“I was checking to see if Aaron and Hannah were playing footsie under the table,” she replied, draping her trousers neatly over the desk chair.
“And were they?”
“They weren’t.”
“Interesting. You don’t suppose Carly’s imagining this whole thing, do you? Because Hannah hardly seems like… Freeze frame, was someone else playing footsie?”
“As a matter of fact, yes.” Des pulled back the covers on the bed and dived in, shivering and whooping. “God, it is freeeezing in here!”
“Well, who was it? Give it up.”
“Not until you get your hot bod in here with me. Come on, move your pink butt. Your girlfriend needs warming up.”
Mitch needed no more in the way of encouragement. Quickly, he brushed his teeth, tore off his own clothes and joined her. Des’s teeth were chattering, her hands and feet like ice. She snuggled close, one incredibly long, smooth leg thrown over him, her head on his chest. As Mitch held her there under the mountain of covers, warming her, he watched the reflection of the flames dance across the ceiling and walls. He listened to the storm rage outside. And he remembered to be happy. Happy he was sharing this moment with her. Happy that she was such a big part of his life.
And here is what Mitch was thinking: If only we could stay like this forever. If only things didn’t have to change. If only WE didn’t have to change. But we do, we do…
“So talk,” he said to her. “Give it up.”
“It was Norma and Teddy.”
“No way.”
“Yes way. Norma’s stocking toes were in Teddy’s lap.”
“So the two of them are…?”
“You now know as much as I do.”
“Des, can I tell you something I’m not very proud of?”
Her eyes met his slowly in the firelight. “Mitch, you can tell me anything.”
“I have trouble picturing two people that age having sex together. I mean, they’re as old as my parents.”
“Well, you’d better start picturing it,” she chided him. “Because you’re going to be that age yourself one day, and I expect you to be having sex with me regularly and with great…” She drew back from him suddenly. “God, shoot me right now. I can’t believe what just came out of my girl hole.”
“Which was…?”
“That what we have going is… that we might still be together in thirty years. Or thirty days. Make that thirty minutes. I had no business going there. Forget you ever heard it. Erase it from your hard drive, will you?”
“It’s a duh-deal…” Suddenly, Mitch had great difficulty swallowing. That same damned melon-sized lump had formed in his throat. “You’re awfully funny sometimes, know that?”
“Oh, yeah. I’m a regular Henry Youngman.”
“It’s Henny Yuh-youngman,” he gulped.
Now she was glaring at him in the firelight. Here it was-Her Wary, Scary Look. “Mitch, have you got something you want to say to me?” she demanded stiffly.
“Absolutely not. Why would you suh-say that?”
“No… reason.” Her eyes widened with alarm. She’d started breathing in ragged, uneven gasps. Plus her entire body was clenched tight.
“Des, is something wrong?”
“Absolutely… not. Why would… you… ask me that?”
“No reason.”
“It’s just… I’m still cold, that’s all.” She raised her nightshirt over her head and flung it aside. “Why don’t you see what you can do about it?”
“You sure you’re…?”
“I’m fine,” she purred, her naked body taut and elastic against his, her flesh satiny.
He closed his eyes and buried his nose in the long, sweet hollow of her throat, inhaling the spicy fragrance that made him dizzy with longing.
“Ada likes my work,” she whispered after a moment, her breath warm on his face. “She thinks I’m gifted.”
“She’s right, you are.”
“But she wants me to get out of the academy. She thinks they’ll try to control me.”
“She’s right again.”
“How will I know when it’s time to go?”
“You just will. It’s an instinct, kind of like this…” He kissed her gently on the mouth, feeling her lips soften and flower under his.
And so they made love together like a couple of eskimos, burrowed deep under all of those covers as the fire warmed their room and the wind howled and the ice pellets smacked against the windows. It was a different kind of lovemaking from what Mitch had ever experienced with Des Mitry. She clung to him with a passion that very nearly overwhelmed him with its urgency. He wasn’t sure whether it was to do with the storm, being trapped here. Or if it was about him and that damned lump that kept clogging up his voice box every time he tried to tell her the thing he needed to tell her. They didn’t discuss it. Didn’t talk at all after that. Just drifted off to sleep, safe and snug together.
