***
Her words did something to me, though it was only when we were in the car that I felt the change, and then it was so subtle that I couldn’t put a name to it. I’m not sure I wanted to just then. Between the events of the last few hours and all that crying, I was wiped. The best I could do when Edward suggested taking a ride, was to put my arms in the parka he held and, without argument, walk with him out to the Jeep.
26
The night was quiet. Filling my lungs with moist, full-bodied April air, I felt soothed. If the press had been in the parking lot of the Inn earlier, they had either gone to bed or regrouped at the police station. We headed in the opposite direction. And yes, in sporadic moments, I thought of what lay behind. Grace had to be terrified. I had no idea what, if anything, they were telling her about Chris, and though I told myself that with the eyes of the world on the boy, he was physically safe, I couldn’t begin to imagine his emotional state. Jay had already talked with the U.S. Attorney in New Mexico, but that was all we knew. I hadn’t heard from Michael Shanahan again. He would file a probation-violation report the next morning, at which point my fate would be in the hands of the same judge who had sentenced me five years before.
I should have been panicked. The worst was happening. I should have beenterrified.As we drove north, though, the reasons why drifted off in the night. It wasn’t that I felt numb, certainly not mellow, though thatword did come and go. Likewise, relief. With my greatest fear coming to pass, the wait was over.
But no, it wasn’t relief, either. What I felt inside was deeper. It was as if a part of me could deal with this new fear, as if little threads of hope were caging it in.
I wasn’t a total stranger to hope. I had felt it about many things in Devon. But this was different from finding a home for the holidays or realizing that I liked doing makeup. This was larger. Still, it remained just beyond my grasp as the tires spun over macadam and shadowed trees came and went.
I had no idea where Edward was taking me, hadn’t asked when we left the Inn, hadn’tcaredwhen we left the Inn. Increasingly, though, the drive was a little too familiar. The farther we went on the Blue behind the headlights of this particular car, the stronger my sense of déjàvu.
“Sex isn’t the answer,” I warned over the engine’s hum.
“No sex,” came his deep voice. “I just want to show you something.”
“At your house? There’s nothing there.”
“There is.”
I studied him in the pale light of the dashboard. His jacket was open, collar down, turtleneck up. Above that, his profile was strong, those spikes of hair, his straight nose, and whiskered chin, but I saw nothing at his mouth, either smile or frown, to give a clue what “there is” meant. Then he reached for my hand, and something in the way he held it, squeezing and releasing, spoke simultaneously of excitement and concern.
Curiosity won over the purr of silence. “What’s there?” I asked.
“You’ll see,” he said but said no more.
So I refocused on the night. Being in transit was a good thing. It allowed me to float, which wasn’t to say there were no other random moments of thought.
“I have to call my lawyer in Boston,” I said during one.
“Already did,” Edward replied. “He says to let him know if the letter arrives.”
I was adjusting the heat vent when the next moment hit. “If?”
“I’m not sure Shanahan will act. Nothing you did was intentional. He knows that. If he makes a BFD about it and the judge rules against him, he’ll look ridiculous.”
I might have argued, because the judge had been stern handing down his sentence, like he was doing me a huge favor andYou’d be wise to remember that, Mrs. Cooper.But I was feeling calm without consciously working at it. This was new. I didn’t want to jinx it.
After following the Blue for another mile, we crossed back over the river onto the lesser-used road that led to Edward’s house. Thirty seconds more, and there it was again, the sprawl of a farmer’s porch, shingled siding, and mullioned glass lit by the swing of his headlights as he turned the wheel. Pulling up at the side, he killed the engine and was jogging around to open my door even before I had my seatbelt released. As soon as I was out of the Jeep, he took my hand and drew me to the house.
Sensing in him the same anticipation I had in the car, I watched him unlock the door. When he stood back for me to enter, I hesitated. My last visit here had unleashed a firestorm of emotion. What with everything else going on back in town, I didn’t want that now.
“Please?” he asked on a vulnerable note, telling me I had a choice here this time.
But really, what choice did I have? I trusted the man. Iadoredthe man.
Stepping in, I stood aside while he closed the door and flipped on a light. I remembered the kitchen as being small and unsettled. With its checkerboard floor and Formica cabinets, it looked more old now than small and with the clutter gone, simply sad.
The bedroom wing was at the back of the house down a corridor on the right, but, true to his word, we didn’t go there. Instead, he guided me left, through an open archway and into a room at the front of the house where moldings hugged ceiling and floor, and fluted columns separated endless shelves everywhere between. A smattering of books stood in random chunks, but far more remained in cartons below.
Edward’s desk was the focal point of the room. Standing smack in the center, it was modern and spare, a simple mix of glass and steel set on aniron tube frame. We had bought it for our last house, and while Edward had done his share of late night work there, Lily and I also used its large surface for art projects.
This desk matched the sleekness of our lives back then. It didn’t fit here, not with the decorative millwork. But here it was. An oversized computer stood at one end. At the other lay long rolls of architects’ drawings in a pick-up stick mess. Seeming to know which of the rolls he wanted, Edward pulled one out, pushed the others aside, and unrolled it.
Then he rethought that. Letting go so that the edges curled up on themselves, he woke up the computer instead and pulled up the same plan, now in a full-color rendering. Positioning the desk chair, he urged me to sit—and oh, I knew that chair, too. I had sat in it many, many times with Lily on my lap. The memories warmed a little something in me. The familiarity of it was bittersweet, but not painful, as it once might have been.
