Dearly Beloved

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  “Shawn!”

  “Laura!” He grins at her, and his cornflower-blue eyes look her up and down. “You’re about a hundred thousand times more uninhibited than Jennie.”

  “Oh? And how do you know?”

  “Be serious. Your sister’s a little . . . straitlaced.”

  “And what am I?”

  He bobs his eyebrows suggestively. “I’ll tell you later.”

  Laura smiles, puts her fork down, and wipes her mouth with her napkin. “Why wait until later? Leave the rest of that stuff you’re eating here—it’ll probably swim away on its own—and let’s get out of here. Unless you’re still hungry.”

  “You know, I’m suddenly feeling full.” Shawn puts down his chopsticks and motions for the check. Then he turns back to Laura. “Forgive the cliché, but—your place or mine?”

  “You’re joking, right? You have three roommates. My sister’s away for the weekend.”

  “Right. But I do have to stop home first.”

  She groans.

  “Come on, Laura, I haven’t been there in a month. I just want to check my mail and messages and find something unrumpled to wear. It’ll take two minutes.”

  “Shawn, with you, two minutes is usually two hours.”

  “I’ll be fast. I promise.”

  “Fine.” She pushes her chair back as the waiter drops the check on the table. “But then we go straight back to my place.”

  “Definitely.” He lowers his voice and leans forward. “Believe me, Laura, I want you as much as you want me. It’s been a helluva long time to go without it.”

  She murmurs her agreement.

  But she can’t help thinking that eagerness to be alone with Shawn isn’t the only reason she wants to get back to the town house she shares with her sister.

  For some reason, she feels compelled to make sure Jennie’s all right, that she hasn’t called from the island or perhaps come back early.

  Of course she’s all right, Laura tells herself as she follows Shawn out onto the street. What could be wrong?

  Nothing.

  Jennie is probably having a wonderful time.

  But Laura can’t seem to shake her concern for her twin. And the last time she felt this way—the only other time she was ever plagued by this nagging anxiety about her sister’s well-being—was the fateful day three years ago when disaster struck and shattered Jennie’s life.

  “Stephen? Stephen Gilbrooke?” Sandy finally manages to utter his name and sees him stiffen at the sound of it.

  “You remember.”

  “I . . . yes.” Sandy clamps her mouth shut and stares at him through frightened eyes.

  “How did you recognize me? I had the best plastic surgeon in Europe make me into a new person. I don’t look anything like my old self.”

  Sandy isn’t sure what to say. A moment ago, he was disturbed that she didn’t know who he was. Now, he seems disturbed that she does.

  He’s waiting for an answer, standing absolutely still and watching her.

  “It’s your eyes, actually,” she tells him. “They look familiar.”

  “But I’m wearing colored contacts. Blue. My eyes are usually brown, like yours.”

  “I know,” Sandy says around the lump of fear in her throat. She can’t tell him that it isn’t the eyes themselves that triggered the memory. . . . It’s the expression in them.

  An expression that fills her with dread now, just as it did so long ago.

  Though she hasn’t thought of it in years, that day has suddenly come back to her with crystal clarity.

  The day she told Stephen Gilbrooke to get lost.

  It was early September, the last Friday before Labor Day weekend. Sandy had spent so many days that summer at Stephen’s parents’ estate on the Long Island Sound. . . .

  It was the year her father had twisted his back crawling out from under a sink and couldn’t work for several months. Her mother had been forced to take a part-time job as a maid for Andrew Gilbrooke, who owned a thriving import-export business, and his wife, Aurelia.

  Their only child was Stephen, who was about thirteen that summer. Sandy had felt sorry for him from the moment she first saw him hovering outside the kitchen door, shyly kicking the manicured grass with the toes of his immaculate white sneakers.

  He was ugly . . . pitifully ugly.

  His hair was black and kinky and stuck out awkwardly around his teacup-handle ears. Acne covered his face, and his features were misshapen. “Funnel Face,” the other summer kids called him. At least, that was what he’d told Sandy.

