Kathleen O'Brien - Quiet as the Grave

“You thought I…” She frowned for a few seconds, feeling herself heating up, though she wasn’t sure why. Mike Frome had always been able to confuse her in world-record time, which inevitably ticked her off. “Why?”

“I thought seeing me might make you…” He seemed to search for a word. “Uncomfortable.”

Uncomfortable? Her temperature rose even higher. What the heck was that a euphemism for? Did he think she was still a geeky, untouched virgin who would blush at the memory of the night he’d copped a feel?

“Know what, Frome? That’s BS, and you know it. I haven’t got anything to be uncomfortable about where you’re concerned. Sixteen seconds of touchy-feely ten years ago doesn’t exactly require me to wear the scarlet letter for the rest of my life.”

He shook his head. “I didn’t mean that. I meant that seeing me might make you unhappy. You know, you might—”

Unhappy? Oh, this was even worse. Did he think she’d actually spent the past ten years carrying a torch for Mr. Most-Likely-To-Succeed? Oh, brother.

“Might what? Might turn to stone just from looking at your irresistible bod? Sorry, but that’s baloney, too. You may have been the king of the sandbox in Firefly Glen, but it’s a pretty small sandbox. Out in the real world, where I’ve been living for the past ten years—”

To her surprise, Mike began to laugh. He reached out and grabbed her hand. “Easy, Fang. You’re getting it all wrong.”

She forced herself to take a deep breath. Man, was she regressing. She didn’t do this anymore, didn’t fly off the handle, didn’t read insults into perfectly innocent comments. Her tendency toward irrational ferocity had disappeared the minute she left Firefly Glen, which in her opinion proved that Mike Frome must have been the problem all along.

However, there was such a thing as protesting too much. She inhaled one more time, just for good measure.

“Or maybe,” he said, “I’m putting it all wrong.”

“Probably both,” she said tightly. “We never did really communicate all that well. But, look, we’re getting off topic. This is serious. I’m trying to tell you that your ex-father-in-law wants to see you spend the rest of your life in jail.”

“Okay.” He gazed at her, the poker face returning. “So what did you tell him?”

“I told him I hadn’t laid eyes on you in ten years. That frustrated him, but it didn’t really slow him down much. He made it clear that if I’d just say I saw you shove Justine around or something he’d make it worth my while.”

The smile remained on Mike’s lips, but it was as if he’d simply forgotten to put it away. He still had hold of her hand, so she knew how tight his fingers were.

“And what did you say to his offer?”

She pulled her hand away. “What do you think I said?”

“I don’t know.” He shook his head slowly. “I think you said no. I hope you said no.”

“But you’re not sure?”

He stared at her a moment, and then, his body stiff, he rose from his wicker chair. He leaned against the railing, his back to the sunshine, which threw his face into shadow.

“How can I be sure? The Suzie I used to know—she would have told Alton to take his money and stuff it up his hairy ass. But I haven’t seen you in ten years. I don’t know you anymore. Not really.”

“You think ten years is enough to turn me into a liar?”

He hesitated again. “Ten years can do a lot of rotten things to people, Suzie. If you don’t know that yet, I’m happy for you.”

She stood up. “Let me get this straight. You think it could turn me into a woman who would send a man to the gas chamber for something he didn’t do?”

“Perhaps not.” He lifted one hand. The effort to look suave, indifferent, world-weary failed miserably. He was just plain tired. “But am I sure? No. To tell you the truth, I’m not sure of anything anymore.”

Her annoyance faded slightly in the face of his exhaustion.

“Well, you can be sure of this. Millner is going to try to frame you for this, Mike. He’s going to do any dirty thing he can to see that you pay for what happened to Justine.”

“I know.” He glanced toward the French doors, obviously wondering if Gavin was within earshot. “But frankly, Suzie, Alton Millner isn’t the only vulture out to get me. He isn’t even the most dangerous one. The D.A. has a bead on me, too. I guess it’s pretty standard for the cops, even if it feels outrageous to me. They always look at the husband first.”

She felt an upwelling of incredulous indignation. Was everyone around here insane? Mike Frome couldn’t kill anyone. Heck, Suzie herself was a more likely candidate. She’d hated Justine, and she was, after all, the one they called “Fang.”

But neither of them had done it. They just weren’t that kind of people.

“That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard,” she said. “Jeez. Shouldn’t you be a better judge of people than that if you’re going to be the D.A.?”

Mike almost smiled. “You’re so sure he’s wrong, then?”

Suzie rolled her eyes. “I’ve known you since you were about six, Frome. You can be a horse’s ass, and you do have an irritating tendency to think you’re God’s gift. But kill somebody? No way. Kill your own child’s mother? Not in a bazillion, trillion years.”

“Damn.” His half smile turned into a grin. “Why couldn’t you have been the D.A.?”

She shrugged, but she felt herself smiling, too. “Couldn’t have handled law school. Problems with authority, you know.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I know.”

Man, this was getting weird. A minute ago she’d wanted to punch him out, and now she had this stupid impulse to go over and hug him. She felt a disgustingly maternal urge—perhaps the first in her whole life—to help him hang on to that smile.

