by Nora Roberts
“Give me a call first. I’d love to try it.”
“And now”—Heather rubbed her hands together—“was that who I thought it was?”
“Sorry?” Abra responded.
“The man who came in during class. Wasn’t that Eli Landon?”
The name brought on an immediate murmur. Abra felt the benefits of her hour’s yoga practice dissolve as her shoulders tightened. “Yes, that was Eli.”
“I told you.” Heather elbowed Winnie. “I told you I’d heard he was moving into Bluff House. Are you seriously doing the cleaning there while he’s in the house?”
“There’s not a lot to clean if nobody’s living there.”
“But Abra, aren’t you nervous? I mean, he’s accused of murder. Of killing his own wife. And—”
“He was cleared, Heather. Remember?”
“Just because they didn’t have enough evidence to arrest him doesn’t mean he isn’t guilty. You shouldn’t be alone in that house with him.”
“Just because the press likes a good scandal, especially where sex, money and bedrock New England families are involved, doesn’t mean he isn’t innocent.” Maureen arched fiery red eyebrows. “You know that old rule of law, Heather. Innocent until proven guilty?”
“I know he got fired—and he was a criminal defense lawyer. Seems fishy, if you ask me, that they’d fire him if he wasn’t guilty. And they said he was the prime suspect. Witnesses heard him threaten his wife the same day she was killed. She’d have gotten a pile of money in a divorce. And he had no business being in that house, did he?”
“It was his house,” Abra pointed out.
“But he’d moved out. I’m just saying where there’s smoke . . .”
“Where there’s smoke sometimes means someone else started the fire.”
“You’re so trusting.” Heather gave Abra a one-armed hug—as sincere as it was patronizing. “I’m just going to worry about you.”
“I think Abra has a fine feel for people and can take care of herself.” Greta Parrish, the senior of the group at seventy-two, pulled on her warm and practical wool coat. “And Hester Landon wouldn’t have opened Bluff House for Eli—always a well-mannered young man—if she had the smallest doubt of his innocence.”
“Oh, now I’ve nothing but affection and respect for Ms. Landon,” Heather began. “Every one of us hope and pray she’ll be well enough to come home soon. But—”
“No buts.” Greta yanked a cloche cap over her steel-gray hair. “That boy’s part of this community. He may have lived in Boston, but he’s a Landon, and he’s one of us. God knows he’s been through the wringer. I’d hate to think anyone here would add to his troubles.”
“I—I didn’t mean that.” Flustered, Heather looked from face to face. “Honestly, I didn’t. I’m just worried about Abra. I can’t help it.”
“I believe you are.” Greta gave Heather a brisk nod. “I believe you’ve no reason to. This was a very nice practice, Abra.”
“Thank you. Why don’t I drive you home? It’s snowing pretty hard.”
“I believe I can manage a three-minute walk.”
Women bundled up, filed out. Maureen lingered.
“Heather’s an ass,” Maureen stated.
“A lot of people are. And a lot of people will think the way she does. If he was suspected, he must be guilty. It’s wrong.”
“Of course it is.” Maureen O’Malley, her short, spiky hair as fiery as her eyebrows, took another pull from her water bottle. “The problem is, I don’t know if I’d think the same, at least in some little cynical pocket, if I didn’t know Eli.”
“I didn’t realize you did.”
“He was my first serious make-out.”
“Hold that.” Abra pointed with both index fingers. “Just hold that. That’s a glass-of-wine story.”
“You don’t have to twist my arm. Just let me text Mike that I’m going to be about another half hour.”
“You do that. I’ll pour the wine.”
In the kitchen Abra chose a bottle of Shiraz while Maureen plopped down on the sofa in the cozy living area.
“He says that’s fine. The kids haven’t killed each other yet, and are currently in the happy throes of a snowstorm.” She looked up from her phone, smiled when Abra handed her the wine, took a seat. “Thanks. I’ll consider this girding my loins before I walk next door into the battle and feed the troops.”
“Make out?”
“I was fifteen, and while I had been kissed, that was the first kiss. Tongues and hands and heavy breathing. Let me say first, the boy had most excellent lips, and very nice hands. The first, I’ll also admit, to touch these amazing ta-tas.” She patted her breasts then sipped her wine. “But not the last.”
“Details, details.”
“July Fourth, after the fireworks. We had a bonfire on the beach. A bunch of us. I had permission, which was hard-won, let me tell you, and which my kids will likely have a harder time winning due to my experience. He was so cute. Oh my God, Eli Landon up from Boston for a month—and I set my sights on him. I was not alone.”
“How cute?”
