alone to paint the walls. Paint away the ache and fatigue. “He didn’t change what happened or make it worse. He didn’t have to. I just knew that after seeing it again, feeling it again, I was making a mistake.”

  “Why is it a mistake to love a decent man?”

  “Because he doesn’t love me.” She yanked the band out of her hair, as if doing so would relieve the headache simmering at the base of her skull. “Because he’s going to leave as soon as he’s done here. Because the more I’m with him, the deeper in I get, and I can’t control how I feel the way I thought I could. I can’t be with him and not be in love with him.”

  “Did you ask how he felt?”

  “No. And you know what? I just wasn’t up to hearing the old ‘I care about you’ routine. Sue me.”

  No one spoke for a moment. There was only the sound of Dana’s labored breathing, the hum of the paint machine, and the steady buzz of the sander from the other side of the house.

  “You hurt him.” Malory stepped over, flicked off the machine. “Maybe his feelings aren’t as simple and weak as you think. The man I saw this morning had been cut straight down to the bone. If you wanted payback, Dana, you got it.”

  She whirled around, vibrant with fury, trembling with insult. The roller fell out of her hand and left a dull gold smear on the drop cloth. “For Christ’s sake, what do you take me for? Do you think I’ve been sleeping with him just so I could kick him out and get back some of my own?”

  “No, I don’t. I’m just thinking, if you really want that smooth stretch of road, you don’t get it by running somebody else into a ditch, then leaving him there bleeding.”

  Dana heaved the hair band to the floor and wished viciously she had something more satisfying to throw. “You’ve got some goddamn nerve.”

  “Yes, I guess I do.”

  “This is my fucking spin on the wheel, Malory. I don’t need you or anyone else telling me who to let into my life, or who to close out.”

  “Seems to me that’s just what you’re letting Kane do. He had a direction he wanted you to take, and you’re going right along with it. You’re not even asking yourself why he gave you the push.”

  “So now I should stay with Jordan because of the key? You’re lecturing me about my own life, my own decisions, so I won’t risk screwing up your deal?”

  Malory drew a long breath. It wasn’t the time for her to lose her temper, or, she decided, to blame Dana for losing hers. “If you believe that, you don’t know me, and more, you don’t know what it is you’ve agreed to do. So you can keep on painting, and congratulating yourself for avoiding all those bumps in the road, or you can stop being a coward and settle this with Jordan.”

  Finished, Malory started out. “He shouldn’t be hard to find,” she called back. “He told Flynn he was going to see his mother this morning.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  HE brought her carnations. Tulips had been her favorite, but it was the wrong season. Still, she’d liked simple flowers the best. Tulips and daffodils, rambling roses and daisies. The carnations were simple, it seemed to him, and feminine in a soft, old-fashioned pink.

  She’d have appreciated them, made a fuss, and put them in her good vase—the one her mother had given her some long ago Christmas.

  He hadn’t thought to buy anything to put them in, so the florist’s paper would have to do.

  He hated the cemetery. All those stones and markers popping out of the ground like a crop of death in gray and white and black. All the names and dates inscribed on them were as much a reminder that no one beat fate in the end as a memorial to a lifetime.

  Morbid thoughts, he supposed, but this was the place for them.

  The grass was bumpy and weedy, so the green was marred with brown patches where it had worn away, spindly where it hadn’t been clipped close enough to the stones. Others had brought flowers to their dead, and some of the offerings were faded and withered. Some solved this remembrance of death by laying artificial blooms at the markers, but the bright colors struck him as false.

  More lie, he thought, than tribute.

  It was too windy here on the north end, and too cold, without the shelter of the small grove of trees to the east or the sunny rise just to the west.

  He’d had the marker replaced a few years before with smooth white granite. She’d have considered that a foolish expense, but he’d needed to do something.

  It held her name. Susan Lee Hawke. And the span of her life, that short forty-six years. Beneath, in script, was the line he’d paraphrased from Emily Dickinson.

  Hope perches in the soul

  She’d never lost hope. She’d lived her life believing in the power of hope, and faith, leavened with good, hard work. Even when the sickness had eaten away her beauty, had whittled her down to brittle bones she’d had hope.

  For him, Jordan thought now. She’d had hope for him, believed in him, and had loved him without qualification.

  He crouched down to lay the flowers on her grave.

  “I miss you, Mom. I miss talking to you, and hearing you laugh. I miss seeing that look in your eye that told me I was in trouble. And even when I was, you were there for me. You were always there for me.”

