The Carriage House. Carla Neggers

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СКАЧАТЬ start dinner,” Andrew said to her. “Do you want to come with me, let Harl get some work done?”

      “Can we find Tippy Tail?”

      “We can try.”

      She scrambled off toward the front yard ahead of him. Andrew got to his feet, glancing back at his older cousin, remembering those first months so long ago when Harl had come home from Vietnam, so young, so silent. Most people thought he’d kill himself, or someone else. Andrew was just a boy, didn’t understand the politics, the limited options Harl had faced—or the low expectations. His cousin had defied everyone and become a police detective, and now an expert in furniture restoration and a keeper of six-year-old Dolly Thorne.

      He and Andrew had each defied expectations, fighting their way out of that need to keep on fighting. Andrew had worked construction, forced himself to give up barroom brawls and a quick temper, met Joanna, had become an architect and a contractor. He and Harl weren’t part of the North Shore elite and never would be. They didn’t care.

      “We’re not keeping the kittens,” Andrew said. “We’re clear on that, aren’t we, Harl?”

      “Crystal. I told you. I hate cats.”

      That didn’t mean he wouldn’t keep the kittens, especially if Dolly badgered him. Harl operated according to a logic entirely his own. He hated cats, but he’d taken in a mean, scrawny, pregnant stray.

      “Daddy,” Dolly called impatiently, “come on. Let’s go.”

      He headed out across the lawn, smelling salt and lilacs in the warm spring air. If finding Tess Havi-land at the carriage house somehow meant Ike Grantham was back in town, so be it. Dolly was happy and healthy and thought well enough of herself to wear a crown. As far as Andrew was concerned, nothing else really mattered.

      Three

      Lauren couldn’t get the clasp on her pearl necklace to catch. Her neck ached, and she’d lost patience. She wanted to throw the damn necklace across her dressing room.

      Ike had given it to her. He’d picked it up on one of his adventures. “You should go with me next time. Beacon-by-the-Sea will get along fine without you. So will the project. Live a little.”

      She shut her eyes, fighting a sudden rush of tears. Too much wine. She’d already had two glasses on an empty stomach. She didn’t know how she’d make it through dinner. Richard had chosen a dark, noisy restaurant in town. She could sit in a corner and drink more wine while he played terrorism expert and husband of the North Shore heiress.

      God, what was wrong with her? She opened her eyes and tried again with her necklace. Richard never gave her jewelry. He liked to give her books, theater and concert tickets, take her to museum openings. No flowers, jewelry, scarves, sexy lingerie. No pretty things.

      Ike hadn’t understood what she saw in Richard. He was protective for a younger brother, possibly because it had been just the two of them for so long, their parents dying in a private-plane crash twenty years ago. They’d liked Ike best, of course. Everyone did. People spoiled him, spun to his whims and wishes.

      “Richard Montague, Lauren? You can’t be serious!” Ike had stamped his feet, horrified. “He’s one of those limp-dicked geeks who thinks he’s covering up his geekiness by knowing scary things.”

      “He plays squash and racquetball,” she’d argued. “He’s run a marathon.”

      Her brother had been singularly unimpressed. “So?”

      To Ike, Richard was the antithesis of everything he was. Ike had dropped out of Harvard; Richard had his doctorate. Ike had never worked seriously at anything, even his beloved Beacon Historic Project. Richard worked seriously at everything. Ike played to play, for its own sake, for the sheer pleasure of it. Richard played for self-improvement, networking, always with a greater purpose than mere pleasure.

      Marrying Lauren, she was quite certain, came under that same heading. It was to his personal benefit. She was an asset. She had money, a good family name, “breeding,” as he’d once let slip, smiling to cover his mistake. It didn’t mean Richard didn’t love her. He did, and she loved him. Not everyone operated out of the passions of the moment the way Ike did. He had spontaneity and a keen sense of fun and adventure, but no idea what real love, real commitment, meant.

      “Oh, Ike.”

      The clasp fell into place. She ran the tips of her fingers over the pearls and managed, just barely, not to cry. She’d have to start all over with her makeup if she did. She studied her reflection in the wall of mirrors. She was tawny-haired and slender, determined not to let her body slip and sink and turn into mush now that she was forty.

      Ike had teased her about turning forty. “You’re on the doorstep, kid, and look at you—you haven’t lived!”

      She had a failed first marriage, a daughter away at boarding school, all the responsibilities of managing Grantham family affairs on her shoulders. Even the project, which he’d so loved early on, was largely her doing. She saw to the details, showed up when he didn’t. She made his lifestyle possible.

      He knew it. He would tell her how much he appreciated what she did, even as he teased her for doing nothing riskier than go frostbite sailing with friends, laugh too loud at a cocktail party.

      “Ike,” she whispered. “Oh, God.”

      He’s dead. You know he’s dead. But she didn’t, not for sure. Tess Haviland wouldn’t keep the carriage house. She hadn’t even been up to see it in the year she’d owned it. Giving Tess the carriage house had been a stupid, impulsive thing for Ike to have done—but so like him.

      When Tess put the carriage house on the market, Lauren would snap it up. Maybe they could work out an arrangement on their own, without Realtors. She had to keep her focus on that singular, positive thought and will it to happen.

      Her three miniature white poodles wandered in, rubbing against her legs and making her laugh. “You lazy little rats, you’ve been sleeping on my bed all day, and now you want my attention? Where were you when I wanted to play, hmm?”

      Ike had warned her against poodles. “You’re playing to stereotype, Lauren. Get yourself a rottweiler or a Jack Russell terrier.”

      She’d threatened to knit them little vests. Suddenly unable to breathe, she ran out into her spacious bedroom. The windows were open, and she inhaled the smell of spring, stemming her panic. She didn’t want to think about her brother. Wouldn’t. He’d dominated her life for too long. He was selfish, insulting, reckless. He didn’t like Richard because he was doing something important with his life and Ike wasn’t. That was the truth of it. The poodles followed her into the bedroom, and she scooped them up and sank onto a white chair in front of the windows. The sun was fading, but her gardens were still bright with color. This was the house where she and Ike had grown up, built by their grandfather in 1923, high on a bluff above the ocean. She preferred her view of the gardens.

      She would die here, she thought as she stroked the backs of her poodles. Fifty years from now, she would be sitting right here in her chair, perhaps with descendants of these very poodles, but otherwise alone. Ike would be gone, and so would Richard. That was her destiny, and there was no escaping it.

      

      Richard Montague knew his wife was annoyed with СКАЧАТЬ