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Frowning, he stepped over to the breakfront and moved the Sore Loser trophy to a more prominent position on the shelf, right next to his favorite golfing photo of Grandpa Abe, himself and Dad.
Chapter Three
“L innie, oh, no, what is it?” Shallis gasped out as soon as she saw her sister. “What’s happened?”
It was five-thirty in the evening, and Linnie had just opened the front door of her modest ranch house for Shallis, her pretty gray eyes reddened and swollen, and tears streaming down her cheeks. Her shoulders shook with suppressed sobbing.
“Oh, it’s just the usual,” she said, trying to smile. “Not pregnant. Again. Come in.” Her voice cracked into a high-pitched squeak as she struggled for normality. She looked down at the decorative wicker basket in Shallis’s hands. “Oh. Nice. You’ve brought fruit.”
“Left from a conference at the hotel on the weekend.”
“You’re good. It looks l-lovely, with the r-ribbons and all.” Her shoulders shook some more. “Ryan’s not in from the barn yet, thank goodness.”
The house was plain and small, but it was situated on a beautiful piece of land, part of the infrastructure of the horse-breeding business Ryan had been building for several years. He’d recently renovated a couple of old cabins on the property, also, and they would be open for paying guests this summer, with optional breakfast and dinner included in the package.
Ryan worked very hard, as did Linnie, and Shallis wasn’t surprised to hear that he wasn’t yet back at the house. She’d been counting on his absence because she wanted a sister-to-sister talk, but she didn’t understand why Linnie would be feeling the same.
Linnie stepped to the side and Shallis crossed the threshold. “You don’t want to see Ryan?” she asked carefully.
“I don’t want him to see me. Like this.” Linnie flapped her hands at her blotchy face and attempted another smile. It looked heartbreaking. She kicked the door closed behind her.
“Oh, Linnie.” Shallis put down the fruit basket and hugged her sister, burning with love and empathy that just had no place to go, no way to translate into the right words.
“I’m sorry,” Linnie whispered in her ear, her voice tight and harsh with a continuing effort not to cry. “It’s so stupid. It usually only lasts around twenty minutes, so I’ll be okay again soon.”
“Twenty minutes? What does, Lin?”
“The sobbing.” Her body shuddered suddenly, and went still. “There. See? It just stops. And then I sometimes laugh at myself a little bit, because it shouldn’t feel so…so…tragic, you know? Ryan and I love each other, we love the farm and the horses, I love my teaching job, we have great families, plans to extend the house, we have so much going for us. And still I’m sobbing like a maniac every month just because I don’t have a baby. What more do I want out of life? The moon and stars on a big silver plate?”
She threw the words over her shoulder at Shallis on their way down the short corridor toward the kitchen. Her golden-brown hair looked limp and tired, and so did her green-toned skirt and top.
“Of course you want a baby,” Shallis said, following her with the fruit basket. “Of course it’s hard. You had an appointment with the specialist last week. Weren’t there some test results coming in?”
“His nurse called today, just after I got in from school. Which is why I guess I was already a little upset, even before…you know. Nothing conclusive, she said.”
“But that’s good news, isn’t it?” Shallis felt so far out of her depth.
She’d been on the pill for six months. A doctor had prescribed it in Los Angeles when the stress she’d been under there had led to painful and wildly irregular cycles. She had no idea how it must feel to be so desperate to conceive.
“Oh, sure,” Linnie answered. “I mean, it’s better than, ‘Guess what, you don’t have any ovaries,’ or something. But it leaves us still in the dark, nowhere to go. Technically there seems to be no reason why, in more than three years, I haven’t conceived. And if there’s no reason, then there’s no action you can take to correct it, you know?”
“I get it. Oh, Linnie…”
“Hey, want a big, stiff drink? Please say yes, because I’m having one.”
“What’re you having?”
“Bourbon and Coke, nice and strong. Two weeks every cycle I don’t touch a drop of alcohol. You know. Just in case I’m— Then on this day each month, I pretend to myself that getting a little tipsy is just what I’ve been looking forward to. Woo-hoo!”
She sounded so cynical and self-mocking, so not like the sunny, caring, capable Linnie that Shallis knew Ryan had fallen in love with. It scared her a little. Until three months ago, she’d been caught up in her life in Los Angeles, and she’d had no idea.
She’d known Linnie had some kind of fertility problem, of course, but she’d never suspected her sister felt that badly about it. Linnie was only thirty-two. She had time, didn’t she? And modern reproductive medicine could do so much.
In her e-mails and phone calls, Linnie just hadn’t let on the full truth, and neither had anyone else. Protecting Shallis’s important career, as usual. The PR career she hadn’t even liked, in the end, which was one of the reasons she’d come home.
“Does—could—does the specialist think that tying yourself in knots about it might be making it worse?” she asked carefully.
