Lucy And The Stone. Dixie Browning

least, he thought they were pelicans. He was going to have to bone up on his Audubon if he didn’t want to blow his cover. He’d considered bringing along his laptop to work on the series of articles he’d been doing on spec. One of the major syndicates had put out a few feelers after his series on archaeological piracy, and he’d been flattered...and interested.

      At the last minute he’d decided against it. He wasn’t ready to go back to work. His brain was still lagging about two beats behind his body, possibly because he hadn’t had a real vacation in more years than he could remember.

      Or possibly because he’d come so damned close to checking out permanently, he’d been forced to face up to what his life had become.

      Which was empty. No ties, no commitments, nothing to show for his thirty-seven years other than a few yellowed scrapbooks and a few awards packed away in storage with his old tennis racquet.

      In that frame of mind, he had impulsively put a call through to a guy he hadn’t heard from in over a year. Reece was the brother of the woman Stone had almost married once upon a time. A woman who’d finally had the good sense to marry some decent nine-to-fiver who had offered her the home and kids she wanted. Stone had lost touch with Shirley Stocks, but from time to time he still heard from her brother. The kid had thought Stone was some kind of hero, always flying off to the world’s hot spots at a moment’s notice.

      Reece was currently studying journalism at UNC. As it appeared that Stone would soon be headed south to the Old North State, it had seemed like a good opportunity to get together.

      Bird-watching! Thank God Reece didn’t know the depths to which his hero had sunk. It had been his aunt’s idea, the bird-watching cover. Evidently she’d mentioned it when she’d reserved the cottage for the summer, and the real estate agent had mailed him a bundle of birding data along with directions for finding the place. Rather than bother to explain that he didn’t know a hummingbird from a hammerlock, and couldn’t care less, he’d let it stand. But this whole drill was beginning to strike him as slightly bizarre. Not to mention slightly distasteful.

      Reluctantly, Stone began paddling himself back to shore. His shoulders, his thighs and his belly were starting to tingle. Sun had never been a particular problem before, but a few months of holding down a hospital bed had a way of thinning a guy’s skin right down to the nerve endings.

      The cottage wasn’t luxurious, but it was comfortable. Better yet, it was quiet. Best of all, it was his alone for the next two months—books on the shelf, cigarette burn on the pine table, rust-stained bathtub and all.

      All it lacked was a Home Sweet Home sampler nailed to the wall. He’d already taken the liberty of rearranging some of the furniture and was considering dragging a cedar chaise longue into the living room from the deck, just because he liked the way it smelled.

      Home sweet home. Maybe it was time he thought about getting himself something more permanent than a mail drop, a storage shed and a series of hotel rooms. The last real home he could remember—and the memory was fading like a cheap postcard—was a white frame house with a wraparound porch and three pecan trees in the backyard that were home to several platoons of squirrels.

      Decatur, Georgia. They had moved there when his father had gotten a promotion, just in time for Stone to enter the first grade. Before the year was out, that portion of his life had come to an abrupt end.

      As for the Hardissons’ Buckhead mansion, the only time he had felt at home there had been when his aunt was off on one of her jaunts and Mellie had let him eat in the kitchen with the help. He could still remember sitting on an overturned dishpan in a chair and stuffing himself with her Brunswick stew and blackberry dumplings.

      Jeez! When was the last time he’d thought of all that? This was what happened when a guy had too much time on his hands, Stone told himself. Ancient history had never been his bag.

      After making himself a couple of sardine sandwiches and forking his fingers around a cold beer, he wandered out onto the screened deck. Still wearing his trunks, he took a hefty bite of sandwich and turned his thoughts to his unlikely assignment. He’d been in the hospital when Billy had won the primary last month, else he might have heard something. Not that Georgia politicians were of any great interest at IPA. At least, not since the Carter days.

      Senator Billy?

      God, the mind boggled. Stone hadn’t seen his cousin since their great-uncle Chauncey Stone’s funeral in Calhoun, several years ago. Billy had been flushed and smelling of bourbon at eleven in the morning. He had escorted his mother into the church, but Stone had seen the bimbo waiting in his red Corvette farther down the street.

      Family. Funny how it could influence you in ways you never even suspected. He didn’t particularly like his cousin. He didn’t know if he loved his aunt or not, but he’d always recognized her strength, and strength was something Stone had been taught to admire. Strength of character. Strength of purpose. His aunt had both. And when he thought about her at all, he admired her for what she was, and didn’t dwell too long on what she wasn’t.

      Sipping his beer, Stone let his mind wander unfettered across the tapestry of the past thirty-seven years. After a while the empty bottle slipped to the floor and he began to snore softly in counterpoint to the cheerful sound of screeching gulls, scolding crows and gently lapping water.

      * * *

      Lucy watched the odometer roll over a major milestone. She flexed her arms one at a time, then flexed her tired back and wondered how far it was to the next rest area. She’d been driving for eight solid hours, stopping only for gas and junk food, and to wolf down a bacon cheeseburger and a large diet drink for lunch. By the time she’d gotten as far as Kernersville, she was already having second thoughts, but it was too late to turn back, even if she’d wanted to. Her gas was turned off, her mail and paper deliveries stopped.

      Alice Hardisson didn’t owe her a thing. Lucy knew she should have had more pride than to accept the offer, but one didn’t argue with a Hardisson. Not argue and win, at any rate. Fortunately, she had learned early on to be a gracious loser. Or, at the very least, to know when the game was lost.

      And the game was lost. Alice had won. Surrendering to the inevitable, Lucy vowed to enjoy every minute of her unexpected free vacation, and if that made her a parasite, she’d just have to grin and bear it. She couldn’t even remember the last vacation she had taken. Her honeymoon trip with Billy didn’t count. That had been a revelation, not a vacation.

      Guiltily, she knew she was looking forward to it, too. A whole summer of swimming, sleeping late, staying up all night to read all those juicy escapist books she never had time to read during the school year.

      And no more frozen dinners. No more school cafeteria! She was going to eat fried corned-beef hash with catsup and onions for breakfast and fried banana sandwiches for supper, and work off all the calories by walking and swimming.

      Who said you can’t have it all?

      What’s more, she was going to play her guitar until she built up a set of calluses that would shatter bricks. And she’d sing along, even if she couldn’t carry a tune. Which she couldn’t.

      The night Alice had called, Lucy had been feeling mildewy. Rain always depressed her, and it had been raining for over a week. Studying the help-wanted ads for a summer job hadn’t improved her mood, either.

      When she’d picked up the phone, expecting to hear Frank’s familiar voice, and heard Alice Hardisson’s instead, she’d been so shocked she inhaled a piece of popcorn. It was minutes before she could speak coherently. Even now she wasn’t sure she’d been thinking coherently. “Goodness, you’re the last person in the world I ever expected to hear from,” she’d managed to say.

      They had been friends while Lucy was married to Billy, or at least as much as two women of different generations and totally different backgrounds could ever be friends. Alice had been quietly furious about the marriage, but she’d covered it well. Every inch the gracious lady, she had never let on by so much as a single cross word. Instead, she’d had her secretary mail out announcements and then