• two •

There was no possibility of taking a walk that day … the cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so sombre, and a rain so penetrating, that further outdoor exercise was now out of the question.

—Jane Eyre

Emily had to rise early next morning despite her broken night’s sleep. Today was Monday, the day the remodeling of her inherited Victorian mansion into a writers’ retreat was set to begin. They’d had workers on the property for weeks already, refurbishing the old chauffeur’s apartment over the carriage house into a snug little nest for Katie and Lizzie, so they could have some privacy and their current bedroom could be used for retreat guests. But today would be the first time Emily’s own personal space would be invaded. The next phase of the plan was to turn the third floor into a private retreat for Emily, adding a sitting room and full bath to the dear little tower bedroom she was already using.

For the first time a flash of doubt assailed her: Why had she decided to turn her home into a semipublic space? Oh, yes, the guilt. The unreasoning guilt of someone who had always merely subsisted over becoming suddenly wealthy, with a gorgeous home much too large for her, but which she loved far too much to give up. The guilt was only compounded by the fact that Emily had inherited Windy Corner (along with a large chunk of the nearby village of Stony Beach) as a result of her dear aunt Beatrice being murdered. The only way she could live there in good conscience was to share it. She would just have to buck up and endure the remodeling as best she could; but her old, quiet, safely boring life in the literature department at Reed College in Portland looked strangely attractive by contrast.

Emily was finishing her breakfast in the dining room when she heard the sounds of truck engines, doors slamming, and booted feet clomping up the porch steps. She sighed as she addressed Bustopher Jones, the aging, portly tuxedo cat she’d inherited with the house, who sat by her chair doing a poor imitation of a cat with no interest in table scraps. “No rest for the wicked, Bustopher. Here come the troops.”

She pushed to her feet and entered the hall just as Katie came out of the kitchen. Emily opened the door while Katie hung back by the stairs. Jeremiah Edwards, the contractor who was handling her remodeling project, ducked his towering head beneath the lintel and pulled off his cap as he stomped the water off his boots on the mat. Two young men Emily didn’t recognize hovered behind him.

“All done with the garage apartment, ma’am. Except the painting, as per your instructions.” Edwards nodded toward Katie. She had insisted on doing her own painting in her new home, and in fact had finished the first coat in the living room over the weekend. “Brought in some new fellas for the work upstairs. This here’s Roman Martinez—” He pulled forward a swarthy young man not much taller than Emily herself, who also doffed his cap. He nodded briefly at Emily, then his black eyes fastened on Katie’s face and stayed there.

“And this is Jake Newhouse.” The other young man, who’d been hidden behind Edwards, stepped forward. Emily heard Katie’s sharp intake of breath and shot a glance at her. The girl had gone whiter than Beatrice’s bone china. She put out a hand and gripped the newel of the banister next to her.

Emily turned frowning eyes on Jake Newhouse. Six feet tall at a guess, well built, blond and tanned, and much too handsome for his own good. The smile with which he ogled Katie made Emily want to punch him. She’d have to keep an eye on this one.

Edwards, seeing Katie’s face, frowned down at Jake from his height of six foot five. Emily was comforted to think he would be keeping an eye on this one, too. Edwards hitched his jeans up on his skinny hips and said, “Best get to work. Idle hands are the devil’s workshop.” With a nod to Emily, he started up the stairs, treading carefully on the plastic sheeting he’d laid down the week before to protect the treads from all the tromping boots.

As Jake approached, Katie turned and fled to the kitchen. Jake followed her with his eyes, smirking and whistling some unknown tune. Emily deliberately placed herself in his line of sight and summoned her best imitation of Aunt Beatrice’s signature glare. He dropped his eyes and his whistle and followed his boss on up.

Roman trailed after them, also watching Katie but with a strikingly different expression—like a starving man who sees food just out of reach. Goodness, what was it about that girl? She was lovely, certainly, but hardly a femme fatale—more like the girl next door.

When all the men had disappeared upstairs, Emily headed toward the kitchen to find Katie leaning over the sink. Hurriedly Katie turned the faucet on full blast with her left hand while she wiped her mouth with her right. The unmistakable stench of vomit rose from the drain.

“Katie, what’s wrong?”

She kept her back turned to Emily. “Just a tricky tummy. Maybe I picked up a flu bug somewhere. Better stay back; I don’t want you to catch it.”

“Picked up where? You never leave the house. It’s that Jake, isn’t it? You know him?”

Lizzie whimpered from her play space on a blanket under the table. Katie turned, avoiding Emily’s gaze, and knelt to pick her up. She clutched her daughter to her chest, burying her face in Lizzie’s fuzz of red-gold hair. “It’s nothing. I’m fine. I’ve seen J—” She made a choking sound. “I’ve seen him around, that’s all. From high school.”

