"Did they ? Well, they never found me and neither did anyone else. But then, that would be the whole point of living in hiding, wouldn't it?"
Chastised, she lowered her gaze from his and said simply, "Yes."
He felt like a shit, beating her over the head with his unrealized promise. He was doing it because he knew that, more than anyone else, she would feel the waste of it.
Apparently he was right. Her head came back up and she looked him in the eye and said, "You didn't have to run, Quinn. You ended up throwing it all away, didn't you? College, a career, inevitable prestige. You could have done anything you wanted to do, been anything you wanted to be."
"Maybe I wanted to be a fugitive," he said coldly.
"But you weren't a fugitive. You were a fugitive's son. That wasn't as glamorous, surely?"
He remembered now that she had a damn sharp tongue. Annoyed, he said, "If I'd been after glamour, I would have gone to L.A."
"What were you after? I've always wondered. Fame wasn't enough? You had to turn it on its head and go for infamy, too?"
"What the hell is that to you?" he countered, amazed at her bluntness.
"I'll tell you what it is to me. I grew up with you, Quinn. I thought we were friends."
"Friends? Isn't that pushing it a little?"
"All right," she said, coloring. "Intellectual comrades, then. Call it what you like. I can't tell you how shocked I was to learn—from the police swarming our grounds, no less!—that you had run off. Without saying boo, without a note, without a hint. I was so dismayed... so hurt..."
"Christ, it's always about you, isn't it?" he said, remembering that as well. "You know what? I was wrong. You haven't changed, either. You—"
"Hiii,'' Olivia said suddenly to a couple entering the room with their teenage son. "Welcome to Hastings House."
Too late. The group knew they'd strolled into a fight, and no bright smile could hide the fact. The parents walked quickly through the room and then out. Their kid took a little longer, slowing down long enough to steal a burning look at Olivia's breasts.
The boy reminded Quinn of himself just minutes earlier. Quinn had acted like a hormonal jerk then, and for all he knew, he was doing it still. It wasn't Olivia's fault that he had cut and run. And it wasn't her fault that she couldn't understand why. Their lives were night-and-day different. No mother, timid father, nomadic lifestyle, never a mattress to call one's own-—these were alien concepts to a woman raised in the lap of luxury by a doting mom and a powerful dad.
Let it go, Quinn. Different worlds. Let it go.
"Look... what's done is done. Water under the bridge," he said gruffly. "Maybe we ... well. Good night." He turned to leave.
No, goddammit. He didn't have to run anymore, least of all from her.
He spun on his heel and faced her again. She looked completely bewildered, which gave him back the advantage. With a smile that he knew women considered disarming, he said, "You're not married, are you?"
"No!"
"Why don't we have dinner? You can fill me in on the last half of your life."
"Dinner? Huh. Dinner. That would be rather—"
"Daring?" he suggested, an edge in his voice.
"I was about to say, that would be rather nice," she said, snapping open her fan, "except that I have to be here tomorrow night."
"Ah," he replied, somewhat sheepishly.
She seemed agitated, fanning herself with quick little strokes. Intrigued, he waited to see what she would do next.
"Why don't we have lunch?" she asked with a brittle smile. "I could get away then."
"Fine," he drawled, making a victory fist in his pocket. "We'll do lunch."
****
He left, taking most of Olivia's wits with him. The encounter with Quinn Leary had left her completely unnerved. Her heart was hammering, her knees were shaking, and inside she was hot, hot, hot—hot enough that she found herself feeling downright grateful for the cold draft that wended its way from the front door and up her gown, fanning those oddly made drawers of hers.
Oh, wow, this is unreal, she told herself. This is not normal. No man had ever affected her the way Quinn had just then. Flirting was one thing, banter another, but this was new, this was completely new ....
She began to pace the length of the drawing room, trying to work out the tension she felt. In a reverie of wonder, she tapped her closed fan on the palm of her hand and shook her head as she marched up, then down, the parquet floor, ignoring the visitors who wandered through. The tourists assumed she was playing the role of a character from a Victorian novel, but the tourists were wrong.
