As she worked, she considered, and finally admitted, what really had gotten to her tonight.
Zeke’s confidence, his striking looks and his unexpected humor, cloaked as it was in his middle-Tennessee accent, had made her aware of the void in her own life. Riding next to him, she’d felt alone and needy—and that was unacceptable. It wasn’t that he gave two figs about her or she’d ever want him to. He could have arranged the burglary yesterday just to unnerve her and get her to hire him. Given what she’d seen so far of the man, such underhandedness seemed out of character, but that wasn’t the point.
The point was that something about him, or tonight, had made her feel empty. She’d found herself wanting closeness. Wanting love and romance and companionship.
And she remembered something her father had told her years ago, in a static-riddled phone call from some fleabag hotel in some hellish corner of the world. “The love of your life,” he’d said, “is the person who makes you forget what all your standards and preconceived notions about love and romance even were.”
If such a man existed, Dani hadn’t met him yet. And the last thing she needed now was to mess up her life with pointless longing. Loneliness was not a choice she planned to make for herself.
And it was silly to let a dark-eyed security consultant stir up her deepest doubts about herself.
She grabbed fistfuls of peaches and dropped them into the pot, although the water wasn’t yet scalding hot. But she was impatient, anxious to get moving on something, anything.
“Oh, God,” she whispered.
It wasn’t just Zeke Cutler.
She watched the peaches bob to the surface of the water.
Had her mother ever peeled peaches? Had she ever made her own peach jam or known the satisfaction of pulling a peach cobbler from the oven in the dead of winter knowing it was made from fruit she’d frozen herself?
Dani couldn’t remember. Or she just didn’t know.
Twenty-five years tonight.
What happened to you, Mama? Are you alive? Are you dead?
Why did you leave me?
She dropped in more peaches, burning her fingers. She knew she might as well peel peaches until dawn, do up the whole lot of them, because there was no way she’d get any sleep tonight.
Eight
Zeke drove back into Saratoga too fast for his own comfort. It wasn’t the speed in and of itself that bothered him. It was how much he’d let Dani distract him. She could easily worm her way under his skin and bore a hole deep inside him before he’d ever realized he’d let down his armor.
Maybe she already had.
He slid his car to a stop across the street from the Chandler cottage on North Broadway. Kate Murtagh herself was hefting a folded table into a pickup truck, the evening’s festivities now another Saratoga memory. Zeke wasn’t sure what he was doing here. Waiting for answers to fall out of the sky?
Dani had gone after her burglar with a three-inch red high heel.
Definitely a hothead.
But she was also courageous and determined, and even now he could see her liquid black eyes shining in the darkness.
He could hear Kate speaking to her crew. “You sure we have everything? We leave so much as a gum wrapper out here, and Auntie Sara will have us back cleaning the place with a toothbrush.”
Auntie Sara.
Had Roger told his wife that Joe Cutler’s little brother was in town?
“Hell, Naomi,” he whispered to himself, “I should have just pretended I never got your letter.”
But he had never been any good at pretending, and he was here.
Kate spotted him and marched over, boldly poking her head in through the passenger window. “So you’re Zeke Cutler,” she said.
He smiled. “I know who you are, too.”
“I’m Dani’s friend is who I am. You drove her home?”
“I did. She arrived safe and sound.”
“You didn’t put that bruise on her arm?”
“I did not.”
Kate’s brow furrowed, and she looked tired. It must have been a long night for her. “I hope not, seeing how she got in your car with you. But you listen here, Mr. Cutler—I’m on the case. I may slice carrots and whip up crème fraîche for a living, but this is my town, and I’ve got friends here.” She patted the car door. “I’ll have my eye on you.”
Didn’t these women know he was licensed to carry a gun? Zeke stared out at Dani’s tall, attractive friend. “I can see why you and Ms. Pembroke are friends. You both eat nails for breakfast.”
“You hold that thought,” she said and marched back to her pickup.