Emily was baffled, and a little hurt. More proof she hadn’t yet won Katie’s full confidence in the four months they’d shared this house. Katie was more like a daughter to her than an employee; but apparently the feeling wasn’t fully reciprocated.

On the other hand, daughters didn’t always tell their mothers everything. Especially where young men were concerned.

She put her arm around the girl’s shoulders. “Katie, you know you can trust me, don’t you? I only want to help.”

“I know. And thank you. But there’s really nothing to tell.” Katie kissed Lizzie and put her back on the floor. “I’d better get busy. Lots to do. Have to finish up here so I can go paint when Lizzie goes down for her nap.” She turned to the sink and began to pile dirty dishes into it haphazardly. She turned the faucet on again, full hot, and plunged her ungloved hands into the steaming water.

Emily knew when she was beaten. She blew Lizzie a kiss and left the room.

PROPERTY OF KATIE PARKER—PRIVATE! KEEP OUT!

I never thought I’d write in this journal again. Never thought I’d have time, after Lizzie was born. Certainly never thought I’d have the need.

But now I have the need.

He’s here.

Mr. Edwards brought in more guys to work on Mrs. C’s new apartment upstairs, and he was one of them. Last night’s nightmare come to life.

When I first saw him, I thought I was back in that nightmare. Then I thought I was going to faint. Then I thought I was going to puke. Which I did.

I wish I could have kept my cool, not let him know it bothered me to see him again. Then maybe he would have had the grace to be embarrassed. But no. I was trembling and I’m sure as white as new paint, and he—he smiled at me. That horrid, greasy, knowing smile. That was what turned my stomach.

If I asked Mrs. C, I’m sure she’d give Mr. Edwards a hint to get him off the job. But then I’d have to tell her why. And I don’t think I can do that. I can’t even write the words in this journal. I’ll just have to try to avoid him, I guess. It’s a big house, and the work is all upstairs. I should be able to stay out of his way.

But if he so much as looks at Lizzie—I won’t answer for my actions.

*   *   *

Emily’s own part of the overall project of turning Windy Corner into a writers’ retreat was to plan the redecoration of the bedrooms. She and Katie had decided to theme each of the six guest rooms around a different classic author. Some of them were already furnished appropriately and would only need a few extra touches—Aunt Beatrice’s room could become the Forster room with ease, and the front bedroom with the balcony evoked the red-room from Jane Eyre so strongly Emily shivered whenever she went in there. It was a natural for the Brontë room.

But the other rooms—Austen, Montgomery, and Dostoevsky upstairs, and Dickens on the main floor—would need more work, and Emily was clueless as to how to begin. She’d always had a passive interest in decorating but had never had the time or money to indulge it. Her first step in any new endeavor was always to read about it, so now she turned her attention to the ranks of books in Beatrice’s library.

Her search was fruitless, however. Only serious literature was allowed to grace these venerable shelves. She would have to pay a visit to Ben Johnson, Stony Beach’s bookseller. He might not have what she needed, either, but he would know how to get it. And by this time she was feeling desperate to get out of the house. The sounds of demolition from the third floor were filtering down more insistently than she had hoped.

She moved to the library windows, a broad semicircle that looked out over the ocean. The bangs and crashes from upstairs had diverted her attention from the steadier drumming of the rain slanting in sheets against the glass, driven by what looked to her landlubber’s eyes like a gale-force wind. She could barely see the ocean, though it crashed to shore only a few hundred yards away, but what she could see of it was a froth of whitecaps. If the Brontës had lived on the Oregon coast, this would have been the weather they gloried in. Too stormy to make that trip to Ben’s bookstore now.

Emily sighed and returned to her chair in front of the fire, wincing at a particularly reverberating crash from upstairs. If only she’d had the foresight to lay in a stock of earplugs. Another errand to do when the weather cleared.

Before she could pick up her knitting, Levin leapt onto her lap, rubbing his sleek gray cheek against hers before circling and settling down for a nap. Kitty, his nearly identical sister, already dozed on the opposite chair, snuggled up to Bustopher Jones. The harmony between the two cats she’d brought with her from Portland and Bustopher, the original king of the house, was a small miracle among the many that had brought Emily to this place. She should be grateful. But at the moment she was merely annoyed.

She reached for the nearest book and read the same page three times without absorbing a word. Finally another sound shrilled over the hammers and the rain: the telephone. She leapt to answer it, dislodging an indignant Levin. Even talking to a telemarketer could provide a welcome distraction from all this noise.

“Hey, beautiful.”

Luke’s favorite endearment for her, left over from their halcyon days as teenage lovers but still uttered with complete sincerity, always sent a thrill through Emily. “Luke! You’re a sound for sore ears. I swear, this remodeling is going to put me in my grave right next to Aunt Beatrice. And this is only the first day.”