  He stared at the words on the stone. It looked so formal. She’d always been Sue. Simple, straightforward Sue.

  “I know you’re not in there. This sort of thing, it’s just a way of letting other people know you were around, that you were loved. Sometimes I feel you, and it’s such a strong feeling it’s as if I could turn around and there you’d be. You always believed in stuff like that, in the possibilities of what we are.”

  He rose, slid his hands into his pockets. “I’m wondering what the hell I am. I’ve screwed up. Not everything, just one vital thing. I’ve got the one thing I always wanted, and I lost the one thing I didn’t know I always needed. I’d say maybe it’s cosmic justice. Maybe you just can’t have it all. But you’d give me that look.”

  He gazed out toward the hills she’d always loved, and the way the sky held a strong blue over the flame of the trees. “I don’t know if I can fix it. Fact is, I don’t know if I should even try.”

  He closed his eyes a moment. “It hurts to be here. I guess it’s supposed to.” He touched his fingers to his lips, then pressed his fingers to the stone. “I love you. I’ll come back.”

  He turned, and stopped when he saw Dana standing on the edge of the access road, watching him.

  He looked so sad, she thought. More than that, it was as if the sorrow had stripped away his defenses and left the emotions behind them open and raw. It was painful to see him this vulnerable, to understand that they both knew she’d caught him unguarded in a moment meant to be private.

  No longer sure what she would say, could say, she walked across the grass to stand with him by his mother’s grave.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to . . . disturb you,” she began. “That’s why I was waiting over there.”

  “It’s all right.”

  She looked down at the grave, the fresh flowers spread over the grass. Perhaps she did know what to say. “Flynn and I come here once a year.” She cleared her throat. “His father, my mother . . . and yours. We, ah, try to come right after the first real snowfall. Everything’s so peaceful and white and clean. We bring her flowers.”

  She shifted her gaze from the flowers and saw he was staring at her. “I thought you’d like to know we always bring her flowers when we come.”

  He didn’t speak, but his eyes said everything. Then he simply lowered his forehead to hers.

  They stood like that, silent, while the wind whipped around them and fluttered the petals of the pink carnations.

  “Thanks.” He straightened slowly, as if he were afraid something in him might break. “Thank you.”

  She nodded, and they stood, silent again, looking out at the hills.

  “This is the first time I’ve been out here since I’ve been back,”
he told her. “I never know what I’m supposed to do in a place like this.”

  “You did it. Carnations are nice. Simple.”

  He let out a little laugh. “Yeah, that was my thought. Why are you here, Dana?”

  “I had things to say to you, that maybe I didn’t say the right way this morning.”

  “If it’s along the lines of we can still be friends, maybe you could wait a couple of days on that.”

  “Not exactly. I don’t know if this is the appropriate time or place to talk about this,” she began, “but after Malory finished reaming me out this morning, I decided she had a few points, and that I owed you—myself—I owed both of us something better than the way I ended things.”

  “I hurt you. I could see it on your face. I don’t want to hurt you, Dana.”

  “Too late for that.” She lifted her shoulders, let them fall. “You were careless with me, Jordan. You were careless and you were callous. And though I might have spent some happy hours over the years dreaming about paying you back in kind, I realize that’s not really what I want. So my being careless and callous with you this morning wasn’t any more satisfying for me than it was for you.”

  “Why did you do it?”

  “I went back last night, courtesy of Kane.” She frowned up at his pithy comment. “I don’t think you should use that sort of language over your mother’s grave.”

  For some reason, the remark loosened a knot in his belly. “She’s heard it before.”

  “Nevertheless.”

  He shrugged, and there was something of the boy she’d loved in the gesture. Just enough of him to twist her heart again. “Where did you go?”

  “I went back to the day you were packing to move to New York. I experienced it again. Watched myself experiencing it. It was very strange, and no less horrible knowing I was watching a rerun. It was like standing on both sides of a one-way mirror. Watching us, and still being a part of it. Everything you said to me, everything you didn’t say to me, was just as painful as when it happened.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  She tipped her face up to his. “I actually believe you are, which is why I’m here rather than burning you in effigy. But you see, it hurt, all over again. And I have the right, I have the responsibility to myself, to step back from that. I’m not willing to let my heart spill at your feet again, and I can’t be with you and keep it intact. Maybe we can be friends, maybe we can’t. But we can’t be lovers. I just needed to explain that to you.”