Emily's Ghost

by Stockenberg, Antoinette

  Considerate, and knock-down sexy. When he popped out of the cabin a few minutes later with a pickle-filled plastic bag in his teeth, clutching an egg salad sandwich in each hand, with a diet Coke tucked under each armpit, she went absolutely giddy with desire.

  "Thanks, Senator," she said, relieving him of a sandwich and the pickles. "Any chance of getting you in the sack when we reach Hadley Harbor?"

  "Oh, ye of insatiable appetite!"

  "Appetites."

  "Yeah," he said, kissing her, "I'd say there's a pretty good chance."

  He scooted her over and took the tiller, steering with his foot while he packed away his huge sandwich, and half of Emily's, in very short order. They were sitting on the low side of the cockpit, making it easier for Lee to see the trim of the jib. Every once in a while the boat took a gust of wind, sending it heeling on its side, its leeward gunnels awash; Emily trailed her hand overboard, watching the small but perfect diamond on her finger glittering through the water.

  Lee had his arm around her waist. "You'd better be careful, girl. Some fish comes along and chomps off your ring finger, there'll be hell to pay back home."

  She whipped her hand out of the water, then blushed when he laughed at her gullibility. "Still, it was a touching gesture on your mother's part to give me her own ring," she said. "I can't believe it didn't go to Grace or Hildie," she also ventured, for the first time.

  "Too small a stone for Grace, too late for Hildie's engagement in Europe. It was you or never," he said mischievously. "And of course, my mother does happen to adore you," he added when Emily looked crestfallen. "Gosh, woman, will you ever feel confident among our tribe?"

  "I'm making great strides," she insisted. "Who had the courage to decline a calligrapher and address her own wedding invitations?"

  "You did."

  "And who served meat loaf when your mother and Inez visited last week, instead of working myself into a frenzy trying to impress them both?"

  "You're a model of courage for us all. Kiss me and take the helm again. I'm about to risk my life going forward to drop the jib; who knows if I'll come back?" he said gaily.

  She put her hand over his mouth. "Not funny. Don't say that," she begged in a soft, stricken voice.

  Instantly the expression on his face changed. "You're right," he said, taking her hand from his mouth, kissing her tenderly. "I can't think of anything less funny. I love you, Emily, mother of my child." He leaned over and kissed her belly. "I love you both."

  Just as instantly his expression changed again, from somber to deadpan. "What I will do is, I will wrap a line around my waist and secure it to a cleat. Then I will crawl forward on all fours, even though the wind is blowing only five knots, and after I douse the sail, I will crawl back again. To the absolute, impenetrable safety of your arms."

  She pulled off her visor and whacked him with it.

  ****

  At sundown Lee had a drink in the cockpit while Emily heated up homemade chili on the tiny two-burner stove in the yacht's scaled-down galley. Because the galley was tucked under the companionway, it was easy for them to chat back and forth while Emily put together a salad.

  "Looks like a front to our southwest," he said lazily. "We may get some thunderstorms later. I hope I got that leak fixed okay."

  "Which leak?" she asked absently, slicing tomatoes.

  "The one above your half of the berth."

  She looked up with a sly smile. "We'll both stay on your side again, that's all."

  "That's all? That's heaven."

  They ate dinner in the cockpit, and then Lee offered to clean up belowdecks. Emily had her tea in the cockpit while he did so, enjoying the last perfect moments of a perfect summer's day. This was her special time, supper tea, and Lee made a point of letting her savor her solitude, often in the garden somewhere. She saw a light go on in the berth up forward; Lee had two more chapters to go in a Tom Clancy novel.

  A half-moon began its steady climb from the southeast among a few bright stars, while to the southwest Emily saw occasional, spectacular streaks of lightning. It was an extraordinarily beautiful sky, bizarre and exciting at the same time, split evenly between the serene and the diabolical. She thought of calling Lee away from his thriller, but she didn't have the heart. There were very few boats anchored in the nearly landlocked harbor, and the stillness was absolute. There was no sound except of an occasional fish jumping. It was all so new, so different, not like any night she had ever known. Her senses were absolutely alive.

