A Murder at Alcott Manor

by Alyssa Richards

  “I read about that in the paper. I’m so sorry. I wanted to come to the funeral, but I didn’t know if that was the right thing—” She winced.

  He knew that was her polite way of saying that she didn’t know if she would be welcome. “No, it’s fine. I understand.”

  “He was so young.”

  “Fifty-four. Heart attack.”

  She shook her head. “So tragic. How is Dixie doing?”

  “She’s tough. Resilient. Amazes me every day how strong she is. She says she focuses on their time together and that gets her through.” Something jarred inside of him when he repeated his mother’s words.

  “Sounds like her.” Layla sighed. “I miss the talks she and I used to have. She was such a positive force in my life when I was growing up.”

  “Well, you know she always loved you.” He poured wine into their glasses and the air filled with the scent of peaches and apples.

  Layla’s smile was sweet and misty, as though previously forgotten memories warmed her heart. “Does she still do interior decorating? That game room she did at the country club was so exquisite. Like she brought the room over from a British castle.”

  Mason thought of his childhood home that hadn’t been updated since he was in high school and right after the Reverend Milligan disaster. Between the too-dark shaggy carpet, the unfashionable kitchen cabinets, and curtains with the occasional sun-induced hole, it was obvious that Dixie had given up one of her brightest talents.

  “I just don’t care about that stuff anymore, Mason,” his mother said whenever he pushed her to restart her decorating. “I don’t want to have anything to do with those women who spend their days worrying over color and texture. I want to do meaningful work.”

  He didn’t believe her. Those women had shamed every client away from her, including the country club. It was wrong. Unjust. Since her business was dead and his dad was gone, he sent her money each month to make her financial ends meet. He was happy to do it, but she should have been able to do what she was good at, she should have been able to earn a living, she should have been able to do both of those things without judgment.

  “No. She helped Daddy a little bit with the houses he built. You know, staging some of the final homes so they would sell faster. She also helped him rearrange some of the floor plans, said she enjoyed giving him the woman’s point of view.”

  “I’ll bet she did.” Layla raised both eyebrows in a Dixie-means-business kind of way and they both laughed.

  “It was actually Dixie who got me thinking about coming home,” he said to bring the conversation back to his point. “She got ahold of me after Daddy died. Said she noticed something about me, that she didn’t think I was happy. That led to a lot of discussions about—”

  “What is real? What is true?” Layla’s lips broadened into a graceful smile at their shared memory.

  “You remembered.”

  “Maybe not until this moment. But I well remember her advice. Wish I had held on to that through the years.” Her eyes widened with too much to tell and Mason nodded in agreement. He wished he had held on to that advice through the years as well.

  “I spent a bunch of time walking Central Park and ultimately realizing that every answer to those two questions lead me back here to the things I loved doing and the people I loved most. Like carrying on Daddy’s good name in the homebuilding business, working with my hands and spending my time with people I genuinely cared about.”

  He wanted to add—people like you. Because every quiet moment during that period of his life reminded him that the biggest mistake of his life was giving up on Layla. He knew saying that would make him sound psycho and would bring the evening to an abrupt end, so he opted for a more gentle approach. He picked up their glasses of wine. “Let’s walk.”

  She turned up the volume on the baby monitor so she could hear her daughters from a distance, and she took his hand when he offered it as an assist down the back stairs. They strolled next to the fragrant herbs and through the rose gardens, ignoring the area where they had camped over a decade ago, as if they could.

  She told him about her girls, her nursing career, and they talked about old times, good times, and the best shared times, the last of which made them laugh uncontrollably.

  He pointed to a gliding bench built for two, where they sat and watched the moonlight ripple over the waves. The seagulls and the whitewater serenaded their peaceful silence, accented only by the rhythmic squeak of the glider. When a briny breeze raced over the lawn, she closed her eyes and inhaled it deeply, her smile appearing as though she had finally found a safe place to let go, to trust, to be free. He thought he sensed an opening, a pathway forward. Like a gentle release, he thought he felt her carefully crafted walls relax, and he took the chance.

  “I also came back to Charleston because I wanted to make things right with you,” he said.

  She turned to him, her sky blue eyes wide and soft. In a flash, he thought he saw something sacred—a flicker of hope. Then she laughed gently, sipped her wine and adjusted her thin flowered dress that graced her ankles. “Well, you didn’t have to move home to do that. You could have called. Or sent a letter. Email works.”

  A well-timed wave crashed loudly as if it objected. He turned to face her more directly. “No. Making things right with you is important. It warranted a face-to-face conversation. At least. And—” He pressed his hands together and stared at them for a moment. This would either go really well or really badly. “I wanted—I hoped we might start our friendship again. When I found out you were single, I hoped we might try to pick up where we left off. Before everything fell apart.”

  Her eyes shifted toward him abruptly and he wondered if he’d made a misstep. He ran his hand over his face, certain now that he was bungling this.

  Just shoot it straight with her, Mason.

  “What I’m trying to say is, the end of our friendship is one of the biggest regrets of my life. I realized, hopefully not too late, that a relationship with you was a once in a lifetime thing. I’ve really missed what we used to share with one another. I’ve missed you, Layla.”