  She’d been kind to him, because her mother had told her to be and because she felt sorry for him. She knew how cruel other kids could be. The boys at school had taken to calling her Thunder Thighs that spring.

  Sandy had accompanied her mother to the Gilbrookes’ estate many times that summer, and she and Stephen had become friends. Sandy had taught him how to fish, just as Danny had taught her a few years earlier. He’d shown her where wild raspberries grew in the woods, and the two of them had eaten the sun-warmed berries until their fingertips and tongues were stained red.

  Toward the end of the summer, Sandy had started feeling uneasy when she was with Stephen. There was something unnerving about the way he looked at her and the way he spoke to her.

  Almost as though he worshipped her, or something.

  No one—especially no boy—had ever treated Sandy that way. She’d always thought it would be wonderful if someone would.

  Maybe if it were someone else . . .

  But something about Stephen made her want to squirm. It wasn’t his homely looks that bothered her, or his painful shyness.

  It was more the quiet intensity that radiated from him, the sense that though he said little, a lot was happening in his mind. Things Sandy might rather not know . . . particularly when it pertained to the kids who called him Funnel Face.

  Or to his mother.

  She had seen Stephen’s back stiffen and his jaw clench at the sound of his mother’s voice, and she had seen something dark glinting in his eyes whenever he mentioned her.

  Stephen frightened her.

  It seemed that the more uncomfortable she grew around him, the more attached he became to her.

  Angie Cavelli wouldn’t let Sandy stay home alone while she was working and her father and brothers were all busy with the business, so she had no choice but to go to the Gilbrookes’ estate with her mother through the end of the season.

  It was about a week before Labor Day that Stephen tried to kiss her.

  They’d been walking up the lane from the pond where they fished, and Sandy had been lost in thoughts of school’s starting in a few days. With no warning, Stephen had suddenly grabbed her and planted his lips over hers.

  Astonished, Sandy had shoved him away and shrieked, “What are you doing?”

  He’d looked even more startled than she was. “I’m . . . I’m so sorry. I mean . . . God, I’m sorry.” He’d blushed so quickly and completely that Sandy found herself feeling sorry for him.

  “It’s okay,” she’d said, even though it wasn’t. “We’ll forget it happened.”

  Thank God, she was thinking, that there were only a few more days left of seeing him.

  He had been more subdued than usual for the remainder of that week. Then, on that Friday, the last day Sandy would be at the estate, he had grabbed her and tried to kiss her again.

  That time, she had reacted by slapping his pock-marked face, hard.

  His jaw had dropped in shock, and she had seen fury in his eyes before he grabbed her and forced his lips over hers again. This time, he held her head firmly beneath his, his fingertips digging painfully into her scalp as he ground his wet, open mouth against hers.

  Only when she’d let out a strangled sob did he release her.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” she’d screamed, her voice echoing through the quiet woods around the pond.

  “Kissing you,” he’d said calmly.

  �
�Well, I don’t want to kiss you.” She’d wiped her mouth furiously with the back of her hand. “I don’t even like you.”

  “What do you mean, you don’t like me? You’ve been hanging around with me all summer.”

  “I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for my mother’s job,” Sandy had heard herself saying. “She makes me be nice to you because she wants to suck up to your mother. Thank God today’s the last day I’ll have to hang around with an ugly freak like you. Because I can’t stand you.”

  For a moment, he’d just looked at her, and the pain in his expression was raw enough to cut to Sandy’s heart.

  But before she could take her cruel words back, he changed. As though something had snapped inside of him, his eyes had hardened and his mouth was set grimly.

  “Get away from me,” he’d said in an ominously quiet voice.

  “But Stephen, I—”

  “Get the hell away from me. And don’t ever come back here again. Because if you do, I’ll . . . I’ll kill you.”

  How many times had her two oldest brothers told her exactly that?

  I’m going to kill you, Tony Junior or Frankie would say when she’d threatened to tell their parents about something or other or when she’d teased about a girl from school or when she was simply being a bratty little sister.