“That’s the myth, isn’t it? Just relax, and you’ll conceive. If I had a dollar for everyone who’s told us to take a cruise or a trip to Paris and just do what comes naturally… I’m telling you, Shallis, it doesn’t come naturally, any more. It’s like an Olympic event, with training and warm-ups and electronic timing. Ryan is getting—” She stopped suddenly. “So, want that drink?”
With scary efficiency, she reached into the fridge, the freezer, and a couple of cabinets just above her head. Slosh went the bourbon, fizz went the Coke, crack went the ice cubes. She pushed one brimming glass in Shallis’s direction and took a huge gulp from the other. Then she stopped with the glass and her hand in midair.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “It’s one day a month that I do this, and it’s one drink. But boy, do I need the effect!”
Shallis nodded slowly and took a much more cautious sip of her own. She’d had a stomach upset over the weekend and was still eating and drinking carefully. “You were, um, saying something about Ryan.”
“Oh. Yeah. But I rethought.”
“Rethink again. I’m your sister. And I care about you. So much, Linnie.” Oh-oh. Foggy voice alert. They’d both cried enough in the past couple of weeks, about Gram’s death. She swallowed.
“Oh, it’s just… He hates this,” Linnie said. “In a different way than I do, but he hates it just as much. He hates that I’m a mess. He hates the Olympic event mechanical sex. We’ve had a couple of—” she stopped again.
“Arguments,” Shallis suggested.
“Fights.”
“Fights?”
“Yelling. Ryan never yells. It reminds me of his dad.” Who was a difficult man, Shallis knew. “I don’t like it.”
“No, of course you don’t.”
“And I don’t think he does, either. He’s always hated the thought of getting like his father.” She took another gulp of her drink, let it roll around her mouth for a moment, then swallowed and squared her shoulders. “Okay, can we close this subject for the moment?”
“Well, if you want, but—”
“What I want is to hear about your appointment with Mr. Starke today.”
She only said Mr. Starke, ran Shallis’s thoughts. If she’d said Abraham, I would have been obligated to say, no, it was Jared. This way, I can let her think it was his grandfather, if I want.
Yeah.
Right.
That level of honesty between sisters? After Linnie had just more or less admitted to a serious fear that her marriage was in trouble, on top of everything else? When Shallis had come out here pretty much on purpose to tell her about seeing Jared?
No.
“Well, I convinced Mom not to come, in the end,” Shallis began. “She really didn’t need to. And that was good, as it turned out, because it wasn’t Mr. Starke, senior, it was his grandson, who’s taking over the practice for a while. Jared.”
“Jared,” Melinda echoed blankly. “Jared?”
“Yes.” Your old boyfriend, Linnie, whom I would have stolen from you at sixteen, if I’d had the power. The one who dumped you, then tried to get you back at the altar, when you were marrying the man who was perfect for you.
“But he lives in Chicago,” Linnie said. “City of big shoulders and hogs’ breakfasts, or whatever that poet said.”
“Carl Sandburg. But I don’t think the hogs’ breakfasts bit is quite right.” Although Jared’s shoulders were certainly big enough… “He’s taking some kind of break.” Shallis took a breath. “And he was pretty helpful, actually. Professional. Sensitive. He said we could take our business over to Banks and Moore in Carrollton if we wanted, or let him get things rolling and then hand over to his grandfather as soon as he gets back.”
“Where has he gone?”
“Smoky Mountains. Fishing trip. Lo-o-ong fishing trip, Jared thinks. I went with the second alternative, but I have to ask how you feel about it, Linnie. You’re the one whose life he tried so hard to mess up. I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t want anyone in the Duncan family to have anything to do with him.”
“He’s probably not someone I’d enjoy having around, true,” Linnie agreed slowly. “In any personal sense, that is. You know, for fun family barbecues, and stuff. But the way I’m feeling right now, it would seem so petty and unimportant to sack the family law firm just because its temporary new partner spoiled a few of my wedding pictures six years ago.”
“He did a heck of a lot more than that, Linnie!” Shallis put down her drink, most of it untouched.
“You know what I mean. Jared didn’t change the bottom line. Ryan and I had a beautiful wedding, and we—” huge foggy voice alert “—love each other.” The words were barely even a whisper.
“He tried to tell you that you didn’t love Ryan at all!” Shallis’s indignation rose. “He hung around at the reception like a bad odor, with a nasty smile on his face.”
And I flirted with him to keep him away from you, and part of the time I enjoyed it.
“You sound as if you mind about it more than I do.”
“I’m just worried about you, Lin.”
“Thanks. But worry about the important stuff, okay? Our marriage, and our fertility, not Jared Starke. Keep him to deal with Gram’s estate, because it has to be more convenient that way. I expect he’s changed a lot now. Grown up. We all have.” Her face said very clearly that Grown-up Land wasn’t always a fun place to be. “You said he acted like a professional this morning?”
