She could go wherever the hell she wanted to go, he thought, with or without her lover.
Eli focused in on what he’d come for. Inside the closet, he keyed in the combination for the safe. He ignored the stack of cash, the documents, the jewelry cases holding pieces he’d given her over the years, or she’d bought for herself.
Just the ring, he told himself. The Landon ring. He checked the box, watched it wink and flash in the light, then shoved it into the pocket of his jacket. Once the safe was secured again and he started back down, it occurred to him he should’ve brought bubble wrap or some protection for the painting.
He’d grab some towels, he decided, something to shield it from the rain. He took a couple of bath sheets from the linen closet, kept going.
In and out, he told himself again. He hadn’t known how much he wanted out of that house, away from the memories—good and bad.
In the living room he took the painting off the wall. He’d bought it on their honeymoon because Lindsay had been so taken with it, with the sun-washed colors, the charm and simplicity of a field of sunflowers backed by olive groves.
They’d bought other art since, he thought as he wrapped the towels around it. Paintings, sculptures, pottery certainly of greater value. They could all go in the communal pile, all be part of the mechanism of negotiation. But not this.
He laid the padded painting on the sofa, moved through the living area with the storm slashing overhead. He wondered if she was driving in it, on her way home to finish packing for the overnight trip with her lover.
“Enjoy it while it lasts,” he murmured. Because first thing in the morning, he was calling his divorce attorney and letting him off the leash.
From now on, he intended to go for the throat.
He turned into the room they’d fashioned into a library and, as he started to hit the light switch, saw her in a shuddering burst of icy lightning.
From that moment to the answering bellow of thunder, his mind went blank.
“Lindsay?”
He slapped at the switch as he lurched forward. Inside him waged a war between what he saw and what he could accept.
She lay on her side in front of the hearth. Blood, so much blood on the white marble, the dark floor.
Her eyes, that rich chocolate that had so captivated him once, were filmed glass.
“Lindsay.”
He dropped down beside her, took the hand stretched out on the floor as if reaching. And found her cold.
In Bluff House, Eli woke, dragging himself out of the blood and shock of the recurring dream and into sunlight.
For a moment he just sat as he’d reared up, disoriented, hazy. He stared around the room, remembering as his thumping heart leveled again.
Bluff House. He’d come to Bluff House.
Lindsay had been dead nearly a year. The house in the Back Bay was finally on the market. The nightmare was behind him. Even if he still felt its breath on the back of his neck.
He shoved at his hair, wished he could delude himself so he could just go back to sleep, but he knew if he closed his eyes again, he’d be right back in the little library, right back beside the body of his murdered wife.
And yet he couldn’t think of a single good reason to get out of bed.
He thought he heard music—dim, distant. What the hell was that music?
He’d gotten so used to noises—voices, music, TV mumbling—during the last few months in his parents’ house he hadn’t registered there shouldn’t be music, or anything but the sound of the sea or the wind.
Had he turned on a radio, a television, something, and forgotten? It wouldn’t be the first time since his long downward spiral.
So, a reason to get up, he decided.
As he hadn’t brought in the rest of his bags, he yanked on the jeans he’d worn the day before, grabbed the shirt and shrugged into it as he started out of the bedroom.
It didn’t sound like a radio, he realized as he approached the stairs. Or not just a radio. He recognized Adele easily enough as he moved through the main floor, but clearly heard a second female voice forming a kind of passionate—and loud—duet.
He followed the sound, winding through the house toward the kitchen.
Adele’s singing partner reached into one of the three cloth market bags on the counter, drew out a small bunch of bananas and added them to a bamboo bowl of apples and pears.
He couldn’t quite get his mind around it, any of it.
She sang full out, and well—not with Adele’s magic, but well. And looked like a fairy, of the long and willowy variety.
A mass of long curls the color of walnut tumbled around her shoulders, spilled down the back of a dark blue sweater. Her face was . . . unusual, was all he could think. Long, almond-shaped eyes, the sharp nose and cheekbones, the top-heavy mouth down to the mole at its left corner struck him as just a little otherworldly.