I don't have time for someone like him. I don't even have the inclination for someone like him. He's too proud, too prickly, too—much too—controversial. What would Mother and Dad say? They'd be appalled to have a Leary rubbed in their noses again.
Seventeen years. Olivia remembered rushing home after the news of Alison's death and finding her mother sitting alone on the sofa and sobbing. Teresa Bennett, being a Bennett, had quickly wiped her eyes as soon as she saw her daughter. But Olivia, who wanted so badly to hold and be held, had blurted out, "She didn't deserve to die; she never hurt anyone," and burst into tears for her cousin, and then she and her mother had hugged and cried some more, but in secret—because wailing was not allowed in the Bennett household.
The sad thing was, by the time of Alison's murder, Owen Bennett had had little contact with Alison's father Rupert. Olivia didn't know why the brothers had drifted so far apart, and she'd never dared to ask. Olivia's father had bought out her Uncle Rupert's interest in the mill, that much she knew. But she'd always had the feeling that there was more to the split than a difference in business philosophies.
In any case, the attendance of Owen and his family at Alison's funeral did nothing to breech the growing rift between brothers. After the murder, the rift became as wide as a canyon and stayed that way.
Olivia pushed away all of the memories; all of them were bad. No, Quinn was out of the question. He was too bound up with the worst period of her family's life for Olivia ever to be able to take him seriously. True, there was that box of stuff she'd been keeping all these years. But after she returned it to Quinn, that would be it. The town could deal with him any way it liked; it had nothing to do with her.
"Are these parquet squares the kind you buy at Home Depot?"
Olivia turned to the young couple who were linked arm in arm and studying the drawing room floor. "No," she said with a gracious smile, "they're Burma teak, and their value is priceless."
****
Quinn drove home in a state of near bliss. He'd gone on the Candlelight Tour for no other reason than to keep a high profile, and he'd come away with a date with the Princess.
Socially speaking, of course, he was a frog. He knew it, and it made the promise of taking her out all the more gratifying. Dating Olivia was something he never would have dared try back in high school, which was undoubtedly the reason he had enjoyed trouncing her in the classroom every chance he got. He had enjoyed it even more than trouncing her brother on the field.
But it was all such kid stuff. What a jerk he used to be. He laughed softly to himself as he drove his repaired rental past St. Swithin's Church, past the bank, past Town Hill with its lit-up tree. Had he grown up? He hoped so. He hoped that his reason for wanting to be seen in Keepsake with Olivia on his arm was not because she was a royal and he was a commoner, but because she was smart and funny and, okay, knock-down gorgeous.
But he really wasn't sure.
****
At three in the morning, Father Tom was lying in bed with a brutal case of heartburn. He shouldn't have done it; shouldn't have had the blessed beer with his pepperoni pizza. He had yielded to temptation, and now the devil was claiming his due. The priest shifted onto his side, prompting an ineffectual burp.
It tasted like popcorn. Another temptation yielded to, but who could watch a episode of Mystery! without popcorn? It wouldn't have
been right. The priest sighed and sat up, swinging his legs over the side of his bed. The two antacids he'd popped into his mouth before lying down for the night hadn't done a thing; maybe Pepto would help. He reached for his flannel robe and slipped into his sheepskin slippers, then padded sleepily down the hall in search of relief.
I'm getting old. Old and soft and lazy.
What kind of example was he setting for his parish? He, the driving force behind St. Swithin's soup kitchen, now had a pot of his own. He rubbed his belly in disgust. Tomorrow he would walk a mile before mass, and no dessert. And it'd be a cold day in hell before he'd order green peppers on a pepperoni pizza again.
By the glow of the acrylic angel night-light—a present from his grandniece—Father Tom took the bottle of pink liquid from the medicine cabinet, then filled the dosing cup. He downed it the way he used to do his bourbon when he was a young man, tossing it to the back of his throat and swallowing hard.
