by Nora Roberts
Four
HE ENJOYED THE WALK ON THE SNOWY BEACH MORE THAN he’d anticipated. The winter-white sun blasted down, bounced off the sea, the snow, sent them both sparkling. Others had walked before him, so he followed the paths they’d cut down to the wet and chilly strip of sand the sweep of waves had uncovered.
Shore birds landed on the verge to strut or scurry, leaving their shallow stamps imprinted before water foamed over and erased them. They called, cried, chattered, made him remember the advance of spring despite the winterscape around him.
He followed a trio of what he thought might be some sort of tern, stopped, took a couple more pictures and sent them home. Walking on, he checked the time, calculated the schedule back in Boston before he tried his parents’ house line.
“And what are you up to?”
“Gran.” He hadn’t expected her to answer. “I’m taking a walk on Whiskey Beach. We’ve got a couple feet of snow. It looks a lot like it did that Christmas back when I was, I don’t know, about twelve?”
“You and your cousins and the Grady boys built a snow castle on the beach. And you took my good red cashmere scarf and used it as a flag.”
“I forgot that part. The flag part.”
“I didn’t.”
“How are you?”
“Coming along. Annoyed with people who won’t let me take two steps without that damn walker. I’ll do fine with a cane.”
As he’d had an e-mail from his mother detailing the battle of the walker, he’d come prepared. “It’s smarter to be careful, and not risk another fall. You’ve always been smart.”
“That roundabout won’t work with me, Eli Andrew Landon.”
“You haven’t always been smart?”
He made her laugh, considered it a small victory. “I have, and intend to continue. My brain’s working just fine, thank you, even if it can’t pull out how I fell in the first place. I don’t even remember getting out of bed. But no matter. I’m healing, and I will be done with this old-lady-invalid walker. What about you?”
“I’m doing okay. Writing every day, and making what seems like real progress on the book. I feel good about that. And it’s good to be here. Gran, I want to thank you again for—”
“Don’t.” Her voice held the hard edge of New England granite. “Bluff House is as much yours as mine. It’s family. You know there’s firewood in the shed, but if you need more you talk to Digby Pierce. His number’s in my book, in the desk in the little office, and in the far right drawer in the kitchen. Abra has it if you can’t find it.”
“Okay. No problem.”
“Are you eating properly, Eli? I don’t want to see skin and bones the next time I lay eyes on you.”
“I just had pancakes.”
“Ah! Did you go into Cafe Beach in the village?”
“No . . . actually, Abra made them. Listen, about that—”
“She’s a good girl.” Hester rolled right over him. “A fine cook, too. If you have any questions or run into any problems, you just ask her. If she doesn’t have the answer, she’ll find it. She’s a smart girl, and a very pretty one, as I hope you noticed unless you’ve gone blind as well as skinny.”
He felt a warning tingle at the back of his neck. “Gran, you’re not trying to fix me up with her, are you?”
“Why would I have to do something like that? Can’t you think for yourself? When have I ever interfered in your love life, Eli?”
“Okay, you’re right. I apologize. It’s just . . . You know her a lot better than I do. I don’t want her to feel obliged to cook for me, and I don’t seem to be able to get that across to her.”
“Did you eat the pancakes?”
“Yes, but—”
“Because you felt obliged to?”
“Point taken.”
“Over and above that, Abra does what she likes, I can promise you. That’s something I admire about her. She enjoys life and lives it. You could use a bit of that.”
That warning tingle resounded. “But you’re not trying to fix me up?”
“I trust you to know your own mind, heart and physical needs.”
“Okay, let’s move on from there. Or move laterally from there. I don’t want to offend your friend, especially when she’s doing my laundry. So, as I said, you know her best. How do I, diplomatically, convince her I don’t want or need a massage?”
“She offered you a massage?”
“Yes, ma’am. Or she informed me she’d be back at five-thirty with her table. My ‘No, thanks’ didn’t make a dent.”
“You’re in for a treat. That girl has magic hands. Before she started giving me weekly massages, and talking me into doing yoga, I lived with lower back pain, and an ache right between my shoulder blades. Old age, I decided, and accepted. Until Abra.”
He realized he’d walked farther than he intended when he spotted the steps leading up to the village. The few seconds it took him to shift direction, decide to go up, gave Hester an opening.
