LITMIR.BIZ

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previous experience that peaceful wasn’t a state that he was likely to achieve when John left. Matthew had understood and hadn’t left him on his own for the most part, which was something Nick had always been grateful for, although maybe not quite as grateful as Matthew would have liked; Nick knew that his friend had wanted more from him.

      “That’s nice -- that your mother went to visit him, I mean. Were they friends?” Nick was struck with a sudden desire to know more about the man who had lived in this house.

      “Friends?” John frowned. “Not as such, no.” He walked over to the kettle and with a minimum of fuss produced a cup of instant coffee, bringing it over to the table and setting it down in front of Nick before dragging out a chair for himself. “He was just -- he was from here, d’ye see? And she knew fine that he’d be missing the place. She’d take him the local paper, tell him what’d been going on, smuggle in a drop of whiskey too, if I know her.” He smiled. “She’s not one for following rules when they don’t suit her.”

      Nick smiled at the thought, and then realized that he was looking into John’s eyes a little too warmly and dropped his gaze. If he was going to stay here, the last thing he needed to be doing was making anyone uncomfortable with unwanted attraction, even if it wasn’t Nick’s fault that John was warm and charming and much, much sexier than he seemed to realize. A small community like this, one made up of families that had been here for generations ... it would be asking for trouble to open up. “Did he have any friends? Anyone I could talk to?”

      “Start with my mother,” John told him. “She’ll know. But I think you’ll not find many he was close to. He wasn’t unhappy, not exactly, but he was a lonely man.” John pushed back his chair and stood up. “I’ll bring in your cases, shall I? And it’s a little chilly in here; when it’s aired out a little, you’d best light a fire or two. There’s peat stacked behind the house ...” John paused and chuckled at himself. “Imph. You’ll not be knowing how to build a peat fire, now will you?” He pursed his lips in thought. “Look; if you’re wishing me long gone, say the word, but I’ve nothing I was planning to do this afternoon and I can help you get settled in if you’d like.”

      Almost pathetically thankful, Nick nodded. “If you don’t mind, that’d be great. I don’t even know where to start.” He drank a good third of his coffee in one swig and stood up. “But I can help with the bags. And if you could show me where the peat is?”

      They went outside into the fresh air. Some clouds were threatening, but not enough that rain seemed imminent. Nick realized that he really needed to go through the house and find out where everything was. If they lost power, he’d need candles, or a flashlight at least. He’d need to know how to work the chimney -- he knew vaguely that there was something called a flue, but he wasn’t sure what it did -- and if there was a washing machine. He hadn’t planned this properly. All he’d thought about was getting as far away as possible, and Traighshee had seemed to fit the bill.

      “If you plan on staying, and you’ve got the money, you might want to think about installing radiators,” John told him as they walked back to the car and got out Nick’s luggage. “The smell of a peat fire doesn’t make up for the dust they make, and if the peat’s damp, you’ll be choking on the smoke.” Nick’s face must’ve been more expressive than he’d intended, because John grinned again. “There’s a water heater, and that’s electric, so you’ll be able to have a hot bath tonight -- oh, and the water will likely be brown, but that’s the way it comes up here, so don’t panic.”

      “Is that why you drink so much tea here?” Nick hitched the strap of his bag over his shoulder -- God, it was heavy; he should have had all of the books shipped, instead of trying to bring some of them with him -- and watching as John closed the trunk of the car again. “To hide the color of the water?”

      John’s mouth twisted in a smile as he picked up Nick’s suitcase. “Maybe,” he agreed, beginning to walk back to the house. “But the best way to do that is to put it inside a dram.”

      Nick had been doing a fair amount of drinking himself in the past month, once he wasn’t taking what felt like a small arsenal of pills every day -- painkillers, anti-inflammatories, antibiotics -- so he was no stranger to a good glass of whiskey. The thought that the water in said glass of whiskey might be brown, though, noticeable or not, wasn’t all that appealing. Maybe he’d switch to vodka.

      Inside again, Nick considered putting the bag down, but realized he’d just have to move it upstairs anyway. Might as well do it now. “Have you been upstairs?” He gestured toward the staircase that he could see through the doorway between the front hall and what seemed to be a sitting room.

      “The first time was when I helped carry your uncle down them,” John replied. “But, aye, I went up there when I brought down the bed linen, remember? There’s a bathroom and three bedrooms. Only two beds though; your uncle wasn’t much for visitors and I know he had one room shelved for his books, for it was my father who put them up for him.” John stepped back, allowing Nick passage. “After you,” he said with a courteous inclination of his head. “And while we’re up there, I’ll take a look at the water heater.”

      The thought of having a room just for books was appealing; the discovery that his uncle had cared for books, something that Nick had never known, made him smile. He started up the stairs carefully, feeling the creak of solid old wood underneath his feet, noting the scars and scratches in the finish.

      He kept going when he reached the top of the stairs, making room behind him for John with the heavier suitcase and glancing into the room that overlooked the front yard, which had only a single bed in it along with a bureau and a small bookshelf.

      At the top of the staircase to the left was the bathroom, painted a pale shade of gray and containing an old-fashioned claw foot tub as well as shower fixtures. The hallway was larger than Nick would have expected, with another, taller bookcase full of books and a bench with a padded seat that appeared to open for storage. At the back of the house were the other two bedrooms -- the makeshift library on the left behind the bathroom and the master bedroom to the right.

      Nick moved into the master bedroom and set his bag down onto the mattress, which was covered with a thin mattress pad but otherwise stripped. There was a phone on the bedside table, he noted.

      John appeared in the doorway but didn’t cross the threshold. His gaze went around the room, and then came to rest on Nick for a long moment before he looked away. He put the suitcase down just inside the room and left without speaking, heading toward the bathroom.

      Nick frowned, but assumed that John would be back in a few minutes. He moved about the room slowly, picking things up and setting them down where they’d been. A watch, of the wind-daily variety, which he was pretty sure was real gold. A handful of coins, still foreign-looking to him. He wondered how long it would take living in another country before the money looked like actual money and not Monopoly money.

      The wallpaper was dark; navy blue stripes with cream and, when he ran his fingers down along it, thinly coated with the same dust that lay thick everywhere else. An asthmatic would have a hell of a time getting settled here, Nick thought. He opened a dresser drawer and looked inside at the neatly folded sweaters.

      Wandering over to the bookshelf against the wall near the window, Nick crouched down and looked at the books. A few titles that he recognized, but for the most part none of them were ones he was familiar with.

      When he stood up and glanced out the window, the first thing he saw was a small white church.

      The second was the graveyard that lay between the church and the house -- his house. Nick froze, staring at it without blinking, his eyes tracing over each headstone, most of them old and rounded with time and weather, only a few of them appearing to be more recent. Possibly a hundred in total.

      “My father’s buried there.”

      The voice behind him was quiet, but in the silent house a whisper would sound loud, Nick thought. Unwilling to make a fool of himself in front of John twice, he forced himself to look away from the graves, dropping his gaze to the wide windowsill,

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