He washed out the plastic cup and inverted it over the bottle, then returned it to its shelf. And then, because he was loath to lie right down again, he stood a moment at the window of his bathroom and stared out at the lighted Christmas tree on Town Hill. It gave him pleasure to see it—one of the perks, he liked to tell everyone, of having his living quarters within spitting distance of the hill. In summer there was the bandstand; in spring, the Easter-egg hunt. Everything nice about Keepsake happened right across the road from where he lived and served God. (The good Lord willing, he would live through this heartburn to serve Him still.)
Father Tom was about to return to his bedroom down the hall when something ... something caught his eye that wasn't quite right. The priest had a keen eye for pattern and symmetry. If the candlesticks on the altar weren't exactly equidistant from one another, he'd rearrange them before he could even think of saying Mass. So he knew: something was out of whack.
He stared at the town tree.
Yes, there it was, on the left side. Something long and shadowy and unlike anything else on the beribboned tree. How odd. He'd have to take a closer look in the morning. He began to head back to his bedroom, but then, because he was Father Tom and quietly obsessed with maintaining some sense of order in a disorderly universe, he detoured into the front hall and took out his overcoat from the closet there.
He slipped the coat over his robe, then stepped out of the rectory, catching his breath in the cold night air. His slippers dragged on the rock salt spread over the brick path to his residence; he began to walk on tiptoe, trying to minimize the damage to the deerskin soles. He stepped to the sidewalk ... then to the curb ... then to the middle of the empty road.
Salt-melted slush oozed through the seams of his slippers the minute he paused.
No matter. Father Tom was oblivious to the wet and the cold as he stared in shock at the effigy hanging by its neck on a length of rope tied to the Christmas tree. The effigy was the biggest ornament on it: a life-sized figure roughly shaped from a pair of stuffed pantyhose, a wig of blond hair, and a varsity jacket from the high school. The jacket bulged grotesquely at the stomach. Even Father Tom understood that the effigy was meant to depict a pregnant student at Keepsake High. A hanged, pregnant student at Keepsake High.
With a groan of dismay, the priest resisted an overwhelming impulse to cut down the figure and instead ran back to the rectory, where he had to look up the number of the chief of police before punching it in with a shaking hand. God in heaven. God in heaven. Don't let this be so. It was the most fervent prayer Father Tom had ever sent skyward, and the one most doomed to go unanswered.
Buy Keepsake
Beyond Midnight Sample Chapter 1
Antoinette Stockenberg
"Full of charm and wit, Stockenberg's latest is truly enthralling."
--Publishers Weekly
In 1692, Salem, Massachusetts was the setting for the infamous persecution of innocents accused of witchcraft. Three centuries later, little has changed. Helen Evett, widowed mother of two and owner of a prestigious preschool in town, finds her family, her fortunes, and her life's work threatened —all because she feels driven to protect the sweet three-year-old daughter of a man who knows everything about finance but not so much about fathering.
Chapter 1
March.
Helen Evett dropped a log into the jumpy flames of her cozy hearth, then went over to the sitting room window and closed the heavy drapes of faded rose, muting the sound of sleet that tapped against the panes.
This March will be different.
She poured herself a glass of sherry, settled into a deep-cushioned chair in front of the fire, and cracked open the cover of a brand-new biography of Freud that she'd been meaning to read since Christmas.
It's been four years now. Long enough.
Five minutes into the book, Helen looked up and began staring at the flames, unable, after all, to shake herself free of the mood. March in Massachusetts was long, cold, and cruel, full of false hope. March was a liar. March couldn't produce a damn thing except April first, the anniversary of her husband's death.
For four years in a row, Helen Evett had tried to convince herself that spring would be less painful. She had planted hundreds of snowdrops and burned cords of wood, and yet here she was, facing April again with dread. The memories of that fateful day had burned deep and left scars: the somber troop commander standing at her front door, the slow-motion ride to the hospital in a state police car, the shocking sight of Hank's gray, lifeless face.
She hadn't dared pull the sheet farther back than his face; part of his chest, she knew, had been blown away.
