Whiskey Beach

Chapter Three


MAYBE HE’D LOST SOME PROGRESS OVERALL, ELI ADMITTED, but he’d stuck with the book for the best part of the day, and he’d produced there.

If he could keep his brain fired up, he’d write from the time he woke until the time he crashed. And okay, maybe that wasn’t healthy, but it would be productive.

Besides, the snow hadn’t relented until mid-afternoon. His vow to get out of the house at least once every day had to bow to two feet of snow and counting.

At one point when he simply couldn’t think clearly enough to put coherent words on the page, he continued his exploration of the house.

Tidy guest rooms, pristine baths—and to his surprise and puzzlement, the former upstairs parlor, north wing, now held a cross trainer, free weights, a massive flat-screen. He wandered the room, frowning at the yoga mats neatly rolled on a shelf, the towels tidily stacked, the large case of DVDs.

He opened that, flipped through the pages. Power yoga? His grandmother? Seriously? Tai chi, Pilates . . . Getting Ripped?

Gran?

He tried to imagine it. He had to believe he owned a damn good imagination or he’d never make a decent living writing novels. But when he tried to picture his watercoloring, pencil-sketching, garden-clubbing grandmother pumping iron, it failed him.

Yet Hester Landon never did anything without a reason. He couldn’t deny the setup and layout of the room showed careful thought and good research.

Maybe she’d decided she needed a convenient place to exercise when, like today, the weather prohibited her famous three-mile daily walks. She could have hired someone to outfit the room.

No, she never did anything without a reason—and she never did anything halfway.

And still he couldn’t imagine her sliding in a DVD with the goal of getting ripped.

Idly, he flipped through a couple more DVDs in the case, and found the sticky note.

Eli, regular exercise benefits body, mind and spirit. Now, less brooding and more sweating.

I love you,

Gran via Abra Walsh

“Jesus.” He couldn’t decide whether to be amused or embarrassed. Just how much had his grandmother told Abra anyway? How about a little privacy?

He shoved his hands in his pockets and walked to the window facing the beach.

While the sea had calmed, it remained gray under a sky the color of a faded bruise. Waves flopped up against the snow-covered beach, slowly, gradually nibbling away at that rippled blanket of white. The white mounds of dunes rose, sea grasses poked out like needles in a pincushion. They trembled in the wind, bent to the force of its hands.

Snow buried the beach steps, lay thick and heavy on the rails.

He saw not a single footprint, yet the world outside wasn’t empty. Far out in that gray forever he saw something leap—just a blur of shape and movement, here then gone. And he watched gulls wing over the snow, over the sea. In the snow-muffled quiet, he heard them laughing.

And thought of Abra.

He glanced back, gave the cross trainer an unenthusiastic study. He’d never liked putting in miles on a machine. If he wanted to work up a sweat, he’d play some round ball.

“Don’t have a ball, a hoop,” he said to the empty house. “And I do have a couple feet of snow. I should shovel the walk maybe. Why? I’m not going anywhere.”

And that last statement, he thought, had been part of the problem for nearly a year.

“Okay, fine. But I’m not doing any freaking power yoga. God, who thinks of that stuff? Maybe ten or fifteen on that damn machine. A couple of miles.”

He’d put in some miles on the jogging path along the Charles, usually working it in a couple times a week in decent weather. He’d considered a treadmill at his gym a last resort, but he’d put in plenty of time there, too.

He could certainly handle his grandmother’s little cross trainer.

Then he could e-mail her, tell her he’d found the note, done the deed. And if she wanted to communicate with him on something, just communicate. No need to bring her yoga buddy into every damn thing.

He approached the cross trainer with inherent dislike, glanced at the flat-screen. No, no TV, he decided. He’d stopped watching when he’d seen his own face on the screen too often, heard the commentary, the debates on his guilt or innocence, the truly horrible rundowns of his personal life, factual and not.

Next time, if there was one, he thought as he stepped on, he’d dig out his iPod, but for now he’d just get it done and stay inside his own head.

To get a feel for it, he gripped the handles, pushed with his feet. And his grandmother’s name flashed on the display screen.

“Huh.” Curious, he studied the pad, called up her stats.

“Whoa. Go, Gran.”

According to her last entry, which he realized was the day she’d taken the fall, she’d logged three miles in forty-eight minutes, thirty-two seconds.

“Not bad. But I can whip ya.”

Intrigued now, he programmed for a second user, keyed in his name. He started slowly, giving himself a chance to warm up. Then pushed it.

Fourteen minutes and one-point-two miles later, drenched with sweat, his lungs burning, he surrendered. Gasping for breath, he staggered to the mini-fridge, grabbed a bottle of water. After guzzling, he dropped to the floor, lay flat on his back.