“Mmm. That curling hair that would get more sun-streaked every day, those fabulous crystal blue eyes. And he had a smile that would just knock you senseless. An athletic build—he played basketball, as I remember. If he wasn’t at the beach—shirtless—he was at the community center playing ball—shirtless. Let me repeat: Mmm.”
“He’s lost weight,” Abra mentioned. “He’s too thin.”
“I saw some pictures, and the news clips. Yeah, he’s too thin. But then, that summer? He was so beautiful, so young and happy and fun. I flirted my butt off and that July Fourth bonfire paid the dividends. The first time he kissed me we were sitting around the fire. Music banging out, some of us dancing, some of us in the water. One thing led to another, and we walked down to the pier.”
She sighed with the memory. “Just a couple of hormonal teenagers on a warm summer night. It didn’t go any farther than it should have—though I’m sure my father would have disagreed—but it was the headiest moment of my life to that date. Seems so sweet and innocent now, but still ridiculously romantic. Surf and sea and moonlight, music from down the beach, a couple of warm, half-naked bodies just beginning to understand, really, what they were for. So . . .”
“So? So?” Leaning forward, Abra circled both hands in a hurry-up gesture. “What happened then?”
“We went back to the bonfire. I think it might have gone farther than it should have if he hadn’t taken me back to the group. I was so unprepared for what happens inside your body when someone really flips that switch. You know?”
“Oh boy, do I.”
“But he stopped, and after, he walked me home. I saw him a few more times before he went back to Boston, and we had a few more lip-locks—but nothing hit me like the first. The next time he came down, we were both dating someone. We never reconnected, not that way. He probably doesn’t even remember that July Fourth with the redhead under the Whiskey Beach pier.”
“I bet you’re selling yourself short.”
“Maybe. If we ran into each other when he’d come up to visit, we’d have a nice little chat—the way you do. Once I ran into him in the market when I was enormously pregnant with Liam. Eli carried my bags out to the car. He’s a good man. I believe that.”
“You met his wife?”
“No. I saw her once or twice but never met her. She was gorgeous, I’ll give her that. But I wouldn’t say she was the type who enjoyed those nice little chats outside the market. Word was there was no love lost between her and Hester Landon. Eli came up alone or with the rest of his family a few times after they were married. Then he just didn’t come. At least not that I know of.”
She looked at her watch. “I’ve got to get home. Feed the rampaging horde.”
“Maybe you should go by and see him.”
“I think it might feel like an intrusion at this point—or like I was morbidly curious.”
Maureen carried her empty wineglass to the kitchen, set it down. “I know you, Abracadabra. You won’t let him wallow, not for long.” She pulled on her coat. “It’s your nature to fix things, heal things, kiss it where it hurts. Hester knew just what she was doing when she asked you to look after him and the house.”
“Then I better not let her down.” She gave Maureen a hug before she opened the back door. “Thanks for telling me. Not only a sexy story of teenage lust, but it gives me yet another perspective on him.”
“You could use a lip-lock or two.”
Abra held up her hands. “Fasting.”
“Yeah, yeah. I’m just saying should the opportunity arise—he’s got great lips. See you tomorrow.”
Abra watched from the door while her friend hustled through the thick snow, and until she saw the back door light on the house next door shut off.
She’d build a fire, she decided, have a little soup, and give Eli Landon some serious thought.
Three
MAYBE HE’D LOST SOME PROGRESS OVERALL, ELI ADMITTED, but he’d stuck with the book for the best part of the day, and he’d produced there.
If he could keep his brain fired up, he’d write from the time he woke until the time he crashed. And okay, maybe that wasn’t healthy, but it would be productive.
Besides, the snow hadn’t relented until mid-afternoon. His vow to get out of the house at least once every day had to bow to two feet of snow and counting.
At one point when he simply couldn’t think clearly enough to put coherent words on the page, he continued his exploration of the house.
Tidy guest rooms, pristine baths—and to his surprise and puzzlement, the former upstairs parlor, north wing, now held a cross trainer, free weights, a massive flat-screen. He wandered the room, frowning at the yoga mats neatly rolled on a shelf, the towels tidily stacked, the large case of DVDs.
He opened that, flipped through the pages. Power yoga? His grandmother? Seriously? Tai chi, Pilates . . . Getting Ripped?
Gran?
He tried to imagine it. He had to believe he owned a damn good imagination or he’d never make a decent living writing novels. But when he tried to picture his watercoloring, pencil-sketching, garden-clubbing grandmother pumping iron, it failed him.
Yet Hester Landon never did anything without a reason. He couldn’t deny the setup and layout of the room showed careful thought and good research.