Helen sighed heavily. Things would get better after April first. But tonight it was still March.
"Mom! I'm home!"
In the hall outside the sitting room, Helen heard the satisfying thunk of the heavy oak door falling into place. One child back, one to go.
"How're the roads?" she called out. Becky had good instincts and a level head, but her driver's license was so new it still smelled of plastic.
"No problem," the girl said in a voice that Helen knew was being deliberately upbeat. Becky was as aware of March as her mother was, but she had her own system for dealing with it: she shopped.
"Look what I found at Filene's Basement." The girl strode into the room, still in her black hooded trench coat, and nudged the cat off the hassock with her shopping bag. "Cashmere. And dirt cheap."
She flipped the hood of her coat off her head, revealing straight gold hair that took its glow from the fire, and beamed at her mother.
Helen, still marveling at the whiteness and straightness of Becky's teeth despite the fact that her braces had been off for over a year, frowned and said, "Cashmere? Since when can you afford cashmere on a baby-sitter's wages?"
"Well, it's not all cashmere. Just twenty percent."
"I hope you put gas in the car."
"Ten dollars worth," Becky said, wrinkling her nose. "I'll put in another ten when I get paid."
"Becky, this won't do. You can't go spending money like there's no tomorr—" Instantly Helen regretted having said it. Who knew better than they did that sometimes there was no tomorrow? For Trooper Hank Evert, writing out a routine speeding ticket, there had ended up being no tomorrow.
Becky was shrugging out of her rain-spattered coat; she let it fall where she stood on the worn Oriental carpet. When she faced her mother again the look in her green eyes was as calmly agreeable as the smile on her face. "You're right, Mom. This is the last thing I'll buy for a while."
It's March, Helen reminded herself. Let her be.
Rummaging through a wrap of tissue, Becky pulled out a smart turtleneck sweater for her mother's perusal.
Helen smiled ironically. "Oh, good. More black. Just what you need."
"It's not black. It's blackish charcoal."
"It's charcoalish black."
"It'll look terrific on you, too, Mom. With your black hair and gray eyes—"
"I'd look like a lump of coal. Why all the bla
ck, anyway?" Helen added, unable to keep the protest out of her voice. The color of mourning held no allure for her.
"It's just cool, Mom," said Becky with an edge in her own voice. "For no other reason."
Helen had to leave it at that. She stood up, automatically retrieving her daughter's crumpled coat from the floor. On her way out to the hall clothes tree, she asked, "Did your brother say when Mrs. Fitch was picking them up?"
She heard Becky mumble something about Mrs. Fitch's car being at the mechanic's.
Surprised, Helen said, "So how are Russ and Scotty getting home?"
She turned around in time to see Becky sprinting for the stairs. Without pausing, the girl said, "Russ told me a friend of Scotty Fitch was gonna meet them at the mall and drive them both home."
"Rebecca!" Helen said, more angry with her daughter than with her son. "How could you leave him to come back on his own?"
Becky was taking the stairs two at a time. "We live in Salem, Mom," she ventured over her shoulder. "Not Sarajevo."
"You know what I mean! He's fourteen," Helen snapped. "All feet! No brains! I don't want him hanging around with kids who drive."
Turning at the top of the stairs, Becky looked down at her mother and said quietly, "I don't see how you can stop him, Mom."
"Oh, really?" Helen answered in a crisp, dry voice. "Wait till he gets home, then, and watch."
"Oh-h ... don't take it out on Russell," Becky pleaded. "It was my fault. I'm the one who let him." In self-defense she added, "When I was fourteen you let me get chauffeured around by girls older than I was."
"That was different. You were level-headed. I could trust your judgment—up until tonight, anyway," Helen said with a dark look. "And besides, times are—"
"I know, I know: totally different," Becky said with a roll of her eyes. "Even though it's—what?—a year or two later?"
"You don't know who's out there, honey," Helen said, ignoring the sarcasm. "There are nutcases ... madmen ... psychos ...."
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