He noticed Adrienne giving him a worried look and hoped he wasn’t babbling. He felt off balance, uncertain of himself in a way he rarely was. The odd incidents he’d reported to Brody had unsettled him, but he knew they were probably nothing. The overactive imagination of a man with too much time on his hands.
What if he was losing his marbles? What if this was the start down the slippery slope of dementia? Just because his parents didn’t suffer from it didn’t mean he wouldn’t. He’d had an aunt who’d gone down that road, deteriorating before his eyes. A smart, sweet old gal...
Vic waved a hand, dismissing his own wild thinking. He wasn’t suffering from early dementia. He just needed to find out what was going on with these unexplained incidents.
Adrienne got to her feet, obviously as restless as he was. “Vic, you look preoccupied. Is there anything I can do?”
“No, no, it’s nothing. Mind wandering.” He didn’t need her fretting about him. “Did you come in here to ask me something? What can I do for you?”
“I’m going to run into town for a few things. I thought I’d stop at the library. Do you have a library card?”
A library card. Next someone would mention the local garden club. Bird-watching. Volunteering at the senior center. He was only sixty-two.
Maybe he’d pulled the trigger on retirement too soon.
He breathed out slowly, noticing Adrienne’s increasingly concerned look. He made an effort to smile. “A library card.”
“Right. I thought I might be able to use it. Vic—are you sure you’re all right?”
“I am, yes. I’m just panicking about being retired. I decided to get out of the pressure cooker first and then figure out what to do with myself. Everyone tells you not to do it that way, but I didn’t listen. I probably should have taken a vacation and done some soul-searching and planning before I called it quits.”
“There must be all sorts of things you can do given your experience,” Adrienne said. “Of course, you might want something different now. For what it’s worth, I think you should do what you enjoy and never mind anything else. You’re lucky that you can afford to retire at your age and that you have so many options available to you.”
“So I am,” Vic said, chastened. “I thought retirement would come naturally, like being a kid.”
“When you’re a kid, you’ve got parents, school—structure. Now you’re in charge.” Adrienne smiled suddenly. “Well, you enjoy wine, right?”
“I do, but I don’t drink too much—and I don’t drink alone.”
“Definite pluses. Learning more about wine can keep you occupied for decades. My mother loves that I know a bit about wine. It gives her bragging rights. Very important, you know.”
“How is your mother, Adrienne?”
“The same.”
“She’s never remarried,” Vic said.
“Nope. She won’t, either. She and my father were divorced when I was seven, so it’s been a while. She loves being on her own. My father remarried, but you know that. I don’t see much of him.”
“I haven’t seen either of them in far too long. We used to run into each other at the occasional cocktail party when they were married.”
“My father would be quite happy never to attend another cocktail party, but my mother still loves to dress up and impress people.”
Vic heard a note of bitterness—even shrillness—in Adrienne’s tone. “But you get along with both of them?”
“Oh, sure. I figured out by the time I was four that Sophia Portale would never be a warm, fuzzy mother. I made my peace with that inalterable fact later on. She’s game for anything, though, I’ll give her that. I learned to take risks because of her.”
“And your father?” Vic asked, remembering a quiet, intelligent man who couldn’t keep pace with his high-energy wife—who perhaps had been attracted to her because of their different natures.
“He’s there but not there. I don’t know how else to describe him or our relationship. It’s just...” Adrienne paused. “Neutral.”
“I suppose we all come to see our parents as flawed human beings at some point in our lives.”
“I suppose. There’s no animosity between us. That’s good, anyway. Do you regret not having someone in your life, Vic?”
“Someone permanent, you mean.” He didn’t make it a question. “I don’t know. I kept telling myself there’s time. Perhaps there is, but the sand’s running out of the hourglass, that’s for damn sure.”
Adrienne put her hands palm up in front of the fire. At least she’d stopped shivering. “There’s always your neighbor up the road.”
“What neighbor? You mean Elly? Elly O’Dunn?” Vic laughed in disbelief. “You don’t play matchmaker for your friends, do you, Adrienne?”
She scoffed at him, her cheeks red now from her proximity to the fire. “Within a few miles of where you are standing right now, Vic Scarlatti, is a pretty redheaded widow who raises goats. I can see you getting into goats. Elly produces the milk for her daughter’s goat’s milk soap. Another daughter is marrying a billionaire. The two youngest are twins, both getting graduate degrees in theater.” Adrienne grinned at him and kissed him on the cheek. “Honestly, Vic, I can see you roping goats in the back forty and reading Shakespeare on the front porch. Elly has a big garden, too. I’ve only seen it covered in snow. She cans her own tomatoes.”
Vic gave a mock shudder, although he rather liked the idea of canning his own tomatoes. And he loved Shakespeare, of course. Goats, though. Last count, Elly had more than a dozen. He didn’t know how she managed them on her own.
“You’re tempted,” Adrienne said.
“Don’t you have wine to taste?”
“Actually, I still need to finish choosing wines for your cellar. My wish list is amazing. I’ve restricted myself to the probable size of your wine cellar but not to a budget. I’m pretending there are no limits to what you can afford.”