  Emily sat with her legs folded under her, sipping the last of her tea, wondering which would prevail: the lightning, or the moon. Suddenly a loud hiss sounded practically under her elbow; she jumped so high the tea spilled over the edge of her mug. She peered over the cockpit coaming, and in the combatant light of the night sky she saw it: an enormous swan, his neck arched to the height of the cockpit itself, obviously begging for food, just as a family of geese and goslings had done earlier.

  "Oh," she said breathlessly, "wait right here." She dashed down below and rummaged in the cupboard for the last of their bakery bread and a box of oat crackers. "There's a huge swan swimming alongside, Lee; you really should come out and see it."

  "Hmm? That's nice," he answered, completely lost in his book.

  Outside, she tore off hunks of bread and held them up for the swan to take from her hand. She had no idea how he was able to see the food; despite the moon, despite the lightning, it was an inky night. From the west she was able to see black clouds headed for a mixup with the lightning and after that, the moon.

  "Where's your mate?" she whispered to the swan, feeding him the last of the bread.

  Hiss-s-s-s-s.

  He floated alongside, waiting, and then began to leave -- in anger, it seemed to her. She opened the box of oat crackers quickly, and at the first crinkle sound of the plastic liner the swan returned. He took an oat cracker from her, then dropped it in the water. He would not take another.

  "Picky," she murmured.

  Hiss-s-s-s-s.

  He circled once, twice, then glided off. It depressed her somehow, as if she'd failed him. She remembered a bran muffin she was saving for her breakfast and ran below to fetch it, on the chance that the swan might come back. For ten minutes she sat alone, holding her muffin in her lap, waiting.

  He was no ordinary swan, of that she was sure. He was too big, too powerful, too vocal. Lee had told her that all the waterfowl around here panhandled: the ducks, the geese, the sea gulls. They brought their young; generations, he said, had done it. But he'd said nothing about a swan, a swan without a mate.

  Hiss-s-s-s-s.

  He was back! On the other side of the boat! Delighted, Emily broke off a chunk of muffin and tried feeding it to him. He accepted it with an offhand arrogance that Emily had run into only once before in her life. She caught her breath.

  "Fergus?" she whispered, faint with wonder.

  Hiss-s-s-s-s.

  The moon and lightning lit up the sky, lit up the nearly uninhabited shoreline, lit up the great white swan. In six swipes at her fingers the muffin was gone. She had nothing more to give him. He circled alongside, imperial and impatient. "That's all there is," she said sadly.

  The swan paused and circled, then swung away from the boat and struck out for the entrance to the harbor. Emily could see him in the moonlight for perhaps a thousand feet or so. And then the first of the black clouds from the west passed over the moon, and the great white swan was swallowed up in darkness.

  But then a tremendous bolt of lightning ripped the sky open. In its flash she saw the swan one last time. After that the lightning moved off, and the rest of the black clouds moved in, and darkness reigned. It was over.

  "Good-bye, Fergus," she whispered, a tear breaking through and rolling down her cheek. "Goodbye."

  When she went below again, Lee was just closing The Hunt for Red October. "Great read," he said, reaching up one arm behind him and catching her in his embrace. "They always are. What've y
ou been up to?" he said, pulling her toward him for an upside- down kiss.

  She let herself test the novelty of his mouth from the new position and said, "Just saying good-bye to a friend."

  "Same old friend?" he asked in a quiet, thoughtful way.

  "Yes," she said, smiling. "He was just passing through."

  EMBERS: Available for Nook

  An old secret, a new mystery, and dangerous passion buried in the ashes of an historic fire -- ashes that become embers, easily fanned into flames ....

  To Meg Hazard, it seemed like a good idea at the time: squeezing her extended family into the back rooms of their rambling Victorian home and converting the rest of the house into a Bed and Breakfast in the coastal town of Bar Harbor, Maine. But that was before the leaky roof, the balky furnace, and the fuel oil spill in the basement. That was before the inheritance of an exquisite, museum-quality dollhouse with a haunting story of its own to tell. And that was before her much-loved, much-younger and very beautiful sister Allie fell in love with Chicago cop Tom Wyler, who was there simply to put himself back together physically and emotionally after a shattering episode of violence back home. Meg, the Responsible One, has complete sympathy for everyone. What she doesn't have is complete control over her emotions ....

