Less of a Stranger Read online

  coffee.

  So he’d do his best until she came home. He’d keep life in her house, such as his was.

  Eli picked up his bags, started upstairs. He’d take the room he’d always used on visits—or had before those visits stretched out fewer and farther between. Lindsay had hated Whiskey Beach, Bluff House, and had made trips there into a cold war with his grandmother rigidly polite on one side, his wife deliberately snide on the other. And he’d been squeezed in the middle.

  So he’d taken the easy way, he thought now. He could be sorry about that, sorry he’d stopped coming, sorry he’d made excuses and had limited his time with his grandmother to her trips to Boston. But he couldn’t turn back the clock.

  He stepped into the bedroom. Flowers here, too, he noted, and the same soft green walls, two of his grandmother’s watercolors he’d always particularly liked.

  He put his bags on the bench at the foot of the sleigh bed, stripped off his coat.

  Here, things had stayed the same. The little desk under the window, the wide atrium doors leading to the terrace, the wingback chair and the little footstool with the cover his grandmother’s mother had needle-pointed long ago.

  It occurred to him that for the first time in a very long time he felt—almost—at home. Opening his bag, he dug out his toiletry kit, then found fresh towels, fancy seashell soaps. The scent of lemons in the bath.

  He stripped down without glancing at the mirror. He’d lost weight, too much weight, over the past year. He didn’t need to remind himself of it. He turned on the shower, stepped in, hoping to burn some of the fatigue away. He knew from experience if he went to bed exhausted and stressed, he’d sleep fitfully, wake with that dragging hangover.

  When he stepped out he grabbed one of the towels from the stack, again caught the whiff of lemon as he scrubbed it over his hair. Damp, it curled past the nape of his neck, a mop of dark blond longer than it had been since his early twenties. But then, he hadn’t seen his usual barber, Enrique, for nearly a year. He hardly had the need for a hundred fifty–dollar haircut, or the collection of Italian suits and shoes packed in storage.

  He was no longer a sharply dressed criminal attorney with a corner office, on the fast track to full partner. That man had died along with Lindsay. He just hadn’t known it.

  He tossed back the duvet, as fluffy and white as the towel, slid in, switched off the light.

  In the dark he could hear the sea, a steady growl, and the sizzle of sleet against the windows. He closed his eyes, wished as he did every night for a few hours of oblivion.

  A few was all he got.

  ***

  God damn, he was pissed. Nobody, absolutely nobody, he thought as he drove through the hard, freezing rain, could trip his switch like Lindsay.

  The bitch.

  Her mind, and apparently her morals, worked like no one else’s he knew. She’d managed to convince herself, and he was sure any number of her friends, her mother, her sister, and Christ knew, that it was his fault their marriage had deteriorated, his they’d gone from couples counseling to a trial separation to a legal battle in preparation for divorce.

  And his fucking fault she’d been cheating on him for well over eight months—five more than the “trial” separation she’d campaigned for. And somehow it was on him that he’d found out about her lying, cheating, conniving ass before signing on the dotted line so she could walk away with a fat settlement.

  So they were both pissed, he decided—he that he’d been an idiot, and she that he’d finally clued in.

  No doubt it would be his fault they’d had a bitter, vicious and public fight about her adultery that afternoon in the art gallery where she worked part-time. Bad timing, bad form on his part, he admitted, but right now? He didn’t give a shit.

  She wanted to blame him because she’d gotten sloppy, so sloppy his own sister had seen his estranged wife and another man all over each other in a hotel lobby in Cambridge—before they’d gotten on the elevator together.

  Maybe Tricia had waited a couple of days to tell him, but he couldn’t blame her. It was a lot to tell. And he’d taken another couple to absorb it before he’d manned up, hired an investigator.

  Eight months, he thought again. She’d been sleeping with someone else in hotel beds, in B and Bs, God knew where else—though she’d been too smart to use the house. What would the neighbors think?

  Maybe he shouldn’t have gone, armed with the investigator’s report and his own fury, to the gallery to confront her. Maybe the two of them should’ve had more sense than to start a shouting match that carried through the place and out to the street.

  But they’d both have to weather the embarrassment.

  One thing he knew: the settlement wouldn’t be so sweet for her now. All concept of clean and fair, and no need to stick hard to the prenup? Done. She’d find that out when she got home from her charity auction and found he’d taken the painting he bought in Florence, the Deco diamond that had been his great-grandmother’s and had come to him, and the silver coffee set he had no interest in but was another family heirloom he’d be damned if she’d throw into the community property pot.

  She was going to find herself batting in a new ball game.