In another moment, Sara Chandler Stone took her place in the passenger window. “It’s been a long time, Zeke.” Her voice was quiet and ladylike, more so than it had been twenty-five years ago.
He nodded. “Yes.”
She smiled, a cool, sad smile that didn’t reach her deep blue eyes. “Welcome to Saratoga.”
“Nice town.”
“Will you be at the Chandler Stakes tomorrow?”
“Maybe.”
Color rose in her cheeks, which looked even paler in the harsh artificial glare of the streetlights. “Even at thirteen you were laconic.” She touched a hand to her hair, still perfectly in place, and he saw the manicured nails, not too long, not too radically colored. “I’d like to talk to you—not tonight. In the morning?”
“Sara—”
“I’ll be at the track for breakfast.”
She darted away as quickly and unexpectedly as a hummingbird, and it seemed to Zeke that she had become everything she’d dreaded becoming.
Maybe she should have run off with Joe and saved them both.
Zeke turned around in the entrance to Skidmore College up the street, then went back down Broadway through town, following the same route he had with Dani. He didn’t have a plan—he was still just punting—but he knew what he had to do, at least for tonight.
He parked his car in the Pembroke’s guest lot, wondering if come morning Dani would have it towed. But he’d take that risk. There was a part of him that was looking forward to having her try to toss his ass off her property—the part, he thought, that he had to keep under a very tight lid.
He followed a brick path through the darkness. In the distance he could hear an owl’s hoot. Nearby, the purr of tree toads. The grounds were quiet, the jam makers and rock climbers gone to bed or to town to party. Leaving the walk, he found his way across gardens and lawns and down the hillside to the pink, mauve and purple cottage at the edge of the woods.
He sat under a pine tree in a small meadow of wildflowers that looked as though they’d been planted there intentionally. He had a good view of the side entrance, a reasonable view of the front and an excellent view of the side-garden entrance, but none whatsoever of its rear gate. Fortunately, it squeaked. And every window in the place was open. If somebody got in, he’d hear Dani yell. Provided she wasn’t too stubborn to yell.
One day he’d discuss her attitude with Sam Lincoln Jones. Sam liked to analyze people’s attitudes. He said it helped him think he was making use of his education.
Until then Zeke would just do some thinking and keep an eye on things, in case Quint Skinner made a return visit.
Just before dawn, her last peach safely in the freezer, Dani gave up on trying to sleep. She kept seeing her mother waving to her from the basket of Mattie’s hot-air balloon and feeling herself catapulting across her own bedroom, feeling the terror of not knowing who’d pushed her, who’d burglarized her house.
And she kept seeing Zeke’s dark eyes and thinking about what great shoulders and thighs he had. He was the kind of man who could make a woman melt.
Could make her melt.
She’d tried listening to the tree toads. Sometimes yoga helped, or a hot bath, or hot milk. But she knew nothing would work tonight. She threw on a sweatshirt and jeans and headed outside with a simple multicolored flat kite made of nonconductive plastic, slipping quietly in
to her meadow. The sounds and smells of the night and the cool, damp grass on her bare feet, between her toes, eased her tension.
She estimated the wind speed at five or six miles per hour. Fine for kite flying.
With the wind at her back, she tossed the kite into the air a few times, until finally she felt it pulling and let out some line. It rose above the usual ground-air turbulence, higher, higher. Then it was soaring.
She let out more line, grinning, not thinking about her mother, her loneliness, not even hearing the tree toads.
The sun peeked over the treetops in streaks of orange and red, edged with pale pink. In its center her kite was a bold dot of color.
Staring at the dawn, she suddenly could see her mother with more clarity than she’d been able to see her in years. Her generous mouth, her blue saucer eyes, her smile. She could smell her mother’s French perfume and hear her laugh, not her delicate Chandler-lady laugh, but the throaty, exuberant laugh of the woman she’d wanted to become. It was as if she were telling her daughter not to hold back, not to let anything or anyone stand in her way, but to dare to go after what she wanted.