“Jesus Christ. Jesus, I can’t even keep up with an old lady. Pitiful. Pathetic.”

He stared up at the ceiling, struggling to get his breath back, disgusted to feel the muscles in his legs actually quivering with shock and fatigue.

He’d played basketball for goddamn Harvard. At six-three, he’d made up for his relative disadvantage in height with speed and agility—and endurance.

He’d been a f*cking athlete once, and now he was weak and soft, underweight and slow.

He wanted his life back. No, no, that wasn’t accurate. Even before the nightmare of Lindsay’s murder, his life had been impossibly flawed, deeply unsatisfying.

He wanted himself back. And damned if he knew how to do it.

Where had he gone? He couldn’t remember what it felt like to be happy. But he knew he had been. He’d had friends, interests, ambitions. He’d had f*cking passion.

He couldn’t even find his anger, he thought. He couldn’t even dig down and find his anger over what had been taken from him, over what he’d somehow surrendered.

He’d taken the antidepressants, he’d talked to the shrink. He didn’t want to go back there. He couldn’t.

And he couldn’t just lie there on the floor in a sweaty heap. He had to do something, however incidental, however ordinary. Just do the next thing, he told himself.

He pushed to his feet, limped his way to the shower.

Ignoring the voice in his head that urged him to just lie down, sleep off the rest of the day, he dressed for the cold, layering sweatshirt over insulated shirt, getting a ski cap, gloves.

Maybe he wasn’t going anywhere, but that didn’t mean the walkways, the driveway, even the terraces shouldn’t be cleared.

He’d promised to tend to Bluff House, so he’d tend to Bluff House.

It took hours, with snowblower, snow shovel. He lost count of the times he had to stop, to rest when his pulse beat pounded alarm bells in his head, or his arms shook like palsy. But he cleared the driveway, the front walk, then a decent path across the main terrace to the beach steps.

And thanked God when the light faded to dusk and made continuing with the other terraces impractical. Inside, he dumped his outdoor gear in the mudroom, walked like a zombie into the kitchen where he slapped some lunch meat and Swiss cheese between two slices of bread and called it dinner.

He washed it down with a beer, simply because it was there, eating and drinking while he stood over the sink and looked out the window.

He’d done something, he told himself. He’d gotten out of bed, always the first hurdle. He’d written. He’d humiliated himself on the cross trainer. And he’d tended to Bluff House.

All in all, a pretty decent day.

He popped four Motrin, then dragged his aching body upstairs. He stripped, crawled into bed, and slept until dawn. Dreamlessly.

It surprised and pleased Abra to find the driveway cleared at Bluff House. She’d fully expected to slog through two feet of untrampled snow.

Normally, she’d have walked from her cottage, but opted against navigating deep snow or thin ice on foot. She pulled her Chevy Volt behind Eli’s BMW, grabbed her bag.

She unlocked the front door, cocked her head to listen. When silence greeted her, she decided Eli was either still in bed or closed up somewhere in the house.

She hung her coat in the closet, changed her boots for work shoes.

She started a fire in the living room first, to cheer the room, then headed to the kitchen to make coffee.

No dishes in the sink, she noted, and opened the dishwasher.

She could track his meals since he’d arrived. The breakfast she’d made him, a couple of soup bowls, two small plates, two glasses, two coffee mugs.

She shook her head.

This wouldn’t do.

To corroborate, she checked cupboards, the refrigerator.

No, this wouldn’t do at all.

She turned the kitchen iPod on low, then gathered ingredients. Once she’d made up a bowl of pancake batter, she went upstairs to find him.

If he was still in bed, it was time he got up.

But she heard the clicking of a keyboard from Hester’s home office, smiled. That was something anyway. Moving quietly, she peeked through the open doorway to see him sitting at the wonderful old desk, an open bottle of Mountain Dew (mental note to pick up more for him) beside the keyboard.

She’d give him a little more time there, she decided, and went straight into his bedroom. She made the bed, pulled the laundry bag out of the hamper, added bath towels.

She checked other baths on the way back in case he’d used hand towels or washcloths, checked the gym.

Back downstairs, she carted the bag into the laundry room, sorted, separated and started a load. And shook out, hung up his outdoor gear.

Not a lot to tidy, she realized, and she’d given the house a thorough cleaning the day before he’d arrived. While she could always find something to do, she calculated the time. She’d make him a kind of brunch before she rolled up her sleeves and really got to work.

The next time she went upstairs, she deliberately made noise. When she reached the office, he was up and moving to the door. Probably with the intention of closing it, she thought, so she stepped in before he could.

“Good morning. It’s a gorgeous day.”

“Ah—”

“Fabulous blue skies.” With her trash bag in hand, she walked over to empty the basket under the desk. “Blue sea, sun sparkling off the snow. The gulls are fishing. I saw a whale this morning.”