The sound of another big tree coming down woke Mitch sometime during the night. He didn’t know what time it was, but the fire had burned down to glowing coals by then, and the room was frigid. As he lay there, Des fast asleep next to him, Mitch thought he heard footsteps up above them on the third floor. The floorboards creaked. But it must have been the castle itself creaking in the wind. Because who would be walking around up there in the middle of the night in the dark?
He slid out of bed and piled more logs on the fire and made sure they caught. Then he dived back in, shivering.
Des stirred, semi-awake. “Wha…?”
“Just feeding the fire. Go back to sleep. I’m sure the power will be back on by morning.”
But he was wrong. When they woke up in the morning, the power wasn’t back on.
And there was one other development that was even more troubling:
Not everyone in the place woke up.
CHAPTER 6
Norma lay in bed with her hands clasped on top of the covers.
Her nightgown was buttoned to her throat, her hair neatly combed, skin and lips slightly blue. Her hand, when Des felt it, was cold to the touch, the fingers beginning to stiffen. Rigor was setting in, which meant that Norma had likely been dead for several hours. Although it was hard to be certain since the room was so chilly.
Des had her shearling coat on, hands stuffed in her pockets as she stood there studying Norma. More than anything else, there was an incredible stillness about death. A stillness that she was never quite prepared for even though she’d seen it many times. Too many times. “This is how you found her?”
“Yes, it is,” Les said hoarsely, standing there next to her. It was Les’s anguished cries that had roused her shortly after dawn. Roused them all. “It was her heart, Des. She’d had a lot of trouble. A serious attack three years ago. It was just a matter of time, really.”
Les and Norma were in the first room at the top of the stairs on the left, room one. It was practically identical to the room Des and Mitch had shared, just slightly smaller. Outside, the morning sky was clear and blue. The sunlight that streamed through the tall, granite-ledged windows seemed impossibly bright after the darkness of the night. The thermometer that was mounted out on the sill said it was three degrees below zero. And that didn’t factor in the wind that was still howling. Des could hear the angry whine of a chain saw outside. Jase was trying to do something about those two big sycamores that had come down at the head of the drive. Mitch and Spence were helping him. The others had retreated to the relative warmth of the taproom in stunned silence.
Except for Ada, who lingered there beside Les, staring down at her daughter with a shocked, hurt look on her ancient face. The old director had on cream-colored silk pajamas under a belted robe of heavy navy-blue wool. Her beautiful white hair needed brushing.
“My poor, sweet Norma,” she lamented, bending down to kiss her daughter’s cold forehead. “I nursed you at my breast while you gazed at me in innocent, trusting wonder. Now look at you, you sad thing. Ran out of time, didn’t you?
” Ada glanced at Des, a deep, moist sadness in her hooded eyes. “She was just like her father. Luther had it, too.”
“Had what, Ada?”
“Heart disease. He died young himself, sixty-three years old. Not a day goes by that I don’t miss him.”
“She had a valve blockage,” Les spoke up. “Her heartbeat was irregular as a result. Cardiac arrhythmia, they call it. She was on medication, and bypass surgery had been strongly recommended, but she wouldn’t hear of it. Apparently her father…”
“Luther died on an operating table in London,” Ada said. “It was supposed to be a routine heart procedure. It wasn’t routine. Not unless you consider death routine. Norma was convinced the same thing would happen to her if she went in, so she refused to even…” Ada’s voice broke, a jagged sob coming from her. “That’s my baby girl lying there. A mother isn’t supposed to outlive her children. I’ve outlived them both. First Herbert, now Norma. There is no one left. They’re gone. All gone.” Ada lingered for a moment longer, then shook herself. “I’ll join the others downstairs, if you don’t mind.”