  Maybe it was petty, maybe it was stupid—or maybe it was right and just. He couldn’t see through the anger and betrayal, and simply didn’t care. Riding on that anger, he pulled up in the driveway of the house in Boston’s Back Bay. A house he’d believed would serve as a solid foundation for a marriage that had begun to show some cracks. One he’d hoped would one day house children, and one that, for a short time, had plastered over those cracks as he and Lindsay had outfitted it, chosen furnishings, debated, argued, agreed—all of which he considered normal—over little details.

  Now they’d have to sell it, and both likely walk away with half of little to nothing. And instead of renting a condo for what he’d hoped would be the short term, he’d end up buying one.

  For himself, he thought as he climbed out of the car and into the rain. No debates, arguments or agreements necessary.

  And, he realized as he jogged to the front door, that came as a kind of relief. No more holding time, no more maybes, no more pretense his marriage could or should be saved.

  Maybe in her lying, deceitful, cheating way, she’d done him a favor.

  He could walk away now without guilt or regret.

  But he’d damn well walk away with what was his.

  He unlocked the door, stepped into the wide, gracious foyer. Turning to the alarm pad, he keyed in the code. If she’d changed it, he had his ID, listing his name and this address. He’d already worked out how to handle any police or security questions.

  He’d simply say his wife had changed the code—true enough—and he’d forgotten it.

  But she hadn’t. The fact that she hadn’t was both relief and insult.

  She thought she knew him so well, was so sure he’d never enter the house that was half his without her permission. He’d agreed to move out, to give them both some space, so he’d never intrude, never push too hard.

  She assumed he’d be fucking civilized.

  She was soon to discover she didn’t know him at all.

  He stood a moment, absorbing the quiet of the house, the feel of it. All those neutral tones serving as a backdrop to splashes and flashes of color, the mix of old, new, cleverly quirky adding style.

  She was good at it; he could admit that. She knew how to present herself, her home, knew how to arrange successful parties. There had been some good times here, spikes of happiness, stretches of contentment, moments of easy compatibility, some good sex, some lazy Sunday mornings.

  How did it all go so wrong?

  “Screw it,” he muttered.

  Get in, get out, he told himself. Being in the house just depressed him. He went upstairs, directly to the sitting room off the master bedroom—noted she had an overnight bag on the luggage rack, half packed.

  She could go wherever the hell sh
e wanted to go, he thought, with or without her lover.

  Eli focused in on what he’d come for. Inside the closet, he keyed in the combination for the safe. He ignored the stack of cash, the documents, the jewelry cases holding pieces he’d given her over the years, or she’d bought for herself.

  Just the ring, he told himself. The Landon ring. He checked the box, watched it wink and flash in the light, then shoved it into the pocket of his jacket. Once the safe was secured again and he started back down, it occurred to him he should’ve brought bubble wrap or some protection for the painting.

  He’d grab some towels, he decided, something to shield it from the rain. He took a couple of bath towels from the linen closet, kept going.

  In and out, he told himself again. He hadn’t known how much he wanted out of that house, away from the memories—good and bad.

  In the living room he took the painting off the wall. He’d bought it on their honeymoon because Lindsay had been so taken with it, with the sun-washed colors, the charm and simplicity of a field of sunflowers backed by olive groves.

  They’d bought other art since, he thought as he wrapped the towels around it. Paintings, sculptures, pottery certainly of greater value. They could all go in the communal pile, all be part of the mechanism of negotiation. But not this.

  He laid the padded painting on the sofa, moved through the living area with the storm slashing overhead. He wondered if she was driving in it, on her way home to finish packing for the overnight trip with her lover.

  “Enjoy it while it lasts,” he murmured. Because first thing in the morning, he was calling his divorce attorney and letting him off the leash.

  From now on, he intended to go for the throat.

  He turned into the room they’d fashioned into a library and, as he started to hit the light switch, saw her in a shuddering burst of icy lightning.

  From that moment to the answering bellow of thunder, his mind went blank.

  “Lindsay?”

  He slapped at the switch as he lurched forward. Inside him waged a war between what he saw and what he could accept.

  She lay on her side in front of the hearth. Blood, so much blood on the white marble, the dark floor.

  Her eyes, that rich chocolate that had so captivated him once, were filmed glass.

  “Lindsay.”

  He dropped down beside her, took the hand stretched out on the floor as if reaching. And found her cold.

  ***

  In Bluff House, Eli woke, dragging himself out of the blood and shock of the recurring dream and into sunlight.

  For a moment he just sat as he’d reared up, disoriented, hazy. He stared around the room, remembering as his thumping heart leveled again.

  Bluff House. He’d come to Bluff House.

  Lindsay had been dead nearly a year. The house in Back Bay was finally on the market. The nightmare was behind him. Even if he still felt its breath on the back of his neck.

  He shoved at his hair, wished he could delude himself so he could just go back to sleep, but he knew if he closed his eyes again, he’d be right back in the little library, right back beside the body of his murdered wife.

