The Cabin. Carla Neggers

“Sounds wonderful, doesn’t it?”

      “When were you going to tell me?”

      There was nothing calm, professional or deliberate about him now. This was Jack Galway at his stoniest. “I don’t know. I hadn’t even thought about it.” But that was an outright lie, and when she caught her reflection in the mirror, she saw the guilt. “I’m sorry. It was a spur of the moment thing, but I should have told you—”

      “Don’t be sorry. I don’t give a damn what you do.”

      He hung up.

      Susanna stared at the dead phone. Then she hit redial. He let his voice mail take the call. She hit redial again. More voice mail. On her third redial, he picked up, but didn’t speak. She did. “Damn it, Jack, did you hang up on me?”

      “Yes, and I’m going to hang up on you again.”

      “And I’m going to keep calling you until you knock it off!”

      “That’s harassment. I’ll have you arrested, even up in Boston.”

      No one could get under her skin the way he could. “Just try.” She took a quick breath, decided not to fight fire with fire. This once, she could be reasonable. “I can see how you’d look at the cabin as a thumb in your eye, but that’s not what I was thinking when I bought it. Truthfully, I wasn’t thinking—it was like it was meant to be. I couldn’t resist. It’s in the most beautiful spot, right on Blackwater Lake. Gran grew up there. You’ll have to see it.”

      “Why?”

      “Why?” she repeated dumbly. The man drove her mad. He knew the worst, most awkward, most difficult and probing questions to ask her. But he was a trained interrogator. He could get people to confess to murder, never mind to why they’d bought a cabin in the Adirondacks.

      “Yes. Why do I have to see it?”

      “I don’t know—it makes sense. You’re my husband.”

      “It’s an open invitation?”

      She licked her lips. He had her off-balance, and he knew it. “I suppose so. Sure.”

      “You know what Sam says, don’t you?” His voice lowered, deepened. “He says I should go up there, cuff you and haul you back to Texas.”

      Susanna nearly dropped the damn phone in the sink.

      “I knew that’d leave you speechless,” her husband said. “Good night, darlin’. Enjoy your cabin.”

      He hung up on her again.

      This time, she didn’t call him back.

      When she returned to the kitchen, Gran was back, heating up a quart of Jim Haviland’s famous clam chowder on the stove. The girls were setting the table. It was a comfortable scene, three generations of women in Gran’s simple, clean kitchen with its tall ceilings, old painted cabinets and framed samplers from her cross-stitch craze fifteen years ago. Even at eighty-two, Iris Dunning retained her tall, graceful build. Susanna could picture her grandmother as an Adirondack guide in her youth. People assumed she was a widow when she moved to Boston, but that wasn’t true. She’d never married. Now she was in her sunset years, her hair white and wispy, her skin translucent and wrinkled. But her mind was sharp, and she stayed active and socially engaged—she was taking tai chi at her senior center. Before her granddaughter and great-granddaughters had moved in, she’d rented rooms in the house to university students to supplement her income and give her company.

      Susanna sank onto a chair at the table. Her knees were wobbly from her talk with her husband.

      Gran glanced back at her from the stove. “Jimmy Haviland says you’re avoiding him.”

      “I’ve been busy,” Susanna said. But that wasn’t entirely true. Busy, yes, but the last two times she’d stopped at Jim’s Place, its opinionated owner had asked her if she’d told Jack about her stalker. He would keep asking her until she said yes. He wouldn’t squeal to Gran. That wasn’t Jim Haviland’s style. He might to Jack, though.

      Ellen set a sturdy white bowl in front of her. “Mom, we’re sorry we told Dad about the cabin—”

      “No, no, that’s not your fault. I was going to tell him. It just slipped my mind.”

      Maggie shot her mother a dubious frown, but said nothing. Ellen sighed. “We tried to talk to him while we were home. We told him he should try to be more romantic.”

      “Romantic? Your father?” Susanna smiled, shaking her head with affection for her two clueless daughters. “He just threatened to handcuff me and drag me back to Texas.”

      Gran set the steaming soup tureen of chowder in the middle of the table. “I don’t know,” she said, a mischievous gleam in her very green eyes. “I think it’s a start.”

      Four

      After thirty years of running a neighborhood pub, Jim Haviland considered himself a good judge of character. It came down to experience and survival—they’d honed his instincts about people. Still, he had to admit that the woman at the bar had him stumped. He guessed she was in her late twenties. Slightly built, short, curly, dyed red hair and pale skin, almost pasty looking. She wore a lot of makeup and about a half ton of gold jewelry. Dangling earrings, rings on both hands, bracelets, a thin gold necklace with a tiny heart pendant and a thicker chain necklace. He wouldn’t want all that metal on him in a nor’easter. But the snow had finally stopped, and the cleanup was in full force. The plow guys would be showing up later for the beef stew special.

      The woman’s clothes made her stick out in this neighborhood, too. She had on a close-fitting baby blue ribbed V-neck sweater, tight Western-cut jeans and leather boots that would land her on her ass on an icy sidewalk. She played up her femininity, but there was a hardness to her, a toughness that Jim couldn’t reconcile with the jewelry, the clothes, the painted nails. He wouldn’t be surprised if she had a .22 strapped to her ankle.

      After making sure he didn’t use a mix, she’d ordered a margarita. Her accent wasn’t local, but Jim was no good at placing accents outside of New England. He drew a couple of drafts for two firefighters who’d come in, complaining about the hazards of space heaters and overtaxed extension cords. Davey Ahearn, on his stool at the end of the bar, was listening in, nursing a beer and keeping an eye on the woman with the makeup and the margarita.

      “New in town?” Jim asked her.

      “Two days. It’s that easy to tell?”

      “With that accent?” Jim smiled at her. “Where you from?”

      “Texas. A little bitty town outside Houston.”

      “Hope you brought a good winter coat with you.”

      She gestured toward the coat rack next to the door, gold bangles sliding down her slender wrist. “No, sir, but I bought one on sale this morning. They said it’s a basic parka. I never knew there was anything but. I bought a winter hat and gloves, too. I think mittens would drive me batty.” She raised her gray eyes at him. “I’m holding off on the long underwear.”

      She had an engaging manner, whoever she was. “That’s one thing about owning a bar,” Jim said. “I can get through a Boston winter without long underwear. You’ll like it here in the spring. Are you planning to stick around that long?”

      “I’m hoping to relocate here, but have you checked out the rents lately? Whoa. They’re sky-high.” She sipped more of her margarita, looking as if she relished every drop. “I don’t know why you put up with it. Aren’t you the folks who dumped the tea in the harbor?”

      “That we are. You have a job lined up?”

      “More or less, yes, sir.”

      “What’s your name?”

      “Audrey,” she said. “Audrey Melbourne.”

      Jim