think you said no. I hope you said no.”
“But you’re not sure?”
He stared at her a moment, and then, his body stiff, he rose from his wicker chair. He leaned against the railing, his back to the sunshine, which threw his face into shadow.
“How can I be sure? The Suzie I used to know—she would have told Alton to take his money and stuff it up his hairy ass. But I haven’t seen you in ten years. I don’t know you anymore. Not really.”
“You think ten years is enough to turn me into a liar?”
He hesitated again. “Ten years can do a lot of rotten things to people, Suzie. If you don’t know that yet, I’m happy for you.”
She stood up. “Let me get this straight. You think it could turn me into a woman who would send a man to the gas chamber for something he didn’t do?”
“Perhaps not.” He lifted one hand. The effort to look suave, indifferent, world-weary failed miserably. He was just plain tired. “But am I sure? No. To tell you the truth, I’m not sure of anything anymore.”
Her annoyance faded slightly in the face of his exhaustion.
“Well, you can be sure of this. Millner is going to try to frame you for this, Mike. He’s going to do any dirty thing he can to see that you pay for what happened to Justine.”
“I know.” He glanced toward the French doors, obviously wondering if Gavin was within earshot. “But frankly, Suzie, Alton Millner isn’t the only vulture out to get me. He isn’t even the most dangerous one. The D.A. has a bead on me, too. I guess it’s pretty standard for the cops, even if it feels outrageous to me. They always look at the husband first.”
She felt an upwelling of incredulous indignation. Was everyone around here insane? Mike Frome couldn’t kill anyone. Heck, Suzie herself was a more likely candidate. She’d hated Justine, and she was, after all, the one they called “Fang.”
But neither of them had done it. They just weren’t that kind of people.
“That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard,” she said. “Jeez. Shouldn’t you be a better judge of people than that if you’re going to be the D.A.?”
Mike almost smiled. “You’re so sure he’s wrong, then?”
Suzie rolled her eyes. “I’ve known you since you were about six, Frome. You can be a horse’s ass, and you do have an irritating tendency to think you’re God’s gift. But kill somebody? No way. Kill your own child’s mother? Not in a bazillion, trillion years.”
“Damn.” His half smile turned into a grin. “Why couldn’t you have been the D.A.?”
She shrugged, but she felt herself smiling, too. “Couldn’t have handled law school. Problems with authority, you know.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I know.”
Man, this was getting weird. A minute ago she’d wanted to punch him out, and now she had this stupid impulse to go over and hug him. She felt a disgustingly maternal urge—perhaps the first in her whole life—to help him hang on to that smile.
But she forced herself to stay where she was. “Well,” she began. “That’s all I had to say, so I guess I should—”
“Suzie.”
She frowned, just on principle. “What?”
“Thanks for coming by to warn me. It was very—very sweet.”
“Wow.” She found herself smiling again, and she made a few adjustments to make sure it was a sarcastic smile. Behind her, she heard footsteps approaching. Gavin must be coming back. “You’ve used a lot of words to describe me through the years, but I don’t think you ever used that one.”
Mike was still looking at her in that soft way that made her feel like squirming.
“No, I didn’t,” he said. “Just one of my many mistakes.”
SOMETIMES MIKE BELIEVED that if he hadn’t let Justine talk him into leaving Firefly Glen, everything would have been fine.
There was magic here. The Sunday after Suzie’s visit and her disturbing news, he went home for Spencer Fairmont’s sixteenth birthday party. And as he watched his son playing touch football on the front lawn of Summer House, he felt his whole body relaxing.
Though there were about two dozen Glenner children out there, Mike couldn’t take his eyes off Gavin. Look at that smile. He hadn’t smiled like that since his mother’s body had been discovered, almost a month ago.
Magic wasn’t an exaggeration.
And it wasn’t just the magic of “home.” Mike knew that, when faced with your first mortgage payment, your first endless, numbing workweek, or your first real personal crisis, it was easy to get all misty about the innocence of youth.
But Firefly Glen was more than that, and he’d always sensed it, even as a child. Firefly Glen was special. Nestled in a small Adirondack valley, the town was ringed by wooded mountains and spangled with flowers, waterfalls, rivers and birds. It was peopled by gentle eccentrics who argued constantly, and yet stuck together with a loyalty that seemed to belong to another century…or a fairy tale.
Many of those quirky townsfolk were Mike’s own kin. He was a fourth-generation Glenner, and his parents and grandparents still lived here. His cousin, Natalie Granville Quinn, had once owned Summer House, though the crazy old villa was now open to the public as a historic site—and rented out for parties, like this one.
“Can you believe how grown-up he is?”
Mike looked up and saw Natalie standing over him with a cup of punch in each hand. He wasn’t sure which kid she meant. Birthday boy Spencer had come to Firefly Glen as a scared little boy of six. And of course Gavin had left here, ten years ago, as an infant. Three of Natalie’s own four boys were out there, too—the fourth was still in diapers, too young to romp about with the big kids.
Mike took the punch. Natalie gathered her full yellow skirt under her knees and sat down on the step beside him. “Aren’t you glad someone else is mowing this monstrosity now?”
He glanced around at the smooth carpet of grass, which was glowing with gold highlights as the afternoon sun began to drop in the west. “You bet I am. Aren’t you glad someone else is in charge of the repairs?”
Natalie made a swooning sound and leaned her elbows back against the marble gracefully. “Giving this place up was the best decision I ever made.”
Just then Matthew walked by, their youngest son in his arms, and ruffled her hair. Both males made loud, wet kissing noises. Natalie kissed back, then grinned at Mike. “Make that second-best.”
Frankly, it was hard to believe that this happily sex-crazed blonde was now a thirty-eight-year-old mother of four. She hardly looked a day older than she had at Mike’s wedding ten years ago, while he felt about a hundred.
Guess true love really was the fountain of youth, he thought, trying not to be bitter.
“You
