Home Song Page 5

  “Sure, no problem.” Luke pushed the cans to one side of the shed and helped Sara put the bike in place.

  “You should have brought a flashlight. You could have hurt yourself,” he said.

  “I should have left the bike on my porch,” she retorted. “But I was afraid it might rain.”

  Luke glanced at the bike. “I don’t think a little rain would make much difference at this point. Where did you get that, a tag sale?”

  “Lucy brought it over. I was thinking of taking a bike ride on the weekend and asked her where I could rent one. She remembered this one in her garage and insisted that I take it.” Sara brushed her hands on her jeans and looked back at the bike. “I really couldn’t say no. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings.”

  The corner of Luke’s mouth turned up in a reluctant smile. So Lucy had come. Sara had not made up an excuse. He didn’t know why, but hearing that made him feel better.

  “That’s nice of you and all, but are you sure you want to ride it?” he asked doubtfully. “It looks like it needs work.”

  “Oh, it will be fine for me,” Sara insisted. “I’m not entering the Tour de France or anything.”

  Luke shook his head and stared at her a moment. “You go out first. I’ll get the light. Watch your step,” he cautioned.

  He watched Sara step carefully through the mess, then shut off the light and followed. He closed the doors to the shed and latched them, then turned to see Sara waiting for him.

  “How did it go with Lucy? Did she get her homework done?”

  “She already had a draft. I just went over it with her and made some suggestions. Lucy’s very bright,” Sara added. “Most people don’t realize how smart she is.”

  “I don’t think Charlie wants her to realize how smart she is,” Luke said dryly.

  “Yes, I know. It’s hard for her,” Sara said seriously.

  Luke suddenly felt uneasy talking about the Bateses. What did he know about them anyway? He had no right—even if everyone in town, Lucy and Charlie included, gossiped about him.

  “I was just going to make myself some coffee. Want some?” he offered.

  At first he thought she would refuse. Was he going to be shot down twice in one night? Then she nodded. “Okay. Thanks.”

  He nodded back, amused at his turn of luck. He unlocked the door to his cottage and held it open for her. Once inside, he turned on the lights and went into the small kitchen.

  Sara took off her jacket and hung it on the back of a chair. “How was the movie?”

  He shrugged, spooning coffee into the pot. “I don’t know. I didn’t stay much past the credits.”

  “That good, huh? I thought it got rave reviews.”

  “It didn’t do much for me,” he said quietly. He turned on the coffeemaker, then turned to look at her. The truth, of course, was just the opposite. But he couldn’t tell her that, could he?

  He glanced at her again and felt his heartbeat quicken. If he didn’t start being more honest, more authentic with people, what was the point of coming up here at all?

  He stared back at the coffeemaker, watching the coffee drip into the glass pot. He wasn’t sure what was driving him, but for some reason he wanted her to know more about him, who he was. The real story. Maybe just to see if she was scared off, he realized.

  “You know that I used to be a cop, right?” he asked her suddenly.

  “Uh . . . yes. I do. I think you told me back in the summer one time, didn’t you?”

  He heard her voice take on a nervous edge as he came out from the kitchen. He had told her a little about his past, but guessed she had heard even more from others.

  “I think I did,” Luke replied. “Or maybe you just heard it around town.” He watched her. She sat on the small couch, her arms crossed, as if she felt cold. When she looked away, he said, “It’s all right, Sara. I know people talk about me. Especially at the Clam Box. Lucy, Charlie, and Tucker Tulley.”

  “They talk about everyone,” Sara said with a shrug. “The less they know, the more they have to say.”

  “Well, I guess they have a lot to say about me, then.”

  Sara glanced up at him and smiled. “You were a hot topic for a while. Now it’s mostly about Charlie’s election.”

  “So, what did you hear?” he persisted. He walked over to the woodstove and began to build a fire. He crouched down and turned his back to her, picking out sticks of kindling. He didn’t have to see her to tell that it was hard for her to answer.

