Fireside. Сьюзен Виггс

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      Penelope navigated down a long, fence-lined lane and steered the car into the driveway, causing the back end to fishtail around the curve.

      Kim regarded the house, one of the largest and best-known historic properties in town, with her mouth agape. “Mom?”

      “I’ve made some changes around the place,” her mother said.

      “I can see that.” It was not the stately house-at-the-end-of-the-lane she remembered from her girlhood.

      “Isn’t it wonderful, dear? We finished painting it at the end of summer. I meant to send you pictures, but I haven’t quite figured out how to send them in email.

      What do you think?”

      There were no words. The actual structure had not changed. The vast grounds, though currently blanketed in record amounts of snow, did not appear much different, either, except that some of the larger shrubberies appeared to have been sculpted into topiary shapes.

      The house itself was a different story. The Fairfield House Kim remembered, the one where her grandparents had lived, had been an understated white with neat black trim. Now it was painted with colors not found in nature. With colors not found anywhere except maybe on Barbie’s dream house, or in a bottle of Pepto-Bismol.

      Kim blinked, but the image didn’t go away. She couldn’t take her eyes off the garishly painted house. The house, with its rotunda, turrets and gables, stood out like a wedding cake frosted in DayGlo colors. The carriage house and garden gazebo also wore shades of lavender and fuchsia, stark against the white snow.

      Maybe it was an undercoat. Sometimes the primer coat came in weird colors, didn’t it? “Sorry, Mom, did you say you’d finished painting it?”

      “Yes, finally. It took the Hornets all summer.” Her mother parked under the elaborate porte cochère that arched above the driveway at the side entrance. The gleaming coral trim was offset by lime sherbet, with sky blue on the domed roof of the arch.

      “The Hornets painted the house,” Kim echoed.

      “Indeed, they did. The players are always in need of work, after all. And a fine job they did, too.”

      The Hornets were Avalon’s very own baseball team, a professional club affiliated with the Can-Am League. The entire community had embraced the team when it had arrived a few years before, transforming the sleepy lakeside hamlet into a legitimate baseball town. The fact that the league operated on a tight budget meant that local boosters were vital. Families offered jobs, room and board, and sometimes even moral support to the players.

      “Mom, isn’t there some neighborhood covenant against bright colors?”

      “Certainly not,” Penelope said. “Or if there is, no one’s ever told me about it.”

      Kim entered the house. The dizzying kaleidoscope of colors was not limited to the outside. The walls of the entryway, and the curved stairway sweeping up through the center of the house, were all as crayon bright as the outside.

      Her mother hung her coat in the hall closet. “The colors are a bit over the top, don’t you think?”

      “A bit.”

      “I simply thought, if I’m going to go crazy with color, I should go big.”

      Kim summoned up a smile. “Words to live by.”

      “To be perfectly honest, it was a matter of economics,” her mother said. “These are discontinued colors, so the paint cost me next to nothing. I simply used a little of this, a little of that … and I encouraged the painters to be creative.”

      There were probably worse color schemes than those created by baseball players, but at the moment, Kim couldn’t think of any.

      “Speaking of going big, are you sure you’re done with Lloyd?” her mother asked.

      That, of course, was Kim’s chief function—to make Lloyd and all her clients seem nice. Personable. Worthy of their insanely huge salaries. Sometimes she did her job so well, it became impossible to separate the media-trained persona from the real man. Maybe that was why she hadn’t seen the incident with Lloyd coming. She’d started to believe the hype she herself had created.

      “Kimberly?” Her mother’s voice startled her.

      “Absolutely,” she said. “This is for good.” In that instant, she felt a dull blow of shock, an echo of last night, and she began to tremble.

      “You’re as white as a ghost.” Her mother took her arm, making her sit on the hall bench. “Do you need something?”

      The words sounded as though they’d been shouted down a tube. Kim reminded herself that the humiliating, horrifying, confusing incident was behind her now. She often told clients with injuries to move past the pain, focus on the healing. Time to take her own advice.

      “I’ll be all right,” she told her mother in a voice that was soft, but firm. Then she gingerly removed her dark glasses, set them aside and used the corner of her shawl to gently wipe off the makeup.

      Her mother stared, cycling fast from horror to fury. Penelope van Dorn was not the sort to anger easily, but when she did, it was as swift as a sudden fire. “Dear God. How long has this been going on?”

      Kim hung her head. “Mom. I’m an idiot, but not that big an idiot. I had no idea he was capable of hitting anyone. Then last night, we had this terrible fight about something stupid, and it escalated.” She swallowed a wave of nausea, remembering the gawking crowd at the reception, and her walking out, Lloyd following her to the parking lot. His fist didn’t seem like a human appendage at all, but a weapon of blunt trauma. It had come out of nowhere, powered by anger. There was one thing about Kim. She was a quick study. She was gone before he even remembered to straighten his tie.

      Her mother’s eyes filled with tears. “Kimberly, I’m so sorry.”

      “I know, Mom. Don’t worry. He’s history,” Kim said firmly.

      “You must press charges.”

      “I thought about that. But I won’t do it. Given who he is, I’d never stand a chance. I’d have to relive the whole thing and for what? Nothing would happen to him.”

      “But—”

      “Please, Mom, don’t pity me or call the authorities. I want to pretend Lloyd Johnson never happened. This is the best way—coming here. Starting over.”

      Then her mother’s arms were around her, at once soft and sturdy, and Kim was engulfed by a faint, ineffable element she hadn’t realized she’d been missing so much. It was the mom smell, and when she shut her eyes and inhaled, an old, sweet sense of security bloomed inside her. Yet it was a piercing sweetness, breaking ever so gently through her pain and shock. Sobs came from deep within her, erupting against the pillowy shoulder of her mother. They sat together, her mother stroking her hair and making soothing sounds until Kim felt empty—and cleansed.

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