  I’m going to kill you.

  She’d heard it so many times before.

  But never in her life had the words struck her with such icy force as when Stephen Gilbrooke uttered them on that long ago, sunny summer day. Though she’d been shaken at first, she’d eventually forgotten all about that, had forgotten him, too, until now.

  And now, as Sandy looks into those same hard, cold eyes, the threat echoes back at her over the years.

  I’m going to kill you.

  Chapter 7

  Liza sets her dessert plate on the low table in front of the sofa and glances at Laura, who’s still picking at the pastry on her plate.

  “Don’t you like strudel?” she asks lightly, reaching for her teacup, which is nearly empty.

  “What?” Laura looks up at her, then shakes her head. “It’s not that. I’m just . . . I guess I’m not very hungry.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  Liza shrugs and drains her cup. Laura Towne isn’t fine. For the last fifteen minutes, as they’ve sat here in the parlor in silence, the woman has worn a haunted, faraway look in her lilac-colored eyes. She hasn’t touched her tea, and she’s barely eaten the pastry Jasper Hammel painstakingly arranged on her plate.

  At least, Liza thinks, he hasn’t been buzzing around them as much tonight. Earlier, she heard the sound of water running and pots clattering in the kitchen, which meant he must be doing the dishes. And now there’s only silence at the back of the house.

  Liza is about to reach for the porcelain teapot on the serving table beside her when she hears a faint knocking.

  Laura, too, looks up sharply at the sound.

  “What was that?” Liza asks.

  Laura shrugs.

  They both sit absolutely still, listening.

  At first, there’s only the ever-present wind and the staccato spattering of raindrops against the windows.

  Then the knocking sound again.

  “That’s coming from the front of the house,” Laura says, and Liza nods.

  “I think someone’s at the door,” she tells Laura.

  “But why would someone knock? Isn’t the door kept unlocked at this hour?”

  “Who knows?” Liza hears the knocking again, this time more persistent. “Maybe that fruitcake in the kitchen can’t hear it.”

  “I’ll get him.” Laura stands and goes over to the door, poking her head into the hallway. “Mr. Hammel?”

  Liza watches as she moved down the hall and opens the kitchen door, repeating, “Mr. Hammel?”

  After a moment, Laura returns and says, “He’s not around.”

  “He’s not? Where could he be?”

  “I have no idea. There’s a back stairway in there—maybe he’s upstairs.”

  “Well, we’d better answer the door.” Liza is already halfway there.

  In the foyer, she sees a tall figure standing on the other side of the glass door. Sure enough, the bolt is turned, and Liza hurries to open it.

  Maybe this is D.M. Yates at last, she thinks, as a tall man steps inside, his face obscured by the hood of a bulky black storm coat.

  He shakes the water off like a wet dog, then lowers the hood and pulls the door closed behind him.

  Liza stares. He’s a large man, not handsome exactly, though his red-hair, freckled complexion, and wide, easy grin are appealing.

  “Hi,” he says cheerfully, wiping the rain off his ruddy cheeks. “How are you ladies tonight?”

  Ladies? Liza turns and sees Laura standing behind her beside the front desk.

  “I’m Pat Gerkin,” the guy continues. “You two must be staying here at the inn.”

  “We are,” Liza tells him.

  “Is the manager around?”

  “He’s here someplace, but we’re not sure where. Why?”

  “I wanted to let him know that if this storm gets any worse, the homes along the coast are going to be evacuated. You can all take shelter at the Congregational church. It’s pretty much in the center of the island.”

  “Do you think that’ll happen?” Laura asks, sounding concerned.

  “What? The storm getting worse? Maybe. It’s a nor’easter, and right now, it’s blowing right for us. Hurricane-force winds, and maybe even some snow, too. Of course, it might still veer off and miss the island; but as of the last weather report, we’re in for trouble.”