“I thought they were still working on the carriage house. They’re in the main house now?”

“Yeah, they finished up Katie’s apartment Friday. Except for the painting—she’s doing that herself.”

“So where are they starting with your place?”

“Third floor. They’re tearing down walls today, then they’ll start framing in the bathroom and sitting room. I’ve moved into Beatrice’s bedroom for the duration.” Even now, more than four months after her death, the room was still full of the old woman’s presence. And her belongings, which Emily would have to start clearing out soon.

“How about I come take you away from it all? We can go to the Crab Pot for lunch.”

“In this weather? Aren’t you afraid your car will be blown off the road?”

“Heck, this is just a little breeze. It’s only October. You should see the kind of weather we get after Christmas.”

“Well, if you say so. Would you mind if we stopped by the bookstore and the drugstore on the way?”

“How about on the way back? I’m not sure my stomach can stand to wait for you to get through in that bookstore.”

Emily laughed. She wasn’t an avid clothes shopper like so many women, but let her loose in a bookstore or a yarn shop and hours could pass before she knew it. “Fine. Let me make sure Katie doesn’t already have something going for lunch.”

She laid down the phone and stepped through the hall into the kitchen. “Katie? Would it mess up your plans if I went out to lunch?”

Katie’s brunette ponytail swung as she turned from the stove to face Emily. Her cheeks had not regained their usual rosy color after this morning’s baffling episode, but she spoke cheerfully enough. “Not a bit. I was just going to do soup and sandwiches. The soup’ll keep.”

Lizzie gurgled a greeting from her blanket under the table. Emily bent down and waggled her fingers at her, then returned to the phone. “Katie says I’m free to go.”

“Be there in five minutes.”

Emily hurried up the stairs and into Beatrice’s room to change. The Crab Pot was hardly formal dining, but she always wanted to look her best for Luke. She exchanged her chinos for a calf-length, flared brown tweed skirt and her old ratty sweater for a lovely pumpkin-colored mohair one she’d finished knitting the week before. She just had time to tuck a few stray copper curls back into her loose, high bun before she heard the doorbell.

By the time she reached the landing, Katie, holding Lizzie on her hip, had already opened the door to Luke. Emily couldn’t see Luke, but she heard his playful tone. “Hey there, little lady. I see you’ve got everything at Windy Corner under control, as usual.” Little lady? It wasn’t like Luke to address Katie that way. Then he added, “With a little help from your mom.”

Katie laughed. “Yeah, we have a great system—she makes the messes, I clean them up. And the rest of the house in the process.”

“I hear you’re doing your own painting, too. I bet Lizzie’ll be a big help there. She’ll test all the colors for you, won’t you, peanut?”

“Yeah, on her clothes, on her hair … As far as painting goes, she’s helping me by napping through the whole thing.”

Emily descended the last leg of the stairs as Katie stood back to let Luke in. After thirty-five years—most of which, granted, they’d spent apart—the sight of Luke’s tall form still quickened Emily’s blood. His youthful good looks had coarsened with the years, and his once-abundant brown hair was now sparse and graying, clipped close to his head and topped by a khaki sheriff’s cap; but the teasing light in his gray eyes when he gazed at her was just as bright and compelling as it had been when they were teens. Looking at him, Emily could not bring herself to regret the chain of events that had brought her back to Stony Beach—it had brought her back to Luke as well.

Katie evaporated toward the kitchen as Emily went to meet Luke. He took her in his arms. “Mmm, I like this sweater. Real soft.” He kissed her. “Almost as soft as you.”

She returned the kiss, then pulled back. “You, on the other hand, are soaking wet.”

“Sorry ’bout that. House like this in this climate, I’m surprised you don’t have one of those whatchamacallits where you can get from the car to the house under cover.”

“A porte cochère? That’s not a bad idea. Though I’m not sure it would harmonize with the style of the house. You see those more with neoclassical than Queen Anne.”

“Whatever.” He pulled her raincoat off the coatrack. “Your mackintosh, my lady.” He held the coat while she slipped her arms into the sleeves.

“Thank you, my lord.” Emily’s taste for British television was beginning to rub off on Luke. So far she’d introduced him to Jeeves and Wooster, Downton Abbey, and Inspector Lewis. His tolerance for mystery shows was limited, as they inevitably fudged on the details of true police work; but he’d watch almost anything for the sake of getting her to cuddle up with him on his plushy sofa in front of his big-screen high-definition TV.