“You’re a bundle of stress, boy. Do you think I can’t hear it in your voice? Your life went to hell in a handbasket, and that’s not right. It’s not fair. Life too often isn’t either. So it’s what we do about it. What you’ve got to do now is the same as everybody’s telling me I have to do. Get healthy, get strong, get back on your feet. I don’t like hearing it either, but that doesn’t mean it’s not the simple truth.”
“And a massage from your pancake-making neighbor’s the answer?”
“It’s one of them. Listen to you, huffing and puffing like an old man.”
Insulted—mortified—he pivoted to the defensive. “I walked all the way to the village—and some of that through this damn snow. And I’m climbing steps.”
“And these excuses from a former Harvard basketball star.”
“I wasn’t a star,” he muttered.
“You were to me. You are to me.”
He paused at the top of the steps—yeah, to catch his breath, and to wait for the heart she’d managed to stir to settle.
“Did you see my new gym?” she asked him.
“I did. Very nice. How much can you bench-press, Hester?”
She laughed. “You think you’re smart and sassy. I’m not going out scrawny and used up, I’ll tell you that. You make use of that gym, Eli.”
“I did—once already. I got your memo. I’m standing across from The Lobster Shack.”
“The best lobster rolls on the North Shore.”
“Things haven’t changed much.”
“Here and there, but the foundation’s what counts. I expect you to remember yours. You’re a Landon, and you’ve got the grit of Hawkin blood that comes down through me. Nobody holds us down, not for long. You take care of Bluff House for me.”
“I will.”
“And remember. Sometimes a pancake is just a pancake.”
She made him laugh. The sound might’ve been rusty, but it was there. “Okay, Gran. Use the walker.”
“I’ll use the damn walker—for now—if you get that massage.”
“All right. Check your e-mail for some pictures. I’ll call you in a couple days.”
He passed places he remembered—Cones ’N Scoops, Maria’s Pizza—and new enterprises like Surf’s Up with its beach-pink clapboard. The white spire of the Methodist church, the simple box of the Unitarian, the dignified edifice of the North Shore Hotel, and the charm of the scattering of B&Bs that would welcome tourists through the season.
Light traffic chugged by, then petered out almost completely as he made his way home.
Maybe he’d go back to the village on the next clear afternoon, pick up some postcards, write quick notes to make his parents—and the couple of friends he could still claim—smile.
It couldn’t hurt.
And it couldn’t hurt to check out some of the shops, old and new, get a feel for the place again.
Remembering his foundation, so to speak.
But right now he was tired, and cold, and wanted home.
His car sat alone in the driveway, and that was a relief. He’d stalled long enough for Abra to finish. He wouldn’t have to make conversation, or avoid it. Considering the state of his boots, he circled around, let himself in through the laundry room/mudroom.
His shoulder felt fine now, he decided as he took off his gear. Or close enough. He could text Abra, tell her the walk had worked out the kinks.
Except for that deal he’d made with his grandmother. So he’d keep the deal—but he could put it off for a few days. He had a couple hours to work that out, he thought. He was a lawyer, for Christ’s sake—practicing or not—and a writer. He could compose a clear and reasonable communication.
He stepped out into the kitchen, spotted the sticky note on the counter.
Chicken and potato casserole in the freezer.
Fireboxes restocked.
Eat an apple, and don’t forget to hydrate after your walk. See you at 5:30ish.
Abra
“What are you, my mother? Maybe I don’t want an apple.”
And the only reason he got water out of the fridge was that he was thirsty. He didn’t want or need somebody telling him when to eat, when to drink. The next thing, she’d tell him to remember to floss or wash behind his ears.
He’d go up, dig into some research, then compose that text.
He started out, cursed, circled back and grabbed an apple out of the bamboo bowl because, damn it, now he wanted one.
He knew his irritation was irrational. She was being kind, considerate. But at the base of it he just wanted to be left alone. He wanted space and time to find his footing again, not a helping hand.
There’d been plenty of those hands at the outset, then fewer and fewer as friends, colleagues, neighbors had started to distance themselves from a man suspected of killing his wife. Of smashing in her skull because she’d cheated on him, or because a divorce would cost him a great deal of money.
Or a combination thereof.
He didn’t intend to reach out for those hands again.
In his stocking feet, still a bit chilled from the long walk, he detoured to the bedroom for shoes.
He stopped, the apple halfway to his mouth, and frowned at the bed. Moving closer, he peered down and choked out his second laugh of the day—a definite record.