“Yes, he did.” And so did I, thank heaven.
“So give him the benefit of the doubt.”
This is not what I wanted you to say, Linnie. You were supposed to give me the perfect way out…
Shallis hadn’t realized until just now that this was what she’d been hoping for. So who was the person she really didn’t trust?
Herself?
Was that possible?
Ohhh, yeah!
“Did you get a chance to ask him about that strange property tax bill?” Linnie was saying.
“Yes, and he’s going to look into it.”
“Was he concerned?”
“He thought it seemed a little odd. But don’t start worrying about that…”
“…on top of everything else. No, I won’t. I think I hear Ryan. Are you staying to eat?”
“Can’t. I have a function at the hotel tonight. I’ll say a quick hi to your hubby, then I’ll head back to town.”
“So you only came out here to break it to me about Jared in person?” Linnie took another mouthful of her drink. She gave a wan smile which suggested it was sweetly funny of Shallis to think the issue important enough to warrant the price of the gas, and the wear and tear on the car.
Illogically this only made Shallis feel even more fiercely protective about her sister, and even more determined not to risk hurting her in any way. She said her hello to Ryan, and under the cover of a sisterly hug managed to whisper in his ear, “Look after her. She’s hurting today.”
“I know,” he answered, gruff and male and helpless. He’d never been big on fluent speeches, but his heart was in the right place. “I can tell just from her face.”
Shallis was back in town at ten after six.
This was the house on Chestnut Street. Number Fifty-six.
Shallis slowed the car and pulled close to the curb. She must have passed this place dozens if not hundreds of times in her life, but she’d never really looked at it before. The street contained a mix of Victorian architectural styles, and there’d been a mix of changes made to the original dwellings over the years, also. No two houses were alike.
Some of the best places in the street had been gorgeously restored for use as suites of doctors’ and dentists’ offices, elegant dwellings or the kind of bed-and-breakfast inns that featured in glossy travel magazines, but Number Fifty-six hadn’t. Made of a rust-colored brick, it seemed a little tired.
The guttering needed some attention, and so did the floorboards of the wraparound porch. The garden looked as if it received regular care, however. The lawn had been recently mown, and the shrubbery in front of the porch was free of weeds. But the bushes themselves were gnarled and old.
Was anyone living here?
From the street, Shallis couldn’t tell. She parked the car, then sat in it for a moment, debating her options. Several people at the Grand Regency would commence predictable panic attacks if she wasn’t back by six forty-five, but the hotel was only three minutes drive from here, right around the block, and everything had been under control when she left. She had a little time.
She climbed out and went to the small metal mailbox. Tentatively lifting the back flap, she saw two or three days’ worth of junk mail inside. Maybe whoever lived here was away. If the place was unoccupied, someone was definitely collecting the mail. The flap of the mailbox squeaked as she lowered it shut.
She walked up the slate path toward the front door, aware of the ambient sounds of the town around her. High overhead, a jet plane faintly roared, while closer at hand a car or two swished by, a dog barked and muffled radio music played. No sounds came from the house itself.
Stepping onto the porch, she felt like a trespasser. She rang an old-fashioned electric bell which seemed to peal inside the house like a fire station alarm, and she knew she probably wouldn’t have pressed that little black bakelite button if she’d really thought that anyone was home. After a two-minute wait and another press of the bell, she hadn’t sensed any sound or movement inside.
Time to leave.
Except that she couldn’t seem to do so just yet. She really wanted to know if the house was empty and unlived in, or just temporarily unattended. Its secrets seemed to whisper at her in the breeze that stirred the trees. The front windows were curtained, but she cupped a hand against her cheek and forehead and peered through the glass anyhow, in case there was a gap.
Yes. A couple of inches. It was dark inside the house, however, and she couldn’t see. Just a few dim shapes, edges and angles. Furniture? She thought so, but wasn’t sure.
She decided to make a quick trip around to the back of the place. Successful ex-beauty queens tended to be thorough. If there was anything to be learned here, she would learn it now and not need to make a second visit.
The back porch, like the one at the front, was wide and substantial and in need of repair, and a couple of the windows that looked onto it had raised blinds and no drapes. She saw a dining table through an open doorway and a primitive-looking kitchen with this year’s calendar on the opposite wall, still showing the February page.
Behind her, she heard footsteps and a voice. “Shallis, hi…”
Whirling around, she found Jared half way up the back porch steps. She took a too-hasty step and her dove-gray spiked heel rammed through a splintery crack between the old floorboards. She tripped, ending up on both hands and one painful knee, with the other foot bare and its shoe still jammed in the crack, some inches behind her.
“Shoot, this porch needs some work!” Jared dropped beside her and touched her shoulder. He didn’t let the contact linger, but his voice was resonant with concern. “You okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“Sure? Your foot—”