  "A deft blend of mystery and romance ... Stockenberg, who won a RITA [for Emily's Ghost], is sure to win more kudos for her latest."

  --Publishers Weekly

  "A well-written, engaging story of two caring people who have all but given up on finding love."

  --Library Journal

  "All the ingredients that whisper 'best seller' ... reading Embers is a night of pure pleasure."

  --Gothic Journal

  "Embers is a delight -- a beautifully crafted, wholly involving story that explores the complexities of family, sisters and love, creating relationships that sparkle with warmth, wit, and authenticity. I thoroughly enjoyed it."

  --Katherine Stone

  "Antoinette Stockenberg has become a major force in women's contemporary mainstream romantic fiction. Embers is a moving work involving obsession, betrayal, and thwarted passions ... The chilling use of supernatural elements to emphasize the events of the past only enhances a book that has 'classic' written all over it."

  --Affaire de Coeur

  Chapter 1 of EMBERS

  Meg Hazard, shivering in the predawn chill, pulled the blanket up around her shoulders and said, "Money isn't everything, Allie."

  Her sister laughed derisively. "Oh, come on." She threw her head back in a way that profiled her long neck and thick black hair to perfection. "The only ones who say that are those who have it and those who don't. And I say, both sides are lying through their teeth." She pulled her knees up closer to her chest. "God, it's cold up here. Was it this cold when we were kids?"

  "Of course. We're on top of a mountain. In Maine. In June. You know the saying: In Maine there are two seasons —"

  "— winter and August. Mmm. I do know. Which is another reason I'll take a job anywhere but here. You can't make any real money in Maine, and meanwhile you freeze your buns off trying."

  Meg smiled and held one end of her blanket open. "Park your buns under the blanket with me, then. I told you to bring something warm."

  She glanced around at the dozens of tourists sharing the rocky summit with them. Some were murmuring; some were silent. All were waiting. "The sun will be up in precisely — four minutes," Meg said, peering at her watch.

  The two sisters huddled together under the pale pink sky, their breaths mingling, their minds in tune.

  "Tell me why, exactly, I let you talk me into this again?" Allie asked.

  Meg laughed softly and said, "I was just thinking about that. You were five and I was seventeen when I brought you up here the first time. You were so excited, you forgot your Thermos of hot chocolate. I had to drive us back for it —"

  "— and Dad woke up and said we were crazy and if Mom were alive she'd give us what for —"

  "— and then, when we finally got up here, you were mad because we weren't the only ones on Cadillac Mountain, so how could we possibly be the first ones in the whole U.S. to see the sun that day?"

  "You told me we would be, Meg. I distinctly remember."

  "So you stood up and told all the other tourists to please close their eyes because you wanted to be first."

  Allegra Atwells looked away with the same roguish smile that had melted every single male heart that had ever come within fifty feet of it.

  And then she threw off her blanket, stood up, and shouted at the top of her lungs: "Would everyone please close their eyes so that I can finally be the first one to see the sun rise in the United States? I'm from Bar Harbor, folks. I live here."

  Virtually every tourist there turned in surprise to gape at her. Meg groaned and buried her face in her hands, and when she looked up again, a thin sliver of bright gold had popped up into the now blood-red sky, casting the first of its rays across Frenchman's Bay below.

  Allie Atwells had probably got her wish.

  "Twenty-five, and still the same," Meg said, leaning back on the palms of her hands and looking up at her sister with a kind of rueful admiration.

  Allie stood defiantly on the rocky outcrop with her hands on her hips. The rising wind whipped her long black hair across her face and pressed the white shirt she wore against her shapely breasts. Her face — even in the early morning sun, even without makeup, even after an all-nighter spent deep in gossip — was cover-girl gorgeous, the kind that modeling agencies would kill to represent.

  "Of course I'm still the same! How can I be anything else?" Allie said, throwing her arms up melodramatically. "I've been stuck in this god- forsaken corner of the country all my life. I haven't been anywhere, done anything, met anyone ... Thanks to your nagging, I've done nothing but work and study, work and study, work and study."

