Midnight Valentine(82)

Colleen looks startled by my vehement little speech.

Without turning around, Nosey Parker says loudly, “Amen.”

I dig a piece of paper and a pen from my handbag, scribble my number on it, and give it to Colleen. “If you ever need to talk, call me. I’m a really good listener.”

“That’s so sweet. Thank you, Megan.”

She looks surprised, like she can’t believe the girl the whole town is gabbing about could be so nice. The line moves forward again, and soon it’s Colleen’s turn. Before she steps up to the register, she gives me the quick, awkward hug I was dreading, her basket poking into my chest.

“And if you ever need to talk, you can call me too,” she says softly. “Suzanne has my number. I mean it, anytime.”

Then she’s chatting up the pharmacist, and I’m left wondering how long it’ll take before she finds out through the grapevine that Craig and I had dinner. More importantly, how many curse words and threats of bodily dismemberment I can work into the phone call I’m going to make to that worthless, egotistical, polka-loving peacock.

Distracted for the moment from my pending mental breakdown, I get my prescription and get back on the road. It isn’t until I find myself driving past the turnoff to the Buttercup that I realize where I’m headed.

I don’t know the way, so I pull over to the side of the road and punch Theo’s home address into my GPS.



* * *

I’m not sure what I was expecting, but it wasn’t a modern masterpiece of glass and steel jutting from a steep rocky cliff, overlooking the ocean and surrounded on the other three sides by dense forest. Masculine, austere, and starkly beautiful, it’s straight out of Architectural Digest.

I swing shut the driver’s-side door, then slowly walk up the driveway toward the house, gravel crunching underfoot. The sea breeze is brisk, snapping my hair around my face. The sun shines glaringly bright. Set back about a hundred yards from the house is an old barn, out of place with its old-fashioned style and state of disrepair. It looks as if it’s been standing neglected in the same spot at the forest’s edge for a hundred years. If it wasn’t for the padlock and chain wound around the handles of the sliding doors—both as shiny as newly minted quarters—I’d think no one had been inside it in decades.

I walk up a white marble pathway flanked on both sides by a water feature built to resemble a burbling brook. It flows away from the front door, disappearing into an almost invisible dip in the marble at the driveway’s edge. The door itself is a massive slab of steel at least ten feet tall, with a slim steel handle of the same height. Windows on either side of the door give a view of the inside, which is decorated all in white and just as modern as the outside. The furniture is sparse but fits the airy, contemporary space perfectly. The interior walls are devoid of artwork or pictures. Windows are the dominating feature.

The entire west-facing wall is made of glass, giving the viewer the impression the house is floating in midair above the ocean.

Feeling strangely scared, I ring the doorbell.

After several minutes go by and it’s evident no one is home, I decide to go around the side of the house. Skirting plantings of bamboo, horsetail, and Zen-like stone gardens, I make my way around the house until I come to a high glass wall. There’s no door. Beyond the wall is a rectangular infinity pool with a view of the sea.

The lack of furniture on the sleek cement deck makes me suspect that this pool never gets used. It’s only for show.

It looks as lonely as I feel.

I retrace my steps absentmindedly. I don’t know what I was hoping to find here. A clue, perhaps, into the mystery of Theo Valentine. But this home gives no hint as to the nature or character of its occupant. It’s unnervingly sterile, as if it were built so the owner could live inside a blank canvas.

Or wanted to be a blank canvas.

Perhaps its austerity is a clue, after all. Perhaps this is the kind of home you buy or build when what you most need is a clean slate. A place to pretend the past doesn’t exist.

A place to be reborn.

“Stop it,” I chastise myself, the harsh sound of my voice jarring in the silence. No other noise can be heard up here except the whisper of the wind through the trees and the murmur of the waves breaking on the rocky coast far down below.

And the dark, familiar voice of my insanity, wondering why Theo would keep a padlock and chain on a decrepit barn door. Who could he be trying to keep out?

Or what might he be trying to keep hidden within?

I stand staring at the barn for a long time, wondering if it’s my imagination or if I really can smell that hint of sweet peas perfuming the cool morning air.