  “Let’s see . . .” she started off slowly. “I heard that you were a police officer in Boston and that you were in a shoot-out or something. Your partner was killed, and you were shot, too, in your leg. And then you decided not to go back to police work.”

  He tossed a match to the wood and watched the fire spark to life. When she didn’t say more, he turned to her. “That’s all?”

  “Basically, yes.” She shrugged and leaned back on the couch.

  He sensed it wasn’t everything, but Sara probably felt too awkward repeating the rest. He knew some people thought he’d been dealing drugs, or taking bribes from dealers, and had been ambushed for messing around with the wrong people, his innocent partner caught in the crossfire. Or that he’d been a drunk and found himself in a shoot-out, inebriated, unable to react. He’d heard it all, the rumors almost worse than the truth.

  “I guess the gossips around here aren’t half as sharp as I thought.” Luke’s tone was amused but edgy. He stood up and brushed his hands together.

  “I did hear some other things about you,” she admitted. “But I didn’t take them seriously because I didn’t know if they were true or not.”

  He nodded at her. “That’s pretty smart of you. Considering how young you are.”

  “Excuse me? I’m not that young,” she corrected him with a short laugh.

  “Yes, you are,” he countered. “But you act older,” he added.

  “Thanks a lot,” she said.

  He could see that his observation annoyed her, but he did think she was young. Maybe too young for him. He was probably ten years older than she was, and in some ways, she seemed very naive, very sheltered. A nice girl from a good home who hadn’t seen much of the world beyond a college campus. But in other ways, Sara didn’t seem young to him at all.

  “I guess the coffee is done. I’ll bring it out here,” he suggested. He rose from his seat and walked into the kitchen area. “How do you take it?”

  “Just black is fine,” she called back.

  “Like real writers do,” he remarked with a slight smile.

  “It’s a start.”

  Luke brought the coffee in and handed Sara her cup. Then he sat down in the armchair across from her.

  “I’m sorry if I insulted you when I said you were young. I didn’t mean it in a bad way.”

  “That’s okay.” She glanced at him over her mug. “How old are you, anyway?”

  “I’ll be thirty-three at the end of November,” he said, looking straight at her. She blinked but didn’t say anything.

  “I thought my vital statistics would have been common knowledge at the Clam Box,” he joked.

  “They don’t get into the hard facts much,” she countered.

  “Right, the hard facts . . .” He looked down into his mug. “Okay, my version goes something like this. I was on the force about five or six years. I was promoted to detective, doing drug busts mostly.” He took a deep breath and put the coffee aside, as if he had suddenly lost his taste for it.

  “One night my partner and I answered a call. Sounded routine, a disturbance at an apartment building on Delaney Street. Uniforms in a squad car probably should have gone, but none were available, so we took it. We thought it was an argument between neighbors in the building. But when the apartment door opened, somebody began firing at us from inside. I saw my partner hit and I froze. I couldn’t shoot. When I finally got my nerve back, my partner was down. I couldn’t get near him, so I took cover and radioed for help. I t
ried to get back to him, but I’ve never really been able to remember what happened after that.”

  He paused for a moment, realizing that his heart was racing.

  “What happened next?” she asked quietly.

  “The backup found me at the bottom of a stairwell, unconscious. My partner had died at the scene. When they picked up one of the perps later, he testified that I fled when the gunfire started. I think he was willing to say anything he thought would lessen the case against him. But the official take on it was that I had left my partner in the hallway to bleed to death and crawled off to hide from the bad guys. Maybe I did. I can’t remember. Posttraumatic stress syndrome, they call it.”

  “Will you ever know?”

  He shrugged and rose restlessly from the chair. “Probably not. I couldn’t stay on the force with that hanging over my head. So I quit. I had a long way back from the injury anyway. It took a few operations before I could even get out of a wheelchair.”

  “That sounds awful,” Sara said sympathetically.