“That’s fine, Ada.”
“Des, we need to talk some more, you and I,” she said with sudden urgency. “It’s vitally important. Later this morning, okay?”
“Sure, if you’d like.”
Ada touched her fingers to her own lips, then to Norma’s. “Goodbye, my dear. I shall always love you.”
“She loved you, too, Ada,” Les said softly, as the old lady glided from the room. Then he slumped heavily into the armchair by the bed, his eyes red and pouchy. He was unshaven, his wavy silver hair disheveled. He had dressed hastily in a rumpled Astrid’s Castle fleece top and baggy flannel-lined jeans. “She carried too much weight around. Her cardiologist in New Haven, Mark Lavin, kept after her to lose more. She did try, but she just had so much trouble keeping it off.”
“Les, I’ll need a list of the medications she was on.”
“Whatever you say. I used to pick them up for her at the pharmacy, so I ought to know. She took the digoxin for her heart. She also had an underactive thyroid. She took Synthroid for that.”
Des glanced at Norma’s nightstand. She saw a water glass, half empty, reading glasses, a book. No pills. “And they’d be where?”
“The bathroom. She was also on a couple of different, you know, female drugs-in spite of the negative press they’ve been getting.”
“You mean hormone replacement therapy?”
He nodded. “Prometrium and one other one. Can’t remember the name. She swore they made her feel more energetic. She took too much upon herself for a woman in her condition. Long, hard days. Loads of stress. I begged her and begged her to slow down, but she wouldn’t. I-I knew there was a chance that this might happen someday. I just… I wasn’t ready.”
“We never are, Les. Was she feeling poorly yesterday? Did she complain at all?”
“She absolutely never complained. But I did think she looked tired at dinner.”
“I remember you mentioning it.”
“No question she was under an added strain with this big tribute coming up-Ada being here, not to mention Aaron. I guess it was just too much for her.”
“Did she get up at all last night?”
“I wouldn’t know. I sleep like a log. You can set off dynamite next to me and I won’t wake up. That’s the worst of it,” he said, ducking his head.
“What is, Les?”
“I was lying right here next to her, snoring away like a big dumb clod, while Norma was fighting for her very life. I wasn’t here for her, Des. In her last moments on this earth, she was all alone. I just feel so…”
“Responsible? You’re not. Don’t go there, Les. I’m sure she didn’t suffer.” Besides which, Des reflected, what could he have done? No ambulance could have made it up there. Not even a Life Star helicopter could have come to the rescue. Not in this kind of wind. And even if they had, chances were the lady would have already been gone. “Don’t beat up on yourself. Try to remember the good times.”
“We were happy together,” he said mournfully. “We only had a few short years, six this coming May. But we were so happy.”
Des went over to the window and looked out at the morning sunlight. The world had never looked quite this way before. The sky had never been so blue, the snow so white. The clean hard coating of ice that covered everything positively shimmered. Many, many of the castle’s trees, especially the slender, pliable birches, were so bent over from the weight of the ice that their tops had actually frozen to the ground. When they thawed-assuming it ever got that warm again-they would very likely be severely damaged. For now, the sight was simply a breathtaking one. So was the panoramic mountaintop view. The Connecticut River was entirely frozen over. Downriver, where 1-95 crossed over on the Baldwin Bridge, not a single car could be seen. The highway was deserted. Beyond that, she could see steam rising off the salt water of Long Island Sound.
“What do we do now, Des?” Les wondered. “I can’t imagine Fulton’s Funeral Home will be able to make it up here today, can you?”
She turned and faced him and said, “Actually, you’re getting a little bit ahead of yourself, Les. I have to phone this in first.”
“You do?” His eyes widened in surprise. “What for?”
“It’s a state law. Norma didn’t die in the presence of a physician. She was unattended. That makes hers what they call an untimely death. It’s just a formality, but I have to report it to my commanding officer. Also the medical examiner.”