“Ha.”
“I’m going to get several blog entries out of this process.”
“That’s great. Have fun with it.”
“Thanks for giving me this opportunity. Heather feels the same way about the renovations. You enjoy helping people get a leg up, don’t you, Vic?”
“Who doesn’t? But it’s earned, in both cases. I’m not a soft touch.”
“Why Knights Bridge?”
Her question took him by surprise, but then he noticed Brody walking through the dining room toward them. He was stronger, fitter and far more controlled than he’d been as a teenager—and he wasn’t aimless anymore, unaware of the opportunities and possibilities available to him outside Knights Bridge, or even within his small hometown. His happy-go-lucky father and pie-in-the-sky mother had done the best they could with their only son, but had often scratched their heads. Brody might as well have been a throwback to one of Samantha Bennett’s pirates.
Vic had heard about Samantha and her romance with Justin Sloan from Elly O’Dunn.
His neighbor. His friend. Nothing more. He’d met her husband, a kind, troubled man who’d left his wife and four daughters far too soon.
A reminder, Vic thought, that he had no complaints worth fretting about.
He pulled himself out of his thoughts—mind wandering again—and saw Brody was at the fireplace, pulling back the screen and placing a log on the crackling flames. “That’s a good question,” he said, replacing the screen and turning to Vic. “I don’t think I’ve ever asked why you decided on Knights Bridge. You don’t have family in the area.”
“Schenectady.” He grunted. “Close enough.”
“Who’s there?” Adrienne asked.
“A few cousins I never see. I was an only child. My folks had me in their midthirties after they figured they couldn’t have kids. I was the proverbial surprise package. They pu
lled out the stops for me, and ingrate that I was, I felt suffocated. I went to Harvard and came out here one weekend to get away from it all. I pitched a tent on the shores of Echo Lake. Twenty years later, when this place went on the market, I made an offer and now here we are.”
“Did you return to Knights Bridge in the years between coming out here for the first time and buying this place?” Adrienne asked.
“Often, yes. Didn’t matter the weather, I always pitched a tent.”
She smiled. “I don’t see you in a tent.”
“You should see some of the places I’ve lived during my career. Compared to some of them, camping on the shores of Echo Lake is five-star living. I had a tent, a warm sleeping bag, a cooking stove, potable water, plenty of food. I’d listen to the critters in the woods and the lapping of the lake on the shore.” He stared at the fire, seeing himself in his twenties and thirties, wanting nothing more than a few nights on Echo Lake. “I always came here alone. I don’t know why.”
Adrienne nodded thoughtfully. “Was this place unoccupied then?”
“Most of the time. The owner went into senior housing and then a nursing home. She hung on to this property until her death. At least she never wrecked it with bad renovations.”
“Now the Sloans can do their thing,” Brody said without a detectable trace of sarcasm.
Vic pulled his gaze from the fire. He could feel melancholy creeping in, and that wasn’t like him. “It’s strange that I’ve been coming here for forty years, and yet I’m just getting to know Knights Bridge.”
“Let’s hope familiarity doesn’t breed contempt.”
Brody’s comment, Vic suspected, was for the benefit of Heather Sloan, who came in through the main door off the entry. Brody must have spotted her. He would, since his job was to notice things. Heather gave him a look that was one or two notches under scathing and then smiled at Vic. “I need to talk to you whenever you have the time. No rush.”
“But by the end of the day?”
“That would be great.”
“Then there is a rush by my standards.” Vic didn’t know if Heather was picking up on his mood or if Brody had said something to her, but he found her unusually serious, even tense. He winked at her. “I’m trying to get into the spirit of retirement.”
“It’ll be easier to once the renovations are done,” she said. “Even just getting past the planning stages and having the work started will make a difference. It can be hard when you’re betwixt and between with such a huge project.”
“New kitchen, new bathrooms, new wiring, wine cellar, sauna—”
Adrienne held up a hand. “Whoa, whoa. Who said anything about a sauna?”
Vic grinned. “I just added it to the list.”
“Then we definitely need that chat,” Heather said.
“Let’s do it now.” He realized how much better he suddenly felt. It wasn’t the idea of a sauna by itself. It was doing something. He turned to Brody, who no doubt had followed every word of the conversation. “Is there anything you needed from me?”
Brody glanced at Heather as if he needed something from her—Vic couldn’t imagine what—but then shook his head. “Nothing that can’t wait.”
“Excellent. Most of the time when a DSS agent shows up on my threshold, whatever he wants can’t wait.” Vic grabbed his tablet off his chair and pointed it toward the dining room. “Lead the way, Heather. Adrienne? Do you want to join us for our chat? I like my idea of a sauna. I like it a lot.”
“I’d love to join you,” she said.
Vic started to invite Brody, too, but his DSS agent friend was already on his way through the entry. In another moment, there was a draft as Brody went out on the front porch. The guy probably didn’t notice the cold, Vic thought, as he followed the two women into the kitchen.
A sauna as well as a wine cellar.
He grinned. What could be more perfect?