She’d folded, twisted, curved a hand towel into what looked like some strange bird squatting on the duvet. It wore sunglasses with a little flower tucked between the cloth and the earpiece.
Silly, he thought—and sweet.
He sat on the edge of the bed, nodded at the bird. “I guess I’m getting a massage.”
He left the bird where it was, went into the office.
He’d do some research, maybe fiddle around with the next scene, just get that springboard.
But out of habit he checked his e-mail first. Among the spam, a post from his father, another from his grandmother in response to the photos he’d sent her, he found one from his lawyer.
Rather not, he thought. Rather not click on it. But then it would just be there, waiting, waiting.
With the muscles in his shoulders twisting into fists, he opened the e-mail.
He cut through the legalese, set aside the assurances, even the questions of approach, and focused on the ugly center.
Lindsay’s parents were, once again, making noises about filing a wrongful death suit against him.
It was never going to end, he thought. Never going to be over. Unless and until the police caught whoever was responsible for Lindsay’s death, he was the default.
Lindsay’s parents despised him, absolutely and without a sliver of doubt believed he murdered their only child. If they went forward with this—and the longer he remained the default, the more likely they’d do just that—everything would be dredged up again, swirled into the media hot box to cook and bloat. And spill over not only him but his family.
Again.
Assurances the case was unlikely to go forward now, or to gain much traction if and when, didn’t help. They would beat that drum, for sure, righteous in their certainty that they sought the only justice available to them.
He thought of the publicity, all those talking heads discussing, analyzing, speculating. The private investigators the Piedmonts would hire—likely already had—who would come here to Whiskey Beach and bring that speculation, that doubt, those questions with them to the only place he had left.
He wondered if Boston PD’s Detective Wolfe had any part in their decision. On bad days, Eli considered Wolfe his personal Javert—doggedly, obsessively pursuing him for a crime he didn’t commit. On better ones, he thought of Wolfe as stubborn and wrongheaded, a cop who refused to consider that the lack of evidence might equal innocence.
Wolfe hadn’t been able to put a case together that convinced the prosecutor to file. But that hadn’t stopped the man from trying, from edging over the line of harassment until his superiors had warned him off.
At least officially.
No, he wouldn’t put it past Wolfe to encourage and abet the Piedmonts in their quest.
Braced on his elbows, Eli rubbed his hands over his face. He’d known this was coming, he’d known this other shoe would drop. So maybe, in a horrible way, it was better to get it done.
Agreeing with the last line of Neal’s e-mail, We need to talk, Eli picked up the phone.
The headache was a tantrum inside his skull, kicking, punching, screaming. Reassurances from his lawyer did little to alleviate it. The Piedmonts made noises about a suit to increase pressure, to keep the media interested, to float the idea of a settlement.
None of those opinions, even though he agreed with them, reassured.
The suggestions to keep a low profile, not to discuss the investigation, to reengage his own private investigator hardly helped. He already intended to keep a low profile. Any lower, he’d be interred. Who the hell would he discuss anything with? And the idea of pumping money and hope into private investigation, which hadn’t turned up anything genuinely helpful the first time around, just added a layer of depression.
He knew, as his lawyer knew, as the police knew, that the more time that passed, the less likely they’d find solid evidence.
The most likely endgame? He’d remain in limbo, not charged, not cleared, and shadowed by suspicion for the rest of his life.
So he had to learn to live with it.
He had to learn to live.
He heard the knock at the door, but didn’t fully register the sound, the reason, until the door opened. He watched Abra muscling in a huge padded case, a bulging tote.
“Hi. Don’t mind me. You just stand there while I drag all this in by myself. No, no problem at all.”
She’d nearly managed it by the time he crossed over. “I’m sorry. I meant to get in touch, to tell you this just isn’t a good time.”
She leaned back against the door to close it, let out an audible whew. “Too late,” she began, then her easy smile faded when she focused on his face. “What’s wrong? What happened?”
“Nothing.” Not much more than usual, he thought. “This just isn’t a good time.”
“Do you have another appointment? Are you going out dancing? Do you have a naked woman upstairs waiting for hot sex? No?” she answered before he could. “Then it’s as good a time as any.”
Depression spun into annoyance on a finger snap. “How about this? No means no.”
Now she blew out a breath. “That’s an excellent argument, and I know I’m being pushy, even obnoxious. Chalk it up to keeping my promise to Hester to help, and the fact that I can’t stand seeing
