No matter how Theo pressed, Kim wouldn’t change her mind. “I know my body, and I know babies. We’re fine. And Judy’s already on her way back to help out.”
“Do you see what I have to deal with?” Theo said as they drove back to the cottage, his face creased with fatigue. “They have way too much trust in me.”
“Act less competent,” Annie suggested, instead of telling him he might be the most trustworthy man she’d ever known. Or maybe not. She’d never been more confused.
She was still thinking about him the next day as she climbed the steps to the Harp House attic. He’d told her to take whatever she wanted for the cottage, and she wondered if any of the seascapes she remembered remained up there. The hinges on the attic door moaned as she opened it. The place was right out of a horror movie. An eerie dressmaker’s dummy stood sentry over broken furniture, dusty cardboard boxes, and a pile of faded life preservers. The only light came from a grimy oriel window shrouded in tattered gray cobwebs and two bare bulbs hanging from the ceiling beams.
You don’t really expect me to come in here, do you? Crumpet squeaked.
Unfortunately, I can’t stay, Peter said.
Leo sneered. It’s a good thing somebody here has a backbone.
Your backbone is my arm, Annie reminded him, diverting her attention from a creepy plastic-shrouded doll collection that had once been Regan’s.
Exactly, Leo resneered. And here you are.
The attic held piles of old newspapers, magazines, and books no one would ever read. She stepped around a mildewed canvas sail bag, a broken patio umbrella, and a dusty Jansport backpack to get to some picture frames leaning against the wall. Cardboard boxes peppered with dead bugs blocked the paintings. As she began to move them aside, she spotted a shoe box labeled PRIVATE PROPERTY OF REGAN HARP. Curious, she looked inside.
The box was filled with photos of Theo and Regan as children. Annie unfolded an old beach towel and sat on the floor to look at them. Judging by the crooked composition, they’d taken many of them themselves. They were dressed in superhero costumes, playing in the snow, making faces at the camera. The images were so endearing that a lump grew in her throat.
She opened the clasp on a manila envelope and found it stuffed with more photos. The first was of Theo and Regan together. She recognized Regan’s NO FEAR T-shirt from the summer they’d all been together and vaguely remembered having taken the photo herself. As she gazed at Regan’s sweet smile, the way she leaned against her brother, she was once again struck by the tragedy of her loss. The tragedy of all the losses Theo had endured, beginning with his mother’s abandonment and ending with the death of a wife he must have once loved.
She took in the tousled hair falling over his forehead and the arm carelessly draped around his sister’s shoulders. Regan, I wish you were here to explain your brother to me.
All the photos in the envelope seemed to have come from that summer. There were pictures of Theo and Regan in the pool, on the front porch, and aboard their boat—the same boat Regan had taken out the day she’d drowned. Annie was overcome with both nostalgia and pain.
And then . . . bewilderment.
She shuffled through the photos more quickly. Her pulse began to hammer. One by one, the photos drifted from her lap and scattered at her feet like dying leaves. She buried her face in her hands.
I’m sorry, Leo whispered. I didn’t know how to tell you.
AN HOUR LATER, ANNIE STOOD in the bitter wind next to the empty swimming pool. Long cracks fissured the concrete pool walls, and filthy piles of snow and muck littered the bottom. According to Lisa, Cynthia was planning to fill in the pool. Annie imagined her replacing it with the fake ruins of an English folly.
Theo didn’t see her as he emerged from the stable where he’d been grooming Dancer. He was her lover, this wildly seductive man she knew so well yet didn’t know at all. Gray snowflakes swirled like ashes in the gloomy air. A sensible book heroine wouldn’t have confronted him until she’d gathered her thoughts. But Annie wasn’t sensible. She was a mess. “Theo . . .”
He stopped walking and turned to find her. “What are you doing out here?” He didn’t wait for an answer but came toward her with that long-legged gait that had become so familiar. “Let’s call it a day and go down to the cottage together.” The smoky cast in his eyes told her what he had in mind for the two of them to do when they got there.
She huddled into her shoulders. “I’ve been in the attic.”
“Find what you needed?”
“Yes. Yes, I did.” She reached in her coat pocket. Her hand trembled slightly as she pulled out the photographs. Five of them, although she could have brought a dozen more.