* * *
After his chat with Heather and Adrienne, Vic slipped upstairs to his bedroom overlooking the lake. It would remain the master bedroom, but they would add a master bath and walk-in closet in the renovations. Nothing huge or extravagant, but it wasn’t 1912 anymore. He wanted to retain the character of the room while modernizing. For some reason, it was a place where he could settle down and think. One of his strengths as a senior Foreign Service officer had been his ability to focus on a problem no matter what sort of chaos was reigning around him. He’d trusted his security details to keep him safe—the Brody Hancocks of his world—and then let his own training, education, experience and discipline go to work on tackling inevitably complex and often intractable problems.
His job had been all-consuming, but he’d always known who he was and what he needed to do.
He stood at double windows original to the house and looked out at the lake. He’d fallen in love with this area decades ago and had long dreamed of being here, with nothing more consequential on his mind than which wine to have with dinner.
Maybe that was his problem now. He had too much free time, too much peace and quiet. Too much solitude. They led to free-floating anxiety. He had nowhere to anchor his mind, no natural way to channel his thoughts.
He had never wanted to have anyone who depended on him. He hadn’t wanted to matter to someone so much that it became a distraction. Selfish, maybe, but he’d been ambitious and restless, willing and able to go to where he could do some good at a moment’s notice. With his responsibilities, the freedom of not having a wife and kids had appealed to him on a practical level. He knew himself, and he hadn’t wanted a string of divorces. Kids who didn’t know their father, or, worse, hated him.
Then there was always the belief—deep in the back of his mind—that there was still time. That the right woman would happen into his life and he’d have his happy-ever-after. Regardless, he’d never seen himself becoming a lonely old man, whether or not he remained single.
So why the hell had he called Brody? Why was he turning what anyone else would likely regard as normal incidents—normal life in an old house on an isolated lake—into potential threats?
No way to back out now without looking like a damn fool.
He’d long believed Brody needed to come back to Knights Bridge and make his peace, but that was an after-the-fact rationalization for having called him.
And what if he now was trying to downplay incidents that did, in fact, need an explanation?
Vic turned from the windows and got a photo album off an antique oak secretary he’d brought down from Schenectady. It was one of the few decent pieces of his own he’d added to the house. It had belonged to his mother’s mother. It wasn’t worth much to anyone but him, the unsentimental grandson.
He opened the album. He’d always been good if not perfect about logging photos, although he still had photos downstairs he needed to get into albums. It could be a retirement project. He didn’t know who would want them once he was gone, but he enjoyed the process of placing them in albums, labeling them, reliving the moments he’d captured on his camera.
London, Moscow, Cairo, Beirut, Kabul...
His life in photos. He had digital albums now, too—which he also kept well organized—but he liked to have prints of the photos and put them in real albums.
This particular album went back to predigital days.
Back to Paris, thirty years ago.
He flipped to a page with photographs of him with Sophia Portale, Adrienne’s mother. She’d been Sophia Cross then. She wasn’t beautiful so much as irresistible, with her gleaming dark hair, incisive dark eyes and seemingly inexhaustible sexual stamina. She’d had a kind of ruthless ambition and calculating approach to life that he would have expected to find repugnant but instead had found intoxicating.
At least for their five days together that April in Paris.
Later h
e attributed their affair to the gorgeous, romantic setting and the particular nature of Sophia’s predatory self-absorption. She wasn’t so much amoral as convinced her behavior was necessary to getting ahead in her world. Vic had known similarly narcissistic, driven men and women throughout his career, but he had remained steadfast in his refusal to believe their approach to life was necessary to succeed. “Cream and bastards rise,” he would tell himself. “I’d rather be the cream.”
Naive of him, maybe.
Before, during or after those five days in Paris, Sophia had neglected to mention the fiancé waiting for her in San Francisco.
Lovely, that, Vic thought, placing a fingertip within a breath of her face in the fading photograph. He could almost feel her smooth skin, the heat of her embrace. He had found out about the fiancé through a mutual friend a few days after Sophia had left Paris. He hadn’t been hurt or surprised so much as disgusted with himself. Of course she’d used him. That was what men and women like Sophia Cross Portale did. They used people.
Vic had put her and her bedroom gymnastics—her laugher, her dark, shining eyes, her legs wrapped around him—out of his mind and went on with his life and work as if Paris had never happened.
Sophia’s marriage hadn’t lasted, but he wondered if she had softened with the birth of a daughter.
He shook his head. “Nah. No way.”
He didn’t need to tell Adrienne about Paris. He sensed in her a desire—a longing she knew would never be fulfilled—to have parents who loved her unconditionally, who focused on her and not just on themselves. It wasn’t a need, really. Food, water, shelter, security—those were needs. The mother and father you wished you had?
Vic shrugged. “Luck of the draw.”
You played the cards you were dealt. He’d been lucky with his parents. In many ways, so had Adrienne. Sophia and Richard Portale were interesting, successful and well-off. Maybe they could have done better by their daughter, but they hadn’t. If house-sitting on Echo Lake helped Adrienne accept her parents’ imperfections and move on with her own life, then it was a damn good thing she was doing.
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