  And yet he couldn’t think of a single good reason to get out of bed.

  He thought he heard music—dim, distant. What the hell was that music?

  He’d gotten so used to noises—voices, music, TV mumbling—during the last few months in his parents’ house, he hadn’t registered there shouldn’t be music, or anything but the sound of the sea or the wind.

  Had he turned on a radio, a television, something, and forgotten? It wouldn’t be the first time since his long downward spiral.

  So, a reason to get up, he decided.

  As he hadn’t brought in the rest of his bags, he yanked on the jeans he’d worn the day before, grabbed the shirt and shrugged into it as he started out of the bedroom.

  It didn’t sound like a radio, he realized as he approached the stairs. Or not just a radio. He recognized Adele easily enough as he moved through the main floor, but clearly heard a second female voice forming a kind of passionate—and loud—duet.

  He followed the sound, winding through the house toward the kitchen.

  Adele’s singing partner reached into one of the three cloth market bags on the counter, drew out a small bunch of bananas and added them to a bamboo bowl of apples and pears.

  He couldn’t quite get his mind around it, any of it.

  She sang full-out, and well—not with Adele’s magic, but well. And looked like a fairy, of the long and willowy variety.

  A mass of long curls the color of walnut tumbled around her shoulders, spilled down the back of a dark blue sweater. Her face was . . . unusual, was all he could think. Long, almond-shaped eyes, the sharp nose and cheekbones, the top-heavy mouth down to the mole at its left corner struck him as just a little otherworldly.

  Or maybe it was just his fogged brain and the circumstances.

  Rings glinted on her fingers. Dangles swung from her ears. A crescent moon hung around her neck, and a watch with a face as round and white as a baseball rode her left wrist.

  Still belting it out, she lifted a quart of milk, a pound of butter from the bag, started to turn toward the refrigerator. And saw him.

  She didn’t scream, but did take a stumbling step back, and nearly bobbled the milk.

  “Eli?” She set down the milk, laid a beringed hand on her heart. “God! You scared me.” With a throaty, breathless laugh, she shook back all that curling hair. “You aren’t due until this afternoon. I didn’t see your car. But I came in the back,” she continued, gesturing toward the door leading out to the main terrace. “I guess you came in the front. Why wouldn’t you? Did you drive up last night? Less traffic, I guess, but crappy roads with the sleet.

  “Anyway, here you are. Would you like some coffee?”

  She looked like a long-legged fairy, he thought again, and had a laugh like a sea goddess.

  And she’d brought bananas.

  He just stared at her. “Who are you?”

  “Oh, sorry. I thought Hester told you. I’m Abra. Abra Walsh. Hester asked me to get the house ready for you. I’m just stocking the kitchen. How’s Hester? I haven’t spoken to her for a couple of days—just quick e-mails and texts.”

  “Abra Walsh,” he repeated. “You found her.”

  “Yes.” She dug a bag of coffee beans out of a sack and began to fill a machine much like one he’d used daily at his law offices. “Horrible day. She didn’t come to yoga class—she never misses. I called, but she didn’t answer, so I came over to check. I have a key. I clean for her.”

  While the machine hummed, she put an oversize mug under the spout, then continued putting away the groceries. “I came in the back—habit. I called for her, but . . . Then I started to worry maybe she wasn’t feeling well, so I walked through to go upstairs. And she was lying there. I thought . . . But she had a pulse, and she came around for a minute when I said her name. I called for an ambulance, and I got the throw off the sofa because I was afraid to move her. They were quick, but at the time, it seemed like hours.”

  She got a carton of cream out of the refrigerator, added some to the mug. “Counter or breakfast nook?”

  “What?”

  “Counter.” She set the coffee down on the island. “That way you can sit and talk to me.” When he just stared at the coffee, she smiled. “That’s right, isn’t it? Hester said a dollop of cream, no sugar.”

  “Yeah. Yes, thanks.” Like a man sleepwalking, he moved to the island, sat on the stool.

  “She’s so strong, so smart, so herself. She’s my hero, your grandmother. When I moved here a couple of years ago, she was the first person I really connected with.”

  She just kept talking. It didn’t matter if he listened, she thought. Sometimes the sound of someone’s voice could be comforting, and he looked as if he needed comfort.

  She thought of the photos Hester had shown her of him, from a few years back. The easy smile,
the light in his Landon blue eyes—crystal blue with a dark, dark rim around the iris. Now he looked tired, sad and too thin.

  She’d do what she could to fix that.

  So thinking, she took eggs, cheese, ham out of the refrigerator.

  “She’s grateful you agreed to stay here. I know it upset her thinking of Bluff House empty. She said you’re writing a novel?”

  “I . . . mmmm.”