Heroes Are My Weakness: A Novel

Chapter Three

ANNIE WOKE UP IN A slightly more positive frame of mind. The idea of driving Theo Harp gradually insane was so satisfyingly twisted that she couldn’t help but feel better. There was no way he could write those awful books without a powerful imagination, and what could be more well deserved than turning that imagination against him? She thought about what else she might be able to pull off and allowed herself a brief fantasy of Theo in a straitjacket, trapped behind asylum bars.

With snakes slithering across the floor! Scamp added.

You won’t get him that easily, Leo sneered.

Annie hit a snag in her hair and tossed her comb aside. She pulled on jeans, a camisole, a long-sleeved gray T-shirt, and topped it all with a sweatshirt that had somehow survived her college days. As she left her bedroom for the living room, she took in what she’d done before she’d gone to bed last night. The small animal skulls Mariah had displayed in a bowl edged with barbed wire were now buried in the bottom of a trash bag. Her mother and Georgia O’Keeffe might find bones beautiful, but Annie didn’t, and if she had to spend two months here, she was going to feel at least marginally at home. Unfortunately, the cottage was so compact there was nowhere to stash the iridescent plaster mermaid chair. She’d tried to sit in it and been jabbed in the back with a pair of breasts.

Two items she’d uncovered disturbed her—a copy of the Portland Press Herald dated exactly seven days earlier and a bag of freshly ground coffee in the kitchen. Someone had been here recently.

She drank a cup of that same coffee and made herself eat a piece of jelly toast. She dreaded the thought of going back to Harp House, but at least she’d have WiFi access. She studied the painting of the inverted tree. Maybe by the end of the day she’d know who R. Connor was and whether his or her work had any value.

She couldn’t put it off any longer. She stuffed her inventory notebook, her laptop, and some other things in her backpack, wrapped herself up, and began her reluctant journey to Harp House. As she crossed the eastern edge of the marsh, she eyed the wooden footbridge. Bypassing it made the trip longer, and she needed to stop avoiding it. She would. But not today.

Annie had met Theo and Regan Harp two weeks after Mariah and Elliott had flown off to the Caribbean together and returned married. The twins were just coming up the cliff steps from the beach. Regan had appeared first, all golden tan legs and long, dark hair swinging around her pretty face. Then Annie had seen Theo. Even at sixteen, skinny, with a few breakouts on his forehead and a face not quite big enough to carry his nose, he’d been arresting, aloof, and she was instantly captivated. He, however, had regarded her with undisguised boredom.

Annie desperately wanted them to like her, but she was intimidated by their self-confidence, and that made her tongue-tied in their presence. While Regan was easy and sweet, Theo was rude and cutting. Elliott tended to indulge them both in an attempt to make up for their mother’s desertion when they were five, but he insisted they include Annie in their activities. Theo begrudgingly invited her to go out with them on their sailboat. But when Annie arrived at the dock that jutted between Harp House and Moonraker Cottage, Theo, Regan, and Jaycie had already set off without her. The next day she’d shown up an hour earlier only to have them not appear at all.

One afternoon Theo told Annie she should go see an old lobster boat wreck not far down the shoreline. Annie discovered too late that the wreck had become a nesting spot for the island’s gulls. They’d dive-bombed her, batting her with their wings, and one had struck her on the head in a scene straight out of Hitchcock’s The Birds. Annie had been wary of birds ever since.

The litany of his misdeeds had been unending: dead fish in her bed, rough play in the swimming pool, abandoning her in the dark on the beach one night. Annie shook off the memories. Fortunately, she’d never be fifteen again.

She began to cough, and as she stopped to catch her breath, she realized it was her first coughing spasm of the morning. Maybe she was finally getting better. She imagined herself sitting at a warm desk in a warm office, a warm computer in front of her, as she worked away at a job that would bore her to tears but would bring a steady paycheck.

But what about us? Crumpet whined.

Annie needs a real job, sensible Dilly said. She can’t be a vent forever.

Scamp piped up with her own words of advice. You should have made porn puppets. You could have charged a lot more for the shows.

The porn puppets were an idea Annie had entertained when she was running the worst of her fever.

She finally reached the top of the cliff. As she passed the stable, she heard a horse whinny. She quickly cut into the trees just in time to see Theo emerge through the stable doors. Annie was cold even in her down coat, but he wore only a charcoal sweater, jeans, and riding boots.

He stopped walking. She was behind him, but the tree cover was sparse, and she prayed he wouldn’t turn around.

A gust of wind stirred up a ghostly dervish in the snow. He crossed his arms over his chest, grabbed the bottom of his sweater, and pulled it over his head. He wore nothing underneath.

She gazed at him in astonishment. He stood there bare-chested, the wind tearing at his thick dark hair as he defied the Maine winter. He didn’t move. She might have been watching one of the old television soaps famous for using any excuse to get their heroes out of their shirts. Except it was bitterly cold, Theo Harp was no hero, and the only explanation for what he’d done was insanity.

He knotted his hands into fists at his sides, lifted his chin, and gazed at the house. How could someone so beautiful be so cruel? The hard planes of his back . . . The muscularity of his broad shoulders . . . The way he stood against the sky . . . It was all so strange. He seemed less a mortal and more a part of the landscape—a primitive creature who didn’t need the simple human comforts of warmth, food . . . love.

She shivered inside her down coat and watched him disappear through the turret door, his sweater still dangling at his side.