The Crab Pot was on the south end of downtown Stony Beach, a couple of miles from Windy Corner, which stood alone at the end of a stretch of undeveloped land to the north of town. Emily gripped the grab bar of the sheriff’s department SUV throughout the ride as if by doing so she could keep the car’s wheels anchored to the road. She was sure if the wind didn’t blow them away, they’d hydroplane on one of the sheets of water flowing across the pavement and end up in the lake, which ran along the inland side of the highway most of the way into town. But Luke’s driving proved equal to the situation, and when they pulled into the parking lot of the Crab Pot, only one space was open. Apparently the locals agreed with Luke that this was “just a little breeze.” And besides, at this time of year, the Crab Pot was the only open restaurant in town.

They made a mad dash for the door and shook themselves like dogs in the entry before hanging up their raincoats and hats and heading to Luke’s usual table at the back. Emily had the menu pretty well memorized by now, but she pulled a laminated card from the stand on the vinyl-topped table anyway and ran her eyes down the list of a dozen lunch options. She settled on clam chowder in a sourdough bowl. That ought to warm her up.

Sunny, the diner’s sole waiter, shuffled up to their table holding two plastic glasses of water in his one good hand. He plunked the glasses down, then stood silent, hitching up the shoulder of his ratty, ill-fitting overalls as he waited for their order. “Clam chowder and coffee, please,” Emily said.

“The same. And don’t forget the oyster crackers.” Luke winked at Emily. One always had to ask for the extras with Sunny, even though they were supposed to be included with the meal. Sunny grunted and shuffled off.

Luke sat back in his chair, hands in pockets, tilting the chair onto its back legs. He whistled softly under his breath as his eyes sparkled at her.

Emily raised an eyebrow at him. Luke was normally cheerful, but this was a bit much even for him. “What has you looking like the cat that got the cream?”

“Oh, nothing much.” He let his chair down with a thud and leaned toward her. “I’m just stoked that you’re going ahead with your third-floor apartment. Means you’re planning to stick around.”

Emily started. It certainly did appear to mean that, but she wasn’t conscious of having made such a decision. She’d applied for a sabbatical back in June, when it became clear that the seismic shift her life had undergone made an immediate return to Reed unthinkable. But even as she went ahead with the transformation of Windy Corner into a retreat center, she’d never actually decided to extend her sabbatical into full retirement.

Not that she had any compelling reason not to do so—Philip, her husband of three contented decades, had died two years before, and her one close friend at Reed, Marguerite Grenier of the French department, was perfectly happy to visit Emily at Windy Corner as often as required. And the work of teaching literature had lost most of its savor at some indefinite time in the past. Retirement looked attractive on most fronts; but the idea of permanently abandoning Portland with its vibrant cultural life was one she wasn’t quite ready to entertain.

She gave Luke an ambiguous smile. The arrival of their food saved her from having to give a definitive reply. Once Sunny had slammed down their plates and shuffled off, Emily cast about for a way to change the subject. The new young workers she’d been introduced to that morning popped into her mind. “Do you know anything about Jake Newhouse?”

Luke snorted. “I know he’s trouble. Why?”

“What kind of trouble? He’s working on my house.”

“Girl trouble, mostly. I don’t think you need to worry about him stealing or anything. But you might want to keep Katie out of his way.”

“That’s just it—the way they both reacted when they saw each other this morning, I’d swear there’s some history between them.” She described the scene. “But Katie wouldn’t tell me anything except that she knew him slightly from high school.”

“There’s not a pretty girl in this county Jake hasn’t at least tried to get to know more than slightly. I’ve heard some nasty stories—there’d be more than one case against him for date rape if the girls dared to come forward. But in a little place like this, where everybody knows everybody’s business, testifying in a rape trial’d be almost worse for the girl than the rape itself. Fries my bacon the way rape victims get treated in the courts, but doesn’t seem to be anything I can do about it.”

Emily stopped with a spoonful of chowder halfway to her mouth. “I hate to think Katie could have been one of his victims. But she’s never told me anything about Lizzie’s father. Do you think—?”

“It’s possible. Though I don’t know of any redheaded Newhouses.”

She put down her spoon. Her appetite had followed her imagination into the no-man’s-land of what might have befallen her beloved Katie in the past. “I’d better ask Jeremiah Edwards to get rid of him.”

“Well, now, there you could be unleashing some pretty vicious attack dogs. Jake’s daddy’s a lawyer. Family’s big stuff around here. Unless you could show some kind of misconduct on the job itself, he’d likely sue you and Edwards from here to Christmas for wrongful dismissal.”

Emily stared at Luke. “So I have to wait until Jake actually attacks Katie to get rid of him?”

Luke winced. “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. My bet is he’s a lazy bugger. Maybe Edwards’ll be able to sack him for loafing on the job.”

“I’ll have a word with Jeremiah. I just wish Jake had never set foot in the place.” Attack dogs or no attack dogs, she would have to find some way to get rid of that boy.