  Her slightly open-mouthed stare made her appear as though he had stunned her into silence. He wasn’t at all sure what she thought, so he just kept talking.

  “It’s why I took this job.” He gestured to the manor behind them and was glad not to look at it.

  She rubbed her arm slowly as though she were brushing away a chill, and he hoped he hadn’t given her the creeps. He hoped he didn’t sound like a stalker. He hoped for the best. Oddly, he wondered if Dixie ever struggled with this, when she knew the truth before someone else did.

  “You don’t have to answer right away. Think about it.” He was completely tongue-tied around her and everything he said seemed to make it worse.

  She stood and he figured she was about to say thanks and goodnight. The ocean breeze blew the bottom hem of her button front dress behind her and lifted the ends of her long, blonde hair.

  He drew in a deep breath to calm himself and so he wouldn’t say anything else. He would give her time. All that she needed.

  Finally, she sat next to him again. “What does that mean, exactly? Pick up where we left off?”

  “I hoped we might try to go back to before everything fell apart,” he said as plainly as he could and then realized he hadn’t offered any clarity. “I’m hoping you would be interested in going out with me.”

  “You don’t even know me anymore.”

  He exhaled and laid his heart and ego and feelings between them. She could do with them what she chose. All he had left was humility. He had spent a lot of time doing what Dixie coached him to do—following his heart, his happiness, his gut, and it had led him here. It was all risk and vulnerability and trust, qualities he had only ever been able to embrace around Layla. But from the look on her face, he wasn’t sure if those qualities would be rewarded.

  “I’d like for us to get to know one another again. Take it slow. Enjoy the p
rocess.”

  She looked over the darkened lawn where it had happened, and two memories flashed in rapid fire in his mind, as if they were stuck on a loop. The first—Brooke lying on her blood-soaked pillow, Jordan screaming in the background that Layla had killed her. Then weeks later, the detective saying, “It’s forensically impossible for Layla Alcott to have hurt Brooke. The facts are solid, and they just don’t point to her.”

  An endless circle of mystery. The police never did figure out who attacked her, though he still suspected Asher.

  “I haven’t heard from you in ten years.” She waved in the direction where Brooke had been killed.

  “I’m sorry. I should have tried harder.”

  They sat there, staring at one another. She certainly didn’t owe him anything. And although he knew it wouldn’t be enough to bet on, he felt heat between them, simmering in a slow boil. The chemistry they once had was still there.

  He could tell from the look in her eye that she wondered how much to trust. How much she could let her guard down. He knew he wasn’t the only one to put that fear there, but he had played a role.

  He held her hand in his and ran his thumb over the top of it. “When I came to see you, I hoped you’d let me apologize then and there and try to put things back together for us. When your mother told me you were with Asher and that you didn’t want to see me, I understood. I mean, here I was—”

  “What?” Layla leaned forward with a start, her tone scissor-sharp.

  “I understood. You were moving on, beginning a new life. I screwed up.”

  “No. You came to see me?” She stood slowly, as though something propelled her from the inside.

  “I did. And then I tried to find you at graduation, but you didn’t go—”

  “Because I’d gotten death threats from Jordan’s and Brooke’s friends. You came to see me?”

  His chest tightened with a sharp pain. He hadn’t known about the death threats. If he had, he would have put a stop to that. But how could she not know about all the times he tried to get in touch with her? “I did come to see you. Many times. Twice when Brooke was still in her coma. Several times after she died. I spoke with your mother each time.”

  She covered her mouth with her fingers. Her eyes carried worry and fear, as if a horror movie played behind them.

  He rubbed the outside of her arms to steady her or himself, he wasn’t sure. He could still see Jayne Ella’s hard edged face scolding him for how he had hurt her daughter. “It was right after graduation. She told me to go away and stay away, that you never wanted to see me again.”

  Slow and methodical, Layla backed away. Her gaze lifted to the sky and she laughed, short and breathy. Not as though something were funny, but more as though something were utterly unbelievable. “I never said that. And she never told me you came by.”

  They said nothing for a moment, their eyes locked hard on one another. He stood and pushed his hands through his hair. “It never occurred to me that Jayne Ella might be lying,” he whispered. “You must have thought that I blamed you just like everyone else. You must have thought that I hated you. You must have thought—oh gosh, Layla. No— I came by again before I left for school. She said the same thing, that you didn’t want to have anything to do with me.”

  She kept her hand over her heart, as if she needed to find a way to stem the hurt. “I didn’t know.”

  He took a step toward her. “I tried calling you. Several times. But—”

  “Jayne Ella had my phone number changed. The press kept calling, Brooke’s friends and Jordan harassed me nonstop—”

  It seemed there was a lot he didn’t know about Jordan. Which surprised him, considering how much time they had spent together in New York. “I thought you were mad for how I acted that night. I thought you wanted me to move on.”

