Chasing Shadows. Karen Harper

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СКАЧАТЬ downfall, the blowup between them. But this was just a business deal, not a life shared.

      “I’ll do my best to give you an answer soon,” she heard herself promise him.

      “Your best is all I’m asking.”

      * * *

      At home while Lexi took the short afternoon nap Claire always insisted on—she watched her daughter like a hawk for early signs of anything—Claire forced herself to take her twenty-minute power nap, at least that’s what she liked to call it. With a cup of p.m. coffee it perked her right up. Of course, she’d rather have dark chocolate, especially from Norman Love’s shop up on the Tamiami Trail, but once she started on that, she couldn’t stop. She might be narcoleptic, but she was also a chocolate-holic.

      She played with Lexi for an hour, and yes, read to her as well, since that had been one good thing “She,” which is often what she and Darcy called their mother, had done for them. Claire had a great American and English lit education before she even took English 101 her freshman year.

      Today, when Darcy stopped by to take Lexi grocery shopping with her and Jilly, Claire called a cab to take her to Port Royal to give her condolences to Fred Myron’s family. She’d phoned Fred’s widow to be sure it was all right and had been told the family had already gathered in preparation for the funeral tomorrow. They were getting Fred’s body back today from the Collier County ME, and then they’d be sitting shiva for a week.

      At the Myron home with its backyard on a canal, everyone greeted her and commiserated. Repeatedly, she was asked if she knew why anyone would shoot at her, because “our Freddie had absolutely no enemies.” Though she felt exhausted by the visit, she was glad she went; that is, until she started to leave, driven home by Fred’s brother, because they wouldn’t hear of her calling a cab again. A small group of reporters, some of whom she recognized from the courthouse, had assembled on the front lawn.

      “We’re not talking to them, not one word,” Jerry, Fred’s brother, muttered as he backed out of the driveway past their shouted questions. “I’d like to get poor Sarah away from them for a while. Those vultures keep circling, trying to prove poor Fred did something wrong when he was only standing up for the truth and the business he’d built up with his own hands. You going to get away so they don’t bother you?”

      “Maybe I should now that they know I’m out of the hospital,” she said. “Yes, I guess I may get away for a while.”

      “Get some good rest. Put everything bad behind you, right? Forget the reporters and that lawyer that tried to rip you apart.”

      “I’m sure that’s good advice.” It was the only thing she could think of to say that wouldn’t be a lie. She hadn’t actually decided she was going to trust Nick Markwood yet. But she was going to do two things before she agreed to go north with him. First, she would research him to death—so to speak. Without talking to him or his contacts directly, she was going to do an online study of him. Then she was going to risk telling him the real reason she was afraid to accept his offer, and hope that he would be the one to back out of the deal.

      * * *

      Jace never liked riding in the so-called jump seat that was available to pilots. Hard to see out the windows. Rode backwards. Could hear the flight attendants chatting when they were in the galley. But worse, he was close to the cockpit but not in it, so he felt completely out of control. And he hated that.

      He tried to doze but he kept replaying the last time he’d been with Claire, seven weeks ago, when he’d flown into Miami and rented a car there to go see Lexi. But that had meant seeing Claire, too. She’d changed since their divorce. She’d always been kind of quiet, almost private, probably because of all she was hiding—she and that sister clone, Darcy. Man, Claire had put one over on him, however quick their courtship had been. If he hadn’t been flying so much, he would have sniffed it out earlier.

      “Narcolepsy with mild cataplexy!” he’d exploded a little over a year ago when she’d finally come clean with him, after he found her stash of pills and that gross-looking liquid stuff she took at bedtime. “No wonder you sleep like a rock! No wonder you want sex in the daytime but not at night like a normal woman! I thought it was me!”

      “It isn’t you, except I know you can’t stand weakness, can’t stand anyone being sick. You’re a driven perfectionist, Jace, and I’m not perfect.”

      “Oh, try to blame me for your lies and hiding things. You hiding anything else—anyone?”

      “Of course not. Can you keep your voice down? I don’t want Lexi to hear us.”

      “Oh, yeah, hear her mother never trusted or loved her father enough to come clean about—about this sleeping sickness and getting paralyzed at times!”

      “These pills you’re freaking out over keep me from falling asleep or getting paralyzed at times. I’m dealing with my problem. I’m on an even keel.”

      “You could have gone to sleep when Lexi was in the tub or the pool! You could have nodded off and dropped her.”

      “I told you, it’s all under control.”

      “Well, hell, I’m not. You may not have lied to me, ’cause I didn’t ask, but we’ve been living a lie! Is it too much to ask the person who’s supposed to be closest to me not to lie?”

      “I knew it would upset you and drive you away. I didn’t want that. Look, Jace, our romance and eloping happened so fast, and you’re gone so much. I know this is about me, but I found a note to you from someone named Ginger on hotel stationery from Singapore in the pocket of a shirt I laundered, so don’t lecture me on not telling everything. It was a come-to-my-room note. I know you’re gone a lot but—”

      He’d slammed out of their condo. He’d divorced her soon after, and she hadn’t contested it, a Marital Settlement Agreement with a Parenting Plan, the state of Florida called it. Looking back, he supposed they’d done it just as hastily and recklessly as they’d decided to get married.

      But the kick in the gut was that he still felt for Claire, even after all of that. Too often, even now, he recalled their sunset dinners on the beach, how they would dance in the dark in their own living room. How insanely happy they were when she told him she was pregnant and the first time he saw her holding Lexi. How Claire felt curled up against him, or under him...

      The airplane intercom kicked on. The voice of Don Thomas, a pilot he’d flown with many times, interrupted his agonizing: “Good afternoon. We’re beginning our descent into the Los Angeles area. Local arrival time should be 2:14 p.m. with a temperature of eighty-four degrees, cloudy with a light northwest wind. Flight attendants, please prepare the cabin for landing. Welcome to or back to the United States.”

      Someone in the plane actually clapped. An attendant began announcements about tray tables, seat backs and turning off electronic devices. Yeah, he thought, welcome back to the United States, but he was going to soon head out on yet another flight, to a state far from California, to see Lexi, of course, but also to see the woman he couldn’t get out of his head and his heart.

      * * *

      Frustrated she had to move so slowly, typing on the keyboard with one hand, Claire had switched to her smartphone to find websites and articles on a variety of subjects: Nick’s law firm; Francine Montgomery; Jasmine Montgomery Stanton; Palatka, Florida; on and on. There wasn’t much about Shadowlawn besides brief mentions of it. Kingsley Plantation СКАЧАТЬ