  “The worst part was that I had too much time to think. I blamed myself for my partner’s death. I got a lot of money from the force, because of my injury and early retirement. But that made me feel even worse. I wondered why I had ever been a cop in the first place. I decided then that I had never really even liked it.” He bent down and tended the fire again. “Maybe I screwed up on purpose.” He shook his head. “I don’t know. Who knows?”

  Sara was quiet for a moment. Then she said, “How long were you recuperating?”

  “Almost two years.”

  “That’s a long time. How did you manage?”

  “I had help, my family mostly. It was hard for them, though. Especially my father. He took it the hardest.” Luke stood up again and looked at her. “I think it would have been easier for him if I had died doing something real heroic.”

  Sara leaned back a bit to look at him. “That’s a pretty extreme thing to say.”

  “You’ve never met my father. He’s a pretty extreme guy.”

  “Didn’t you have anyone—any friends, or a girlfriend maybe?”

  “My mom was great. And I had a girlfriend. We were engaged. She was great to me, at first. Really sympathetic and just happy I’d survived. But I was pretty horrible. I started drinking, which made everything worse, and she left. I couldn’t blame her.”

  “That’s too bad.”

  “Yes, it was,” he agreed. “But she’s happy now, I think. She met someone and got married. I heard she’s expecting a baby.”

  Sara picked up her coffee and took a long sip. He could see that this was more than she had expected and probably a lot to take in at one time.

  After a while she said, “But you got out of it somehow. You pulled yourself together.”

  “You mean, I don’t seem that awful now?” he asked with a sudden, surprising smile.

  “Something like that,” she said, smiling back.

  “Well, thanks, but I have a long way to go.” He didn’t mean his reply to sound like a warning to her, but somehow it did. He sat up straight and rubbed his bad knee. “So, how does it compare with the Clam Box version?”

  “I hadn’t heard half of this,” she admitted. “Why did you tell me? You didn’t have to.”

  “I don’t know. . . . I just wanted to set the record straight with you, I guess.”

  It was a reason, but he knew it didn’t answer her question. Why did it matter to him what she thought? He didn’t really care about the rest of the town. But Sara was different.

  “Well, thanks for telling me. But I don’t judge people, if that’s what you thought. I think everyone gets knocked down, or has some problem they might be trying to work out. Even people who look totally put together,” she added. “You just never know about people, what’s really going on inside them.”

  He couldn’t help grinning. “How old did you say you were—a hundred and three? You look pretty good—for your age, I mean.”

  “Thanks a lot—” She laughed and looked about to say something more, but didn’t. “Nice fire,” she said, glancing at the stove. “I can never quite get mine going that well.”

  “Maybe the flue needs to be cleaned. I’ll check it for you.”

  “Thanks. When you get a chance.”

  “And that bike could use some help, too. Mind if I take a look?”

  “You don’t have to. I can bring it to a bike place in town.”

  “They’ll charge you a fortune. It’s really not worth it,” he insisted. “I can at least tell if you’re liable to break your neck riding it.”

  “Well, I guess I’d rather not break my neck, now that you mention it.”

  “Not on my property. You might sue me,” he said, giving her a serious look.

  “Oh, now I get it. Just covering yourself, are you? And I thought you were trying to be nice.” She laughed and pushed back her hair with her hand.

  He met her clear blue gaze and felt himself about to smile. Then forced himself not to.

  “Nice?” he repeated in a mocking tone. “Give me a break. What are you trying to do, Sara, ruin my reputation in this town?”

  She smiled at him. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell a soul.” She glanced at her watch and set her mug down on the table. “Got to go. Work tomorrow. Thanks for the coffee, though.”

  She stood up and he did, too.

  “No problem. Can I walk you back?” he offered.

  “Oh, no. Don’t be silly. I’ll be fine.” She picked up her jacket and pulled it on.

  Luke opened the door for her. His gaze met hers for a long moment, and he noticed again how pretty she was, without a drop of makeup, either. He noticed her blue eyes and the way her soft brown hair framed her face. He felt himself moving toward her for an instant. Then he stopped and stood to the side of the door, clearing her way.

