The Carriage House. Carla Neggers
plates.”
“What kind of car?”
“Rusted Honda.”
Harl nodded knowledgeably. “City car.”
Andrew watched as a few yards off, Dolly found a rung with one foot, then the other, lowering herself out of her tree house. On the second rung, she turned herself around very carefully and leaped to the ground, braids flying, crown going askew. She let out a wild yell, ran to Andrew and jumped on his lap with great enthusiasm. She was a solid girl, sweating from her adventures, bits of leaves and twigs stuck in her socks and hair. Her crown hadn’t flown off because it was anchored to her head with about a million bobby pins. She and Harl had put it together in his shop. The Queen of England couldn’t have asked for anything gaudier, never mind that “Princess” Dolly’s jewels were fake.
“What’s up, pumpkin?”
“I can’t find Tippy Tail. She won’t come out.”
If he were an expectant cat, Andrew thought, he wouldn’t come out, either. “Did you call her in a nice voice?”
Dolly nodded gravely. This was serious business. “I used my inside voice even though I was outside. Like this.” She dropped to a dramatic whisper, demonstrating. “Come, kitty, kitty, come.”
“And she didn’t come?”
“No.”
“Then what did you do?” Harl asked.
“I clapped my hands. Like this.”
She smacked her palms together firmly and loudly, which didn’t help the pounding behind Andrew’s eyes. “That probably scared her, Dolly,” he said.
She groaned. “Princess Dolly.”
Andrew set her on the grass. He was beginning to get a handle on this princess thing. “Do you make everyone call you princess?”
“I am a princess.”
“That doesn’t mean everyone has to call you Princess Dolly—”
“Yes, it does.”
Harl scratched the side of his mouth. “You don’t make them bow and curtsy, do you?”
She tilted her chin, defiant. “I’m a princess. Harl, you said the boys should bow and the girls should curtsy, that’s what people are supposed to do when they see a princess.”
Andrew suddenly understood the summons from her teacher. It wasn’t just about crowns. He shot Harl a look. “You got this started. You can finish it. You talk to Miss Perez.”
“What?” Harl was unperturbed. “She’s six. Six-year-olds have active imaginations. I thought I was G.I. Joe there for a couple years.”
“Six-year-olds don’t make their classmates bow and curtsy.”
“I don’t make them,” Dolly said.
Harl was doing a poor job of hiding his amusement. As a baby-sitter, he was reliable and gentle. Andrew never worried about his daughter’s safety or happiness with his cousin. But Harl had a tendency to indulge her imagination, her sense of drama and adventure, more than was sometimes in her best interest.
“I’m taking a walk down to the water before I start dinner,” Andrew said to her. “Do you want to come with me, let Harl get some work done?”
“Can we find Tippy Tail?”
“We can try.”
She scrambled off toward the front yard ahead of him. Andrew got to his feet, glancing back at his older cousin, remembering those first months so long ago when Harl had come home from Vietnam, so young, so silent. Most people thought he’d kill himself, or someone else. Andrew was just a boy, didn’t understand the politics, the limited options Harl had faced—or the low expectations. His cousin had defied everyone and become a police detective, and now an expert in furniture restoration and a keeper of six-year-old Dolly Thorne.
He and Andrew had each defied expectations, fighting their way out of that need to keep on fighting. Andrew had worked construction, forced himself to give up barroom brawls and a quick temper, met Joanna, had become an architect and a contractor. He and Harl weren’t part of the North Shore elite and never would be. They didn’t care.
“We’re not keeping the kittens,” Andrew said. “We’re clear on that, aren’t we, Harl?”
“Crystal. I told you. I hate cats.”
That didn’t mean he wouldn’t keep the kittens, especially if Dolly badgered him. Harl operated according to a logic entirely his own. He hated cats, but he’d taken in a mean, scrawny, pregnant stray.
“Daddy,” Dolly called impatiently, “come on. Let’s go.”
He headed out across the lawn, smelling salt and lilacs in the warm spring air. If finding Tess Havi-land at the carriage house somehow meant Ike Grantham was back in town, so be it. Dolly was happy and healthy and thought well enough of herself to wear a crown. As far as Andrew was concerned, nothing else really mattered.
Three
Lauren couldn’t get the clasp on her pearl necklace to catch. Her neck ached, and she’d lost patience. She wanted to throw the damn necklace across her dressing room.
Ike had given it to her. He’d picked it up on one of his adventures. “You should go with me next time. Beacon-by-the-Sea will get along fine without you. So will the project. Live a little.”
She shut her eyes, fighting a sudden rush of tears. Too much wine. She’d already had two glasses on an empty stomach. She didn’t know how she’d make it through dinner. Richard had chosen a dark, noisy restaurant in town. She could sit in a corner and drink more wine while he played terrorism expert and husband of the North Shore heiress.
God, what was wrong with her? She opened her eyes and tried again with her necklace. Richard never gave her jewelry. He liked to give her books, theater and concert tickets, take her to museum openings. No flowers, jewelry, scarves, sexy lingerie. No pretty things.
Ike hadn’t understood what she saw in Richard. He was protective for a younger brother, possibly because it had been just the two of them for so long, their parents dying in a private-plane crash twenty years ago. They’d liked Ike best, of course. Everyone did. People spoiled him, spun to his whims and wishes.
“Richard Montague, Lauren? You can’t be serious!” Ike had stamped his feet, horrified. “He’s one of those limp-dicked geeks who thinks he’s covering up his geekiness by knowing scary things.”
“He plays squash and racquetball,” she’d argued. “He’s run a marathon.”
Her brother had been singularly unimpressed. “So?”
To Ike, Richard was the antithesis of everything he was. Ike had dropped out of Harvard; Richard had his doctorate. Ike had never worked seriously at anything, even his beloved Beacon Historic Project. Richard worked seriously at everything. Ike played to play, for its own sake, for the sheer pleasure of it. Richard played for self-improvement, networking, always with a greater purpose than mere pleasure.
Marrying Lauren, she was quite certain, came under that same heading. It was to his personal benefit. She was an asset. She had money, a good family name, “breeding,” as he’d once let slip, smiling to cover his mistake. It didn’t mean Richard didn’t love her. He did, and she loved him. Not everyone operated out of the passions of the moment the way Ike did. He had spontaneity and a keen sense of fun and adventure, but no idea what real love, real commitment, meant.
“Oh, Ike.”
The clasp fell into place. She ran the tips of her fingers over the pearls and managed, just barely, not to cry. She’d have to start all over with her makeup if she did. She studied her reflection in the wall of mirrors. She was tawny-haired and slender, determined not to let