“I’d be breaking a confidence, Matt,” he said, stalling for time, trying to analyze the look in his friend’s eyes, trying to tell himself what he saw there was not pain, couldn’t be pain. Real, physical pain.
“You’re not allowed to tell anyone, Ryan?” Matt asked. “Or just me?”
Ryan winced, not really playacting anymore, because this was his friend, and his friend was hurting. “If you ever decide to sell the family bank, you might want to take up law. You cross-examine real well for a banker. You’re right, Matt. I’m not supposed to tell you. She didn’t want me broadcasting her whereabouts to anyone, but you were the only one she mentioned by name.”
“She mentioned me by name.” Matt’s eyes flashed blue fire as he felt his hands clenching into fists at his sides. Tension, strain—they’d been his companions for long weeks, and he was almost afraid he was going to lose it entirely and shake the answers out of Ryan if he wasn’t forthcoming soon. “And you not only kept your word, you didn’t come to me, ask me what the hell was going on?”
“I thought about it,” Ryan confessed, rubbing at the back of his neck. “Then I thought about how you haven’t beaten down the door demanding to see Jessica whether she wanted to see you or not. She might be wondering that, too. I know Allie wanted me to wait until—never mind. Let’s just say I was waiting for the proper moment? God, that’s lame. I’m sorry, buddy.”
Matt let out his breath on a sigh, feeling his anger drain away to be replaced by something just as uncomfortable. Sometimes he wished Jessica wasn’t Ryan’s sister. Ryan was a good friend; the kind of guy other guys confided in, told their troubles to, be they financial or female or anything in between.
But the “troubles” with Jessica weren’t the sort Matt wanted to discuss with Ryan. Not by a long shot.
“We…um…” he began slowly, searching for the right words. “We, um, Jessica and I spoke together the night of…well, the night Maddy and I decided to break off our engagement. After dinner, when I went out back to the gazebo, feeling pretty much like a fifth wheel at the dinner table. Jessica followed me. Trying to comfort me, I suppose.”
“You spoke together? Out back, in the gazebo, in the dark? Just the two of you? You were gone for a couple of hours, if I remember correctly,” Ryan said, nodding.
And then he winced, one of his many suppositions reforming into more of a certainty. “Boy, now that explains it. I see it all now. You spoke together, and eight weeks later my sister picks up and takes off for parts unknown—at least to you—after spending those weeks avoiding you like the plague. Must have been some conversation.”
“Yeah. Yeah, it was,” Matt said, going back over to the papers on the table, gathering them up, stacking them neatly. “So was the talk we had the morning after the first one, right before she told me to go to hell. Since I figure I’ve been there ever since, maybe she’ll think I’ve done enough penance and will talk to me again. Now, are you going to tell me where she is, or am I going to have to tell you things you damn well don’t want to know?”
Ryan leaned back against the wall, looked at his friend, saw the naked pain in his usually bright-blue eyes. “I’m going to be honest with you, Matt, because you’re my friend, and because you probably should be warned. One, Jessica doesn’t want you to know. That’s a given. Two, Allie does want you to know. Now, if neither of those two facts scares you straight back to hell, I’ll tell you where my sister is, okay? The rest is up to you.”
Starting to figure it out, are you? I thought you would.
Now, more about me. It’s dark in here, but warm, kind of cozy. And I like the way her heart beats. Slower than mine, but steady, reliable.
I only wish she didn’t cry at night.
I’m the one that’s supposed to do that, just not yet. First I get to kick her, and maybe give her heartburn. It’s a lousy job, but somebody has to do it—it’s in all the books. Just so she remembers I’m here, and that she’s not alone.
Gee, I wonder how much bigger I have to get before I can suck my thumb….
Chapter Two
O cean City was a study in contrasts. Billed as the nation’s greatest family resort, it was a full-time city in its own right all year-round. But, in with the homes and schools and churches of an everyday town, there were hotels and motels enough for many summer visitors, while the majority of vacationers rented modern condos by the week or the month.
Old homes had been torn down, sacrificed in the name of building the most house possible on the least amount of land, so that the long streets were lined curb to curb with tall, ultramodern condos with fantastic views of the Atlantic Ocean.
Stuck here and there sat stubborn old summer homes that had not given way to progress, small clapboard houses with knotty pine signs over the front door with names like Seaside Heaven or Bill’s Dream burned into the wood.
And then there were the grand old homes of some of the first summer residents, built long ago, even before World War II. These homes near the northern end of the island were more dazzling in their age and design than the most innovative three-floor condo built on stilts and decorated with huge round windows that looked out at the ocean.
The Chandler home was one of these grand old dames. Designed as a Cape Cod, with the third floor built up so that there could be three extra bedrooms under the eaves for visitors, the house was huge, the clapboard painted a bright white. Dark green canvas awnings with white scalloped edges sat on top of each and every window and was duplicated in the large canopy over the huge cement back porch.
Evergreens lined the half-acre grass lot, along with a dazzling living fence of pink and blue hydrangeas that boasted platter-size blooms all summer long. Built-in sprinklers picked up their metal heads twice each day and watered this oasis of green in the middle of sand and cement. A curved driveway led to a separate four-car garage built off to one side, and the rear of the home had a slightly elevated and spectacular view of the ocean that, all by itself, put the value of the home in the millions.
Not that the Chandlers would ever consider selling what had been their summer paradise for six decades.
This was a home that could be picked up and re-deposited in Allentown, or any other northeastern town, and fit in as if it had been built on the spot. A solid house. An ageless design, with nothing of the modern about it except for the renovated kitchen and baths, and the addition of air-conditioning.
With two living rooms, a formal dining room, a book-lined study, five bedrooms on the second floor furnished in cherry woods and oriental carpets, the Chandler house was an anomaly in this resort town, one of about two dozen bastions of a bygone era, and it was lovely enough to make a person weep.
Which wasn’t why Jessica Chandler was sitting on the porch, her feet resting on a chintz-covered foot-stool as the sun rose on another perfect late-July day in this summer paradise, crying into her wholesome glass of milk.
She was so alone. So very alone. Rattling around in this great, empty house she had believed a natural refuge. But it wasn’t. It was just a reminder of how alone she was, how alone she would always be, how empty her life had become.
“Because I’m a great big idiot,” she said out loud before swilling down the remainder of the milk, then making a face at the empty glass. “A great big idiot who
