is?” she challenged. “You make confirmed bachelors look like old married men. You could do a lot worse than Tabby.”
“She could do a lot better than me,” he countered. “A little cottage with a picket fence isn’t what I’m saving up for. I want to sail around the world. I want to go exploring. In the meantime, I like being an investigator, even if this job is beginning to wear on me.”
“Tabby’s an investigator, did you know? She searched for the solutions to ancient mysteries. That’s what anthropologists do—they discover the cultures of ancient civilizations and how they worked.”
“No two-thousand-year-old mummy is likely to sit up in his sarcophagus and pull a gun on her, either,” he argued.
“Probably not,” she conceded. “But digging for the truth is something you both like to do.”
He ran an angry hand around the back of his neck. “I didn’t like hurting her that way,” he said abruptly. “I said some harsh things.”
“Well, that’s all in the past now,” she reminded him. “She’s dating someone and it sounds serious, so you won’t have to worry about any complications while you’re deciding what we should do about Dad’s house.”
“I suppose not,” he said, but he wasn’t looking forward to seeing Tabby again. His treatment of her wore on his nerves, and she wasn’t going to be pleased to see him. Tabby, like Nick himself, deplored losing control. Her lack of pride was going to hurt her as much as Nick’s sharp words, and she wouldn’t like being reminded of their confrontation any more than he did.
“It will be all right,” Helen said gently.
“Your favorite saying. What if it isn’t?”
“For goodness’ sake, think positively!” she chided. “Buy a plane ticket and go to Washington.”
“I guess I will. But I still have my doubts,” he said.
Two days later, with Dane Lassiter’s blessing, Nick was on his way down Oak Lane to his father’s old house in Torrington.
It looked just the same, he thought as he wheeled lazily along in the rental car. The oaks were a little older, as he was, but the street was quiet and dignified, like the mostly elderly people who lived on it.
His eyes went involuntarily over the flat front of the redbrick home where he and Helen had grown up. There were blooming shrubs all around it and the dogwood and cherry trees were green now with their blossoms gone in late spring. The weather was comfortably warm without being blazing hot, and everything looked green and restful. He hadn’t realized before just how tired he was. This vacation was probably a good idea after all, even if he had fought like a tiger to keep from taking it.
It was Friday, and not quitting time, so he didn’t expect to see Tabby at her family’s house next door. But in his mind’s eye, he saw her—long brown hair down to her waist and big dark eyes that followed him everywhere as she walked by the house on her way home from school. She was tall, very slender, with curves that weren’t noticeable at all. That hadn’t changed. Her hair was in a bun these days, not long and windblown. She wore little makeup and clothes that were stylish but not sexy. Her body was as slender as it had been in her teens, nothing to make any man particularly amorous unless he loved her. Poor Tabby. He felt sorry for her, angry at Helen because she’d engineered that meeting at New Year’s Eve and made Tabby think he cared about her.
He did, in a sort of brotherly way, mainly because that was how he’d always interpreted Tabby’s attitude toward him. She’d never seemed to want a physical relationship with him. Not until New Year’s Eve, anyway, and she had been intoxicated. Perhaps this colleague she was dating did love her, and would make her happy. He hoped so.
Life in a garret wasn’t for him. He was already thinking about applying to Interpol or as a customs inspector down in the Caribbean. A tame existence appealed to him about as much as drowning.
He pulled into the driveway of his father’s house and sat just looking at it quietly for a long time. Home. He hadn’t ever thought about what it meant to have a place to come back to. Odd, with his need for freedom, that it felt so wonderful to be in his own driveway. Possession was new to him, like the feeling of emptiness he’d had since the Christmas holidays. Loneliness wasn’t something he’d experienced before. He wondered why he should feel that way, as if he were missing out on life, when his life was so full and exciting.
As he unlocked the front door and carried his suitcase inside, he drank in the smells of wood and varnish and freshener, because he’d had a woman come in and clean every week since the house had been vacant. His parents’ things were neatly kept, just as they’d been when he and Helen were children. Nothing changed here. The smells and sights were those of his boyhood. Familiar things, that gave him a sense of security.
He scowled, looking toward the banister of the staircase that led up to the three bedrooms on the second floor. His long fingers touched the antique wood and fondled it absently. Selling the furnished house had seemed the thing to do. Now, he wasn’t sure about it.
As the day wore on, he became less sure. The power had been turned on earlier in the week, and the refrigerator and stove were in good working order. He found a coffeemaker stashed under the sink. He went shopping for supplies, arriving home just as a small blue car pulled in next door.
He paused on the steps, two grocery bags in one powerful arm, watching as a woman stepped out of the car. She didn’t look toward him, not once. Her carriage very correct, almost regal, she walked to the front door of her house, inserted the key she held ready in her hand, and disappeared out of sight.
Tabby. He stared after her without moving for a minute. She hadn’t changed. He hadn’t expected her to. But it felt different to look at her now, and it puzzled him. He couldn’t quite determine what the difference was.
He went inside and started a pot of coffee before he fried a steak and made a salad for his supper. While he was eating it, he pondered on Tabby’s lack of interest in his presence. She had to have seen the car in the driveway, seen him go to the door. But she hadn’t looked his way, hadn’t spoken.
He felt depressed suddenly, and regretted even more the wall he’d built between them at New Year’s. They were old friends. Almost family. It would have been nice to sit down with Tabby and talk about the old days when they’d all played together as children. He didn’t suppose Tabby would want to talk to him now.
After he’d finished his meal and washed up the dishes, he sat down in the living room with a detective novel. The television wasn’t working. He didn’t really mind. It was like entertainment overkill these days, with channels that never shut down and dozens of programs to choose from. The constant bombardment sometimes got on his nerves, so he shut it off and read instead. Nothing like a good book, he thought, to cultivate what Agatha Christie’s hero Hercule Poirot called the “little gray cells.”
He was knee-deep in the mystery novel when the front door knocker sounded.
Curious, he went to open the door.
Tabby stood there, unsmiling, her hair in a neat bun, her glasses low on her nose, her expression one of strain and worry. She was wearing a neat suit with a white blouse, and she obviously had worn it all day. It was nine in the evening and she hadn’t changed into casual clothes.
“Hello,” he said. His heart felt lighter and he smiled.
Tabby
