LITMIR.BIZ

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grandmother who’d wanted to live independently, so there was no totally destroying the charm. There was just a front room, bedroom and kitchen, but the casement windows bowed, and the bedroom had a slanted ceiling, and the living room had a huge limestone fireplace with a sit-down hearth. She hadn’t fixed any of it. Hadn’t looked at any of it either. She’d been sleeping on a hard mattress with a bald pillow and no bedding. Cobwebs filled the corners; the floors hadn’t been swept, and the cupboards were empty.

      She couldn’t remember the last time she brushed her hair or changed clothes.

      Eventually this had to stop. She realized that in an intellectual way, but emotionally, there only seemed one thing inside of her. All she wanted was to sit all day and seep with the rage, steep with it, sleep with it. Fester it. Ache with it. My God. It had been bad enough to lose Robert. Bad enough to wake up in a hospital bed with a face so battered she couldn’t recognize herself, bruises and breaks that made her cry to touch, lips too swollen to talk…and that was before she’d been told Robert was dead.

      Initially, the grief had ripped through her like a cyclone that wouldn’t quit. It just wrenched and tore and never let up. But then came the trial. She’d been so positive that the trial would at least bring her the relief and satisfaction of justice. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the dark street, heard her laughing with Robert, complaining about walking in high heels from the party on the balmy fall night, and then there they were. The bastards, the drug-high bastards. There was no reason for them to start punching her, playing her, scaring her. They’d have given them all their money in a blink. But it wasn’t money they wanted. Robert—he’d tried to protect her, tried to get in front of her. That’s why they were meaner to him. Why he ended up dead.

      All three of them had looked clean-cut and young in court—because they were. They had cried their eyes out, which had impressed the judge, too. They’d come from good families, had no records, weren’t even drug users—they just made one mistake, thought they’d experiment one time, and foolishly bought some mixed cocktail that caused psychotic behavior. It was a tragic accident, their attorney claimed. The boys weren’t hardened criminals, nothing like that. And the judge had given them the most lenient sentences possible.

      That’s when the rage was born. Camille remembered the day in court, feeling the slow, huge, hot well of disbelief. A few years in jail and they’d be out. Easy for them. They hadn’t lost their soul mate. They hadn’t lost anything but a few years, where she’d lost everything. Her life had been completely, irreversibly, hopelessly destroyed.

      She stared blankly at the cracks in the stucco ceiling, hearing the drizzle of rain. Inside of her there was nothing but a hollow howl. It wasn’t getting any better. She couldn’t seem to think past the red-sick haze of rage. She’d tried curling up for days. She’d tried not eating. She’d tried hurling things and breaking things. She’d tried silence. She’d tried—and was still trying—drinking.

      No matter what she tried, though, she couldn’t seem to make it pass. She couldn’t go under, around, through it. The rage was just there.

      At some point, she got up and finished the shot of Kahlúa.

      And at some point after that, she jerked out of the rocker and chased fast for the bathroom. The Kahlúa was as worthless as all the other darn liquors. It refused to stay down.

      By the time she finished hurling, she was extra mean. She stood in the bathroom doorway, sweat beading on her brow, weakness aching in every muscle in her damn body. She wasn’t sure she was strong enough to lift a dust ball. Her throat felt as it had been knifed open and her stomach as if she’d swallowed hot steel wool.

      With her luck, she was going to end up the first wanna-be alcoholic in history with an allergy to alcohol. Either that, or Kahlúa had joined the long list of liquors her body seemed to reject.

      Thinking that possibly she could nap—and maybe even sleep this time—she turned toward the bedroom…just as she heard another knock on the door.

      “Aw, come on, Violet. I’ll come up to the house for dinner. But right now, just leave me alone.”

      “It’s not Violet. It’s me. Your neighbor. Pete MacDougal.”

      A charge volted through her pulse as if she’d touched a volatile electric cord. Pete didn’t have to identify himself for her to recognize his voice. There was a time that voice would have comforted her. Pete’s clipped tenor was part of her childhood, as familiar as the rail fence and the tree house in the big maple and the toboggan hill between the MacDougals and Campbells.

      She’d never played with Pete because he was older, Violet’s age. But she’d toddled after him for years with puppy eyes. When he was around, he’d lift her over the fence so she wouldn’t have to walk around, and he’d pulled her sled back up the hill, and he’d let her invade the sacred tree house when all the other kids said she was still a baby.

      Pete was not just her childhood hero; he’d been an extra zesty spice to her blood because the four year age difference made him forbidden. Further, he was ultracool, with his biker shoulders and thick dark hair and smoky eyes. He was the oldest of three brothers, where she was the youngest of three sisters, which she’d always felt gave them a key connection. What that connection was, she’d never pinned down exactly. She’d just wanted to have something in common with Pete MacDougal. Coming from three-children families and living in Vermont had seemed enough to be critical bonding factors when she was a kid.

      Those memories were all sweet and a little embarrassing and definitely fun—but not now. Right now, she didn’t want to see anyone she’d once cared about, and Pete’s voice, specifically, hurt like a sting. He had one of those full-of-life, uniquely male voices—full of sex and testosterone and energy and virility.

      It wasn’t Robert’s voice. In fact, it was nothing at all like Robert’s sweet voice. But that bolt of vibrant masculine tenor reminded her of everything she’d lost. And because she felt stung, she stung back.

      “Go the hell away.”

      He knocked again, as if he hadn’t heard her. “Could you just open the door for a minute?”

      “NO.”

      He knocked again.

      What did it take? A sledgehammer? “Damn it, Pete. I don’t want visitors. I don’t need sympathy. I don’t want help. I don’t want to talk to anyone. I just want to be left alone. GO AWAY.”

      When he knocked the fourth time, she yanked open the door from sheer exasperation. If the only way to get rid of him was to punch him in the nose, then she was about to slug him good—and never mind that he was almost a foot taller than her.

      Instantly she noticed that foot-taller. Noticed his black-and-white wool shirt, his oak height, the hint of wet mahogany in his damp hair, that his good-looking sharp-boned face still had smoky, sexy eyes. She also noticed that he wedged a size-thirteen boot in the door before she could slam it on him again.

      In that same blast of a second, he looked her over, too—but he didn’t make out as if he noticed that she was in days-old clothes, her hair unkempt, her face paler than a mime’s. He didn’t make out as if he noticed anything personal about her at all. He just said, “I have to tell you something about your sister.”

      “So tell me and get out.”

      “Hey, I’m trying.” He didn’t force his way in, just kept that big boot wedged in the doorway. He leaned his shoulder in the jamb, which insured he had a view of the inside. But if he saw the piles of boxes and packing debris in the dreary light, he made no comment. “It’s Violet. I don’t know what on earth’s wrong with your sister. But something sure is.”

      “I’ve seen her very day. She’s perfectly fine.”

      “Ditsy as always,” Pete concurred. “But after she came home after the divorce, she started playing in the greenhouse. By last spring, she’d added another greenhouse and opened her herb business. Then last spring, she laid off Filbert Green—you know, the man your dad hired after he retired,

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