  “Good night, Sara. I’ll watch you until you get in,” he said quietly.

  “Oh, all right,” she replied, sounding surprised. “Good night, Luke.”

  He watched her cross the short distance between their cottages, his mind tumbling with thoughts. Regrets about telling her his past, worry over what she thought of him now. And finally a strange sense of relief at being open with someone.

  At her doorstep she turned briefly and waved to him. He waved back, watched her go in, and then closed his own door.

  Yes, relief. He felt . . . better. Absolutely.

  But why Sara?

  CHAPTER FOUR

  NOW, THIS ONE IS VERY OLD. MY MOTHER AND father on their wedding day.” Lillian glanced at the back of the photograph, then handed it to Sara. “It has a notation, but I can’t make it out.”

  Sara leaned over from her seat on Lillian’s sofa. It was hard for her to read the faded handwriting in the late afternoon light. Finally she said, “Ruth and Albert. May sixth, 1919.”

  “Yes, May the sixth. Their anniversary. I’d almost forgotten.” Lillian took the photograph back and studied it. “Look at my mother’s gown. Wasn’t it spectacular? The lace was handmade, imported from France.”

  She pushed the sepia-colored photo toward Sara. It was a formal wedding portrait, probably taken in a studio. The young groom and bride looked grim and determined, as if the occasion required great moral resolve.

  Lillian looked more like her father, Sara thought, with his deep-set eyes and long narrow face. But Sara could also see a strong resemblance to Jessica Warwick in the delicate features of Lillian’s mother, her own great-grandmother, Ruth Merchant. They both even had the same luxuriant curly hair.

  “Your mother was very beautiful,” Sara commented. “She looks a lot like Jessica.”

  “Really? I don’t see that resemblance at all,” Lillian said curtly, taking the photo back. She examined it a moment, then tapped it with her index finger. “That pearl necklace first belonged to my great-great-grandmother. My mother promised that I would wear it, too, when I was married. But as it turned out, I never did.”

  “Why not?”
>
  Lillian sat back in her chair and took a sip of tea, as if she was deciding whether or not to answer. Finally she said, “My parents disapproved of Oliver Warwick. They forbade me to marry him, threatened to cut me off entirely if I went against their wishes. So when I did, no pearl necklace.”

  “How sad,” Sara said.

  “I survived,” Lillian replied dryly. She picked up some other photographs that were scattered on the coffee table and began to arrange them in a pile. Her hands trembled a bit, Sara noticed.

  “How about your sister and brother? Did they stop speaking to you, too?”

  “They were afraid to risk their inheritances, so they obeyed my parents’ wishes in the matter, by and large. My sister, Elizabeth, got in touch occasionally. Of course, when trouble came, no one offered any help. . . .” Lillian paused and took another sip of tea. “I didn’t go crawling back to them, either,” she added stiffly.

  Sara’s knowledge of the Warwicks’ trouble was limited to what she had heard through town gossip, but she didn’t press for details, sensing that for Lillian it was still a painful subject.

  “When my sister died, my brother, Lawrence, sent me the pearls and some other pieces of jewelry,” Lillian continued, sitting back in her chair. “I don’t believe he had any idea of its significance for me. Wait, let me find a picture of Lawrence for you,” she said, rifling through the photographs on her lap.

  Sara sat quietly, watching her. Had she ever heard that Lillian had defied her wealthy, aristocratic parents to marry Oliver Warwick? That was quite a twist to the family saga, which Sara was finding increasingly fascinating. The Warwicks’ story sometimes seemed like an intricate jigsaw puzzle that she was trying to assemble piece by piece. Now she wondered if there was a pattern she hadn’t seen before: Lillian defying her parents to marry for love, and Jessica now doing the same to marry Sam. The missing piece, of course, was Emily. What had happened with Emily that led to her own birth?