  “You seem pretty happy about it,” Liza observes, noting the guy’s perpetually twinkling blue eyes.

  He shrugs. “I’ve been through a lot of these storms. I’m a fisherman on the island year-round. And in the summer, I work part time on the local police force. These things are rough while they last; but eventually, they blow by and we clean up the damage. Hopefully, this one won’t be too bad.”

  “How do we know if we should evacuate?” Laura asks.

  “Someone will come around and let you know. Have some things packed to take with you, just in case.” Pat looks around. “The manager didn’t go out in this weather and leave you here, did he?”

  “Who knows?” Liza shrugs. “Do you know him well?”

  “Who?”

  “Jasper Hammel.”

  “Oh, that’s his name? The little guy with the mustache, right?”

  She nods.

  “Yeah, I’ve seen him around here and there, but we’ve never met. He’s not the friendly type. And he’s new on the island.”

  Liza frowns. “How new?”

  “Only been here a few weeks. And this is the first weekend the inn’s in operation again since it was sold to the new owner at the end of last summer.”

  Liza and Laura exchange a glance.

  “Who’s the new owner?” Laura asks.

  Pat Gerkin shrugs. “I have no idea. Some businessman from the mainland. He hasn’t been out here since he bought it, but he’s kept the people who live here pretty busy with renovation work.”

  “Let me ask you something,” Liza says, frowning. “Have you ever heard of D.M. Yates?”

  “The writer?”

  “You know him?” she asks, relieved at the expression of recognition that crosses the guy’s features.

  “Sure.”

  “Then he does live out here, after all,” Liza says. “Thank God. I was really starting to think this was just a wild-goose—”

  “Who lives out here?” Pat interrupts. “Yates?”

  “Doesn’t he?”

  “Live on Tide Island? Nope.”

  “What do you mean? I thought you said you knew him.”

  “I know his work. Just finished Before a Fall last week, as a matter of fact.” Pat leans against the wall and folds his arms across his chest. “It was hard to g
et through those first few chapters; but once you got into it, it was a good story.”

  “When you said you knew him, I thought . . .”

  “You thought the man himself, not his books. No, I read a lot. Hey, don’t look so surprised. I may be a fisherman now, but I was an English major in college. Used to write poetry and everything.”

  “I’m not surprised about that,” Liza murmurs, glancing over her shoulder at Laura, who looks a little paler than usual. “It’s just that I was supposed to meet Yates out here, and I’ve been waiting for him to show.”

  “Well, I guarantee you that he doesn’t live here. I’m on this island year-round and have been all my life. I know everyone here, except for the tourists. And even if Yates is on his way out here to meet you, you’re going to have a long wait. The ferry schedule has been suspended until the storm passes by. Water’s too rough.”

  “You mean we can’t leave?” Laura asks, her voice sounding slightly high-pitched. “The last ferry tonight was the last one, period?”

  “There was no ferry tonight,” Pat Gerkin says, looking puzzled. “There never is on Saturday nights.”

  “Not even on holiday weekends?” Liza asks, her heart flip-flopping erratically in her chest.

  “Nope,” Pat Gerkin says. “The last Saturday ferry left this afternoon.”

  Slowly, Liza turns to look at Laura again. She knows what Laura’s thinking. It’s the same thing that Liza is thinking.

  That Jasper Hammel really did lie about Sandy.

  That she didn’t leave the island on the late ferry, because there was no late ferry.

  That somewhere on this island, right this very moment, Sandy Cavelli might be in serious trouble.

  Keegan McCullough is sitting in front of the television on the verge of biting into the enormous ham-and-cheese sandwich he just bought at Subway, when the phone rings.

  He reaches for it with his left hand, still holding the sandwich with his right. “Hello?” he says, then bites into the sandwich.

  “Hey, Keegan, it’s me.”

  “Buddy?” he asks around a mouthful. He hurriedly chews and swallows.

  “Yeah. What are you doing?”

  “Watching the tail end of ‘Cops’ and eating dinner. Why? What’s up?”