  Layla stared where the waves crashed until she finally turned to face him. “I—um. I wasn’t mad. I was…distraught. Before that night, you had kissed me, and I thought it meant something. You said you were breaking up with Brooke and that you wanted to take me out. I thought we were heading someplace. And then…it was over and I thought…”

  He stepped toward her until they were only inches apart. He felt nothing but gratitude that he could be this close to her again. “That kiss did mean something,” he said, remembering how her kiss made him feel. “Our friendship, that kiss. You. Us. This has never been over for me.” He pressed his lips to hers and felt her body lean against his chest. Her kiss was even better than he had remembered—her soft lips pressing against his, awakening something inside of him. “This will never be over for me.”

  He would be lying if he said her kiss didn’t light a fire inside of him or make him want to carry her to the beach and make love to her until sunrise. But the intimacy of their kiss played upon the harmony they had always shared as friends and made their connection nothing less than amazing. It stunned him and held him in the magic of it all, the magic he had only ever known with Layla.

  Layla leaned against one of the pillars. The evening ocean breeze was warm and playful and seemed to twirl around them like a playful child. As if it were happy at what they had managed to figure out.

  Mason’s eyes skimmed along the eaves of the manor as though he reflected on their past and what might have been. “The last decade could have been very different for the both of us if Jayne Ella hadn’t interfered.”

  She thought of how her mother had pushed her into marrying Asher. “Story of my life.” She also wondered if he would have continued their relationship had Brooke lived. Or would he have chosen her instead? She wasn’t ready to ask that question yet.

  He held her hands in his while they stood beneath the portico, at the top of the stairs and with the great lawn and the ocean laid out in epic grace before them. “I know we can't erase the last ten years, but we could start fresh from today. There’s no reason why not. Right?”

  Except that all of the reasons why not quickly marched across Layla’s brain, one by one, in a technicolor parade. Primary among them was that she was a murderer. She was the one who had killed Brooke and ruined their lives. She grinned as if she agreed with him, while inwardly her heart dropped like a sinking ship.

  “This weekend, I’d like to take you out on that date I promised you a long time ago.”

  She nodded, and he guided her into the kitchen.

  “I’ll plan something special,” he said.

  He must have noticed something in her expression, or maybe it was because she had become quiet, because he asked, “Are you uncomfortable staying here alone tonight?”

  “I’ll set the alarm, we’ll be fine.” A distant thought of Asher knocked at the outside of her mind. She waved that away, and the dead zone took its place.

  “You sure? I could sleep on the couch. First nights in new places are always difficult.”

  Her throat tightened at the thought of having to walk down the dark stairwell again.

  “Well, actually, the lights are out in the stairwell.” She gestured in that direction with the baby monitor. “Maybe you could just fix that before you leave?”

  His grin broadened in that all-American boyish style that made her knees do funny things. “I’ll do better than that.”

  He closed the door behind him and locked it, then set the alarm.

  “Mason, I’m not suggesting—”

  “No, I’m just going to fix those lights for you. Then I’ll sleep on the couch up here.” He pointed down the main hallway. “In case y’all need anything. I’ll leave early in the morning and come back with breakfast.”

  She found herself taking a deep breath and thanking him.

  “This house is a monster, too big, takes some getting used to. I’ll have my cell phone, call if you need me.”

  He gestured casually, in an adorable hunky-quarterback kind of way, a gracious smile on his lips that said he was only too happy to help her. For a moment, it was as if the last ten years had never happened.

  17
>
  They agreed to leave the door at the top of the stairs open to allow for plenty of light, since the stairwell lighting issue appeared to be a wiring problem. Then they said their goodnights, but not their goodbyes. Her dress swished blithely against her bare legs when she went down the stairs. She didn’t think about the dark stranger she had convinced herself she saw earlier in the stairwell, she didn’t think about future living arrangements for her family, and she didn’t think about anything financial. She didn’t think because her heart was centered on all things Mason.

  She pinched the delicate skin on the inside of her arm.

  Ouch.

  Definitely awake.

  She tried to guard against hope because she knew, logically, it was futile. But step by pillowy step, her heart was still buoyed by everything she had discovered tonight. He had come by to see her back then, to continue on with what they had started. Wasn’t that what he said? At the very least, he had said that what they had would never be over for him. She remembered that verbatim.

  She caught a glimpse of the great lawn that stretched from the manor to the ocean. Unusually so, her evergreen sense of guilt about that night was momentarily at bay. It was covered by Mason’s touch, his kiss, and his caress.

  She glanced around the summer quarters, her makeshift home that was a far cry from the upstairs that was adorned with gold and crystal, marble and silk. Rough as the summer quarters were, she was glad that they weren’t living with her mother.

  Jayne Ella.

  Layla expected to feel a surge of anger strong enough to make her eat cake. Chocolate cake. Maybe an entire cake.

  To her surprise, there was no anger.

  At least not tonight. Oh, she and her mother would have words. Lots of them. But tonight a wrong had been righted, an imbalance had been corrected, and past lies had shifted, finally, to an honest track.

  After Mason had left town, Asher looked like the only one who cared and the only one who ever would. Jayne Ella ground over those facts again and again until Layla acquiesced—Mason was gone, she was a fool for caring about him, and girls like her didn’t have many options.