But I have, she thought. She had the springs, the Pembroke, her friends.
She didn’t have intimacy. There was no lover in her life. Zeke should have been the last man to remind her of the absence of romance in her life, but he had. Yet her mother had had a husband and a child, and they hadn’t been enough.
Her kite continued to gain altitude, riding the wind from Dani’s fingertips.
She could hear herself now as a little girl, promising to keep her mother’s secret. She’d never tell anyone, she’d said, sincere, frightened as her mother towered over her, so beautiful, so frightened herself.
The memory was so vivid, Dani might have been back on that cold, dreary December afternoon when she’d visited her dying grandmother—her mother’s mother. Claire Chandler had withered from an elegant society matron into a skeleton wrapped in sagging yellowed skin. Yet she retained her commanding presence, receiving her only grandchild in the cavernous living room of her New York apartment. She’d had her thinning hair fixed and wore a green silk robe, embroidered in red and gold at the sleeves, the one she wore every Christmas, not just this one, her last. It was way too big for her.
Dani remembered the strength in her grandmother’s voice when she’d called her young granddaughter to her side. Christmas carols had played softly on the stereo. “The First Noel” and “Joy to the World.” A huge Christmas tree, strung with hundreds of tiny white lights, awaited decorating. Big white boxes, brought in from storage, were filled with ornaments of handblown glass, painted toy soldiers, fragile angels, silver snowflakes. Dani was permitted only to hang the wooden ornaments. She’d eyed the nativity set carefully arranged on a polished antique table. She wanted desperately to play with the beautiful Madonna and the little baby Jesus, and the sheep and the Wise Men, but even touching the English porcelain figures was forbidden. Also off-limits was the New England village set up on another table, with its steepled white church, colonial houses and old-fashioned carolers. Ordinarily Dani would have pressed her case, but her mother had asked her to be especially nice that afternoon.
Dani had dug into the pocket of her wool blazer and produced a paper snowflake. “I made it myself—it’s origami. You can hang it on your tree if you want.”
Even now, she could remember her grandmother’s trembling, bony hand as she’d taken the origami snowflake. “Thank you, dear. It’s lovely. You’re such a thoughtful child.”
The snowflake, Dani had known, would end up in one of the scrapbooks her grandmother kept, put up on a shelf to be preserved for Dani’s own children. Her parents had stuck dozens of her origami snowflakes on windows, the refrigerator, hung them on the tree. But that was their style, not Claire Chandler’s, and Dani had made the snowflake for her because she loved her, not because she wanted praise and recognition.
“And how was school today, Danielle?” her grandmother had asked, regal even in illness.
“Good. All the kids call me Dani.”
“Why would they do that?”
“Because I asked them to,” Dani had said without fanfare. “Danielle’s such a prissy name.”
“Now, wherever did you get such a notion? Danielle’s a perfectly lovely name.”
“Mattie said it sounds kind of prissy—”
“Mattie? Danielle, where are your manners?” Claire had coughed, her skin going from yellow to red to white in the course of a couple of minutes. “Next you’ll be calling us all by our first names.”
“Oh, I’d never do that. It’s just that Mattie hates to be called Grandmother.”
“Well, she is one, even if she’d rather not admit it. We all get old. We all die.”
And Dani had asked her, “Are you going to die?”
Her grandmother’s sickly blue eyes had widened for a moment, then softened. “Yes, dear, I’m going to die—sooner, I’m afraid, rather than later. Please don’t be sad. I’ve led a full, wonderful life, even in the relatively few years I’ve had on this earth. I wish only that we’d had more time together.” She’d smiled gently even as Dani’s eyes brimmed with tears. “You’re a remarkable child. I should have told you that more often. I should have told my own daughters that more often. It’s not always easy…One does one’s best.”
A maid had brought a tray of hot cider and gingerbread cookies, and Claire Chandler had permitted Dani to play with the New England village, although the nativity set was still forbidden, on the grounds that playing with religious figures was improper. Claire’s only requirement had been that Dani gather up all the pieces and play with them on the carpet next to the couch, close to her grandmother.