But she forced herself to stay where she was. “Well,” she began. “That’s all I had to say, so I guess I should—”

“Suzie.”

She frowned, just on principle. “What?”

“Thanks for coming by to warn me. It was very—very sweet.”

“Wow.” She found herself smiling again, and she made a few adjustments to make sure it was a sarcastic smile. Behind her, she heard footsteps approaching. Gavin must be coming back. “You’ve used a lot of words to describe me through the years, but I don’t think you ever used that one.”

Mike was still looking at her in that soft way that made her feel like squirming.

“No, I didn’t,” he said. “Just one of my many mistakes.”

SOMETIMES MIKE BELIEVED that if he hadn’t let Justine talk him into leaving Firefly Glen, everything would have been fine.

There was magic here. The Sunday after Suzie’s visit and her disturbing news, he went home for Spencer Fairmont’s sixteenth birthday party. And as he watched his son playing touch football on the front lawn of Summer House, he felt his whole body relaxing.

Though there were about two dozen Glenner children out there, Mike couldn’t take his eyes off Gavin. Look at that smile. He hadn’t smiled like that since his mother’s body had been discovered, almost a month ago.

Magic wasn’t an exaggeration.

And it wasn’t just the magic of “home.” Mike knew that, when faced with your first mortgage payment, your first endless, numbing workweek, or your first real personal crisis, it was easy to get all misty about the innocence of youth.

But Firefly Glen was more than that, and he’d always sensed it, even as a child. Firefly Glen was special. Nestled in a small Adirondack valley, the town was ringed by wooded mountains and spangled with flowers, waterfalls, rivers and birds. It was peopled by gentle eccentrics who argued constantly, and yet stuck together with a loyalty that seemed to belong to another century…or a fairy tale.

Many of those quirky townsfolk were Mike’s own kin. He was a fourth-generation Glenner, and his parents and grandparents still lived here. His cousin, Natalie Granville Quinn, had once owned Summer House, though the crazy old villa was now open to the public as a historic site—and rented out for parties, like this one.

“Can you believe how grown-up he is?”

Mike looked up and saw Natalie standing over him with a cup of punch in each hand. He wasn’t sure which kid she meant. Birthday boy Spencer had come to Firefly Glen as a scared little boy of six. And of course Gavin had left here, ten years ago, as an infant. Three of Natalie’s own four boys were out there, too—the fourth was still in diapers, too young to romp about with the big kids.

Mike took the punch. Natalie gathered her full yellow skirt under her knees and sat down on the step beside him. “Aren’t you glad someone else is mowing this monstrosity now?”

He glanced around at the smooth carpet of grass, which was glowing with gold highlights as the afternoon sun began to drop in the west. “You bet I am. Aren’t you glad someone else is in charge of the repairs?”

Natalie made a swooning sound and leaned her elbows back against the marble gracefully. “Giving this place up was the best decision I ever made.”

Just then Matthew walked by, their youngest son in his arms, and ruffled her hair. Both males made loud, wet kissing noises. Natalie kissed back, then grinned at Mike. “Make that second-best.”

Frankly, it was hard to believe that this happily sex-crazed blonde was now a thirty-eight-year-old mother of four. She hardly looked a day older than she had at Mike’s wedding ten years ago, while he felt about a hundred.

Guess true love really was the fountain of youth, he thought, trying not to be bitter.

“You make marriage look easy,” he said. He glanced around. Now that twilight had settled in, the band up on the balcony had begun to play slow songs. Couples were swaying together in little love pods all along the front courtyard. Spencer had a new girlfriend, and they looked so sweet, foreheads touching, hands folded between their bodies as if the dance were a prayer. Ward Winters, who was nearly ninety, was in a lip-lock with Madeline Alexander. Griffin and Heather Cahill were nuzzling like newlyweds. It just went on from there.

He turned back to Natalie. “You all make it look easy.”

Natalie’s brown eyes were gentle. “It is easy,” she said. “If you’re married to the right person. You can’t judge from your experience, honey. That was…well, it was like getting caught in a freak storm at sea.”

He noticed she didn’t say Justine’s name. As if there were a conspiracy to shelter him, whenever Mike entered the town limits, the problems of his “real” world dropped away. They had welcomed Justine back while the marriage lasted, and after the divorce no one ever said a word against her, especially not to Gavin. In fact, they rarely mentioned her.

Sure, occasionally crusty Theo Burke would begin to make some snarky comment, or maybe Ward Winters would start to grouch about Mayor Millner, but someone would always poke them hard, or stomp on their feet, and they’d swallow the words with a gruff apology, and the comforting cocoon would remain unbroken.

“Hurricane Justine wasn’t completely unexpected,” Mike corrected. “Plenty of people warned me. I just wasn’t listening.”

Natalie patted his shoulder. “That’s not entirely your fault, either. You just had a really bad case of TB.”

He gave her a curious look. Natalie had always been eccentric. All Granvilles were. You rarely had any idea what she’d say next. He was actually kind of glad that he was only one-sixth Granville. He had troubles enough.

“TB?”

She nodded. “Testosterone Blindness. It afflicts young men from the ages of twelve to about twenty. Its symptoms include bad judgment, night sweats, following some gorgeous girl around with their tongue hanging out, and—”