  Meg laughed. "And now here you are, six years, four apartments, two majors, and eleven part-time —"

  "Twelve," Allie said with a wry look. "You forget -- I worked for a week at the front desk of the Budgetel before you talked me into coming home for the summer."

  "I did that because finding a full-time job is a full-time job. Anyway, twelve part-time jobs later, and you have a degree. Think of it, Allie," Meg said, motioning to her to sit back down beside her. "A degree." She threw one arm around her sister and pressed her forehead to Allie's temple.

  "The first one in the family; we're all so proud of you."

  "Oh, Meg," the younger girl said modestly. "It's not as if it's from Cornell's hotel school. It's no big deal. I still have to start at a pathetic wage in an entry-level job. A degree doesn't make me any better than you or Lloyd. It only means I didn't marry young the way you two did."

  "Yeah, and I know why," Meg said with an ironic smile. "Because the minute you say yes to someone, ninety-nine other men are sure to cut their throats, and you can't bear the thought of all that blood on your hands."

  Allie's violet eyes turned a deeper shade of perfection. "That isn't why I've never married, Meg, you know that," she said in a soft voice. "I just haven't found the right one."

  Meg sighed heavily and said, "Whereas I, on the other hand, married my one and only suitor — and then lost him."

  Allie shook her head. "Paul wasn't the right one for you, Meg. You know he wasn't."

  Meg's brow twitched in a frown, but then suddenly she smiled and said: "Was too."

  "Was not."

  "Was too!"

  "Dammit, Meg!" Allie grabbed a short brown curl of her sister's hair and yanked it hard, then said in a voice endearingly wistful, "It's good to be back, Margaret Mary Atwells Hazard. I've missed you."

  "And I," said Meg softly, "have missed you too, Allie-cat."

  They sat there for a long moment without speaking, content to watch the kaleidoscope of reds and pinks that streaked across the morning sky. On a good morning — and this was one of them — the view of the sea from Cadillac Mountain went o
n forever.

  "Maybe you're right, Meg," Allie murmured at last. "Maybe money isn't everything."

  Meg nodded thoughtfully, then stood up and stretched. "Let's go home, kiddo. We've got work to do."

  ****

  Homicide Lieutenant Tom Wyler was stuck in a traffic jam as thick and wide as any he'd ever had to cut through back in Chicago. But at least there he had resources: a siren, a strobe, a hailer to warn people to get the hell out of his way. Here, creeping along the main drag through Ellsworth, Maine, he was just another tourist, without authority and without respect.

  And without air conditioning. In a burst of economic caution he'd decided on Rent-a-Wreck instead of Hertz or Avis at the airport. The three- year-old Cutlass they gave him ran perfectly fine; if it were, say, January, he'd have no complaint. But he was dressed for the Arctic, which is roughly where he thought Maine was, and with the midday sun beating down on a dark gray roof on a hot June day, he felt like complaining plenty.

  "Go heal somewhere else," his surgeon had advised him. "Away from the bloodshed. Somewhere cool, somewhere quiet, somewhere where every citizen isn't armed up to his goddamned teeth."

  Wyler was shell-shocked, and he knew it. He needed time to think, time to heal, time to decide whether he even wanted to go back to the bloody fray. So he'd chosen a small, very small, resort town with a reputation for quiet evenings and grand scenery. He didn't need theme parks, topless beaches, casino gambling, or all-night discos. All he needed, all he wanted, was a little peace and quiet.

  So why, having fled to this supposedly remote chunk of granite coast, was he feeling his blood pressure soar and his temples ache?

  Because this isn't what it was supposed to be, he realized, disappointed. Because he'd pictured the route to Bar Harbor as a quiet country road lined with gabled houses with big front porches, and laundry billowing from clotheslines out back. Instead, he found himself inching past a more familiar kind of Americana: Pizza Hut, Holiday Inn, Dairy Queen, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and McDonald's, all vying with one another for his tourist dollars — that is, if the fella on the curb selling Elvis-on-velvet paintings didn't get them first.