“The medical examiner?” Now Les looked truly aghast. “They’re not going to cut her open, are they?”
“I highly doubt that. Not if Dr. Lavin confirms that her death wasn’t unexpected. But that’s entirely up to the medical examiner. His people will have to come up here and take a look at her. Road conditions being what they are, Norma may have to stay put for a while. Why don’t you move some of your things into another room? I need to close this one up.”
“Whatever you say,” Les said woodenly, getting up slowly out of his chair. “But I’m going to join the others down in the taproom right now, if you don’t mind. I can’t stay in here with her any longer.”
“That’s fine, Les. By the way, did you tidy Norma up before the rest of us came in?”
“I did. I wanted her to look nice. Is that okay? I didn’t mean to do anything wrong.”
“Not at all. I was just curious. Go ahead and go downstairs with the others.”
Once he’d left, Des got busy on her cell phone. As she’d suspected, Norma wasn’t going anywhere for the next twenty-four to thirty-six hours. Connecticut was officially locked down, its highways and roads closed to all but emergency vehicles. Most residents were still without power. Phone service was spotty. All of this plus the bright blue morning sky was merely a cruel tease-the National Weather Service was still predicting that same six to ten inches of snow later in the morning.
First Selectman Bob Paffin told her that the Center School emergency shelter was up and running, complete with food, cots, blankets and kerosene heaters. Three hundred very cold people were already making use of the facility. Members of Dorset’s volunteer fire department and ambulance corps were making sure that anyone else who needed to get there could do so. Des gave him the names of Mitch’s three elderly charges. Bob assured her they’d be seen to. Des was pleased that folks in Dorset were so on top of things. And damned frustrated that she couldn’t be with them, pitching in.
She tried calling Bella again. This time she got a ring instead of a busy signal. Also a thick, drowsy “Wha…?” from the other end of the crackly line.
“Girl, I don’t mean to be a Jewish mother,” Des said, greatly relieved to hear her friend’s sleepy voice, “but you don’t call, you don’t write, nothing.”
“Everything is fine, tattela,” Bella assured her, yawning. “The house is fine, I’m fine. Although I must tell you that I am not alone in this bed.”
“Shut up! Who’s…?”
“All five cats are under these covers with me.”
“Oh, I see,” Des said, smiling.
“I find this very intimate, also lumpy. And, feh, I have someone’s tail in my face. Spinderella, move over, will you? Where are you, Desiree?”
“Stranded up at the castle. The way things look, I may never get out of here. When did you lose power?”
“About nine o’clock. And, believe me, we were very, very lucky. A big oak came down right next door and flattened George’s sun porch. But don’t worry about a thing. I can make a fire, and I’ve got enough brisket to feed the entire block. We’re okay here.”
“Bella, that’s the best news I’ve heard in a while. And I sure can use it.”
“Desiree, I don’t like what I’m hearing from you. Are you okay?”
“Aside from the fact that our hostess died in the night, I’m just dandy.”
“Who, Norma? What happened?”
“Heart attack.”
“My God, that’s awful. I’m so sorry.” Bella paused, clearing her throat. “From your tone of voice, I was thinking it might be something else.”
“Like what?”
“Like that other matter we discussed, regarding a certain Semitic gentleman who shall remain nameless. Mitch Berger is who I’m talking about.”
“Yeah, I kind of caught that.”
“Nu? How are you two?”
“Okay, I guess. Maybe you were right. Maybe this stuff’s all in my own mind.”
“And what does that tell you about yourself?”
“That I’m a whack job, totally demented.” Which she totally wasn’t. There was still something heavy going on with him. She’d felt it the second he’d made with his Great Big Fat Nothing Gulp in bed last night. Just as she’d felt her own sheer desperation when they’d made love together, her hunger for him so insatiable that she’d nearly bounced the big guy off the ceiling. “But, hey, we already knew that about me,” she put in dryly, hearing the creak of a floorboard out in the hallway.
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