By the time her mother arrived to pick Dani up, Claire had fallen asleep. Dani had leaned over and kissed her grandmother’s sunken cheek, something she’d never done on her own before. “Goodbye, Dani,” her grandmother had said, and she seemed to try to smile.
On the elevator down to the lobby, Dani had noticed that her mother was crying. “Did Grandmother die?”
“No—no, not yet.”
When the elevator’s polished brass doors opened, her mother had rushed out, sobbing. “I’m not going to end up like my mother, I swear I’m not.”
Left to follow, Dani had joined her mother on the street. The temperature had dropped, and the wind had picked up; a light snow was falling. Her mother had taken Dani’s hand and began walking briskly in the opposite direction of their building.
“Where are we going?” Dani had asked, the wind stinging her cheeks.
“The subway station,” her mother said tightly.
Dani had made no response. She often rode the subway with Mattie, who would spout off about the virtues of public transportation and conserving the world’s resources, but never with her mother.
Lilli had stopped abruptly. “You look cold.” Then she’d pulled off her pale gray cashmere scarf and wrapped it around Dani’s neck for added warmth, tucking one edge up over her mouth and nose.
They’d taken the subway to Greenwich Village, her mother acting so much as if it was a grand adventure that Dani got caught up in her excitement. “Are we going to see Mattie?” she’d asked.
“No, she’s gone ballooning in New Mexico.”
That had sounded fun to Dani, but even her father didn’t like the idea of her getting into a hot-air balloon with his mother. “Can we go to New Mexico?”
“Maybe during your winter vacation, after—” Her mother’s eyes had clouded, her shoulders sagging. “One day we’ll go.”
They’d walked to a section of Greenwich Village where even Mattie, who had few rules, hadn’t permitted Dani to wander on her own. Lilli had plunged down two concrete steps to a heavy, dirty door, its black paint chipped. She’d peeled off a black leather glove and knocked. There was one window, blackened with soot and covered with iron bars, and a sign over the door that said the Flamingo.
A voice yelled for them
to come inside.
Even now, so many years later, Dani could smell the smoke inside that dark bar. It had been decorated—of course—with plastic flamingos and fake palm branches. In the dim light, she’d seen her mother’s smile falter.
A black-haired man had greeted her from behind the bar. “You the lady who called?”
Lilli had nodded, looking faintly disapproving, the way she did when giving in to Dani and buying hot pretzels from a street vendor. “You’re Mr. Garcia.”
He was a Cuban exile, he explained. He had played jazz for the tourists in Havana before Castro. A picture of John F. Kennedy hung above the cash register. One of Fidel Castro hung behind the bar; it was struck with darts. Licking her lips, Lilli slid a hundred-dollar bill across the worn bar. Until that moment Dani hadn’t been sure her mother even knew how to write a check; she’d always seemed to pay for things just by nodding. Mattie had insisted Dani learn how to handle money.
“The place is all yours,” Mr. Garcia had said, a sweep of his chubby arm taking in all of the small, empty bar.
Lilli had removed her coat and hat, then helped Dani with the complicated clasps of the dress coat she’d worn for her visit with her grandmother. Her hair had crackled with static electricity as she pulled off the cashmere scarf.
“I’m going to sing some songs,” her mother had told her. “You can sit up at the table by yourself and be my audience. How’s that?”
“Can I have a Coke?”
Lilli smiled. “And pretzels.”
She’d given Mr. Garcia more money, and he’d brought a tall glass of soda and a bowl of pretzels to Dani, who’d sat alertly at a rickety round table, aware that this wasn’t like sitting on Mattie’s front stoop discussing baseball and politics with anybody who happened by. This, she’d thought at age eight, was really scary.
Underneath her coat, her mother had been wearing a slinky black dress. She put on a pair of strappy black high heels that she’d had squished down in her handbag. Dani had never seen the dress or the shoes before.
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