Maybe she’d decided she needed a convenient place to exercise when, like today, the weather prohibited her famous three-mile daily walks. She could have hired someone to outfit the room.
No, she never did anything without a reason—and she never did anything halfway.
And still he couldn’t imagine her sliding in a DVD with the goal of getting ripped.
Idly, he flipped through a couple more DVDs in the case, and found the sticky note.
Eli, regular exercise benefits body, mind and spirit. Now, less brooding and more sweating.
I love you,
Gran via Abra Walsh
“Jesus.” He couldn’t decide whether to be amused or embarrassed. Just how much had his grandmother told Abra anyway? How about a little privacy?
He shoved his hands in his pockets and walked to the window facing the beach.
While the sea had calmed, it remained gray under a sky the color of a faded bruise. Waves flopped up against the snow-covered beach, slowly, gradually nibbling away at that rippled blanket of white. The white mounds of dunes rose, sea grasses poked out like needles in a pincushion. They trembled in the wind, bent to the force of its hands.
Snow buried the beach steps, lay thick and heavy on the rails.
He saw not a single footprint, yet the world outside wasn’t empty. Far out in that gray forever he saw something leap—just a blur of shape and movement, here then gone. And he watched gulls wing over the snow, over the sea. In the snow-muffled quiet, he heard them laughing.
And thought of Abra.
He glanced back, gave the cross trainer an unenthusiastic study. He’d never liked putting in miles on a machine. If he wanted to work up a sweat, he’d play some round ball.
“Don’t have a ball, a hoop,” he said to the empty house. “And I do have a couple feet of snow. I should shovel the walk maybe. Why? I’m not going anywhere.”
And that last statement, he thought, had been part of the problem for nearly a year.
“Okay, fine. But I’m not doing any freaking power yoga. God, who thinks of that stuff? Maybe ten or fifteen on that damn machine. A couple of miles.”
He’d put in some miles on the jogging path along the Charles, usually working it in a couple times a week in decent weather. He’d considered a treadmill at his gym a last resort, but he’d put in plenty of time there, too.
He could certainly handle his grandmother’s little cross trainer.
Then he could e-mail her, tell her he’d found the note, done the deed. And if she wanted to communicate with him on something, just communicate. No need to bring her yoga buddy into every damn thing.
He approached the cross trainer with inherent dislike, glanced at the flat-screen. No, no TV, he decided. He’d stopped watching when he’d seen his own face on the screen too often, heard the commentary, the debates on his guilt or innocence, the truly horrible rundowns of his personal life, factual and not.
Next time, if there was one, he thought as he stepped on, he’d dig out his iPod, but for now he’d just get it done and stay inside his own head.
To get a feel for it, he gripped the handles, pushed with his feet. And his grandmother’s name flashed on the display screen.
“Huh.” Curious, he studied the pad, called up her stats.
“Whoa. Go, Gran.”
According to her last entry, which he realized was the day she’d taken the fall, she’d logged three miles in forty-eight minutes, thirty-two seconds.
“Not bad. But I can whip ya.”
Intrigued now, he programmed for a second user, keyed in his name. He started slowly, giving himself a chance to warm up. Then pushed it.
Fourteen minutes and one-point-two miles later, drenched with sweat, his lungs burning, he surrendered. Gasping for breath, he staggered to the mini-fridge, grabbed a bottle of water. After guzzling, he dropped to the floor, lay flat on his back.
“Jesus Christ. Jesus, I can’t even keep up with an old lady. Pitiful. Pathetic.”
He stared up at the ceiling, struggling to get his breath back, disgusted to feel the muscles in his legs actually quivering with shock and fatigue.
He’d played basketball for goddamn Harvard. At six-three, he’d made up for his relative disadvantage in height with speed and agility—and endurance.
He’d been a fucking athlete once, and now he was weak and soft, underweight and slow.
He wanted his life back. No, no, that wasn’t accurate. Even before the nightmare of Lindsay’s murder, his life had been impossibly flawed, deeply unsatisfying.
He wanted himself back. And damned if he knew how to do it.
Where had he gone? He couldn’t remember what it felt like to be happy. But he knew he had been. He’d had friends, interests, ambitions. He’d had fucking passion.
He couldn’t even find his anger, he thought. He couldn’t even dig down and find his anger over what had been taken from him, over what he’d somehow surrendered.
He’d taken the antidepressants, he’d talked to the shrink. He didn’t want to go back there. He couldn’t.
And he couldn’t just lie there on the floor in a sweaty heap. He had to do something, however incidental, however ordinary. Just do the next thing, he told himself.
He pushed to his feet, limped his way to the shower.