“A whale.”

“Just luck. I happened to be looking out the window just as it sounded. Way out, and still spectacular. So.” She turned. “Your brunch is ready.”

“My what?”

“Brunch. It’s too late for breakfast, which you didn’t eat.”

“I had . . . coffee.”

“Now you can have food.”

“Actually, I’m . . .” He gestured to his laptop.

“And it’s annoying to be interrupted, to be hauled off to eat. But you’ll probably work better after some food. How long have you been writing today?”

“I don’t know.” It was annoying, he thought. The interruption, the questions, the food he didn’t want to take time for. “Since about six, I guess.”

“Well, God! It’s eleven, so definitely time for a break. I set you up in the morning room this time. The view’s so nice from there, especially today. Do you want me to do any cleaning in here while you eat—or ever?”

“No. I . . . No.” After another slight pause. “No.”

“I got that. Go ahead and eat, and I’ll do what I have to do on this level. That way if you want to go back to work, I’ll be downstairs where I won’t bother you.”

She stood between him and his laptop, smiling genially in a faded purple sweatshirt with a peace sign dead center, even more faded jeans and bright orange Crocs.

As arguing seemed time-consuming and futile, he simply walked out of the room.

He’d meant to stop and have something—maybe a bagel, whatever. He’d lost track of time. He liked losing track of time because it meant he was inside the book.

She was supposed to clean the house, not take on the position as his damn keeper.

He hadn’t forgotten she was coming. But his plan to stop writing when she arrived, to grab that bagel and take it with him on a walk, to call home while he was out, well, the book sucked that away.

He turned left, into the glass-walled curve of the morning room.

Abra was right. The view was worth it. He’d take that walk later if he could find a reasonable route with the snow. At least he could get to the beach steps, take some pictures with his phone, send them home.

He sat at the table with its covered plate, its short pot of coffee, crystal glass of juice. She’d even taken one of the flowers from the living room arrangement and tucked it in a bud vase.

It reminded him of the way his mother had put a flower or some game or book or toy on the tray when she brought food to his sickbed when he was a boy.

He wasn’t sick. He didn’t need to be mothered. All he needed was someone to come in and clean so he could write, live, shovel damn snow if it needed shoveling.

He sat, wincing a little at the stiffness in his neck, his shoulders. Okay, the Shovel Snow for Pride Marathon had cost him, he admitted.

He lifted the dome.

A puff of fragrant steam rose from a stack of blueberry pancakes. A rasher of crisp bacon lined the edge of the plate and a little clear bowl of melon garnished with sprigs of mint sat beside it.

“Wow.”

He simply stared a moment, struggling between more annoyance and acceptance.

He decided both worked. He’d eat because it was here, and now he was damn near starving, and he could be annoyed about it.

He spread some of the butter she’d scooped into a little dish over the stack, watched it melt as he added syrup.

It felt a little Lord of the Manor—but really tasty.

He knew very well he’d been raised in privilege, but pretty brunches with the morning paper folded on the table hadn’t been everyday events.

The Landons were privileged because they worked, and worked because they were privileged.

As he ate he started to open the paper, then just set it aside. Like television, newspapers held too many bad memories. The view contented him, and letting his mind just drift, he watched the water, and the drip of melting snow as the sun bore down.

He felt . . . almost peaceful.

He looked over when she came in. “Second floor’s clear,” she told him, and started to lift the tray.

“I’ll get it. No,” he insisted. “I’ll get it. Look, you don’t have to cook for me. It was great, thanks, but you don’t have to cook.”

“I like to cook, and it’s not all that satisfying to cook just for myself.” She followed him into the kitchen, then continued on to the laundry room. “And you’re not eating properly.”

“I’m eating.” He mumbled it.

“A can of soup, a sandwich, a bowl of cold cereal?” She carried in a laundry basket, sat in the breakfast nook to fold. “You don’t have secrets from the housekeeper,” she said easily. “Not about eating, showering and sex. You need to put on about fifteen pounds, I’d say. Twenty wouldn’t hurt you.”

No, he hadn’t been able to find his anger for months, but she was drawing him a map. “Listen—”

“You can tell me it’s none of my business,” she said, “but that won’t stop me. So I’ll cook when I have time. I’m here anyway.”

He couldn’t think of a reasonable way to argue with a woman who was currently folding his boxers.

“Can you cook?” she asked him.

“Yeah. Enough.”

“Let’s see.” She cocked her head, swept that green-eyed gaze over him. “Grilled cheese sandwiches, scrambled eggs, steak on the grill—burgers, too—and . . . something with lobster or clams.”

He called it Clams à la Eli—and really wished she’d get out of his head. “Do you mind read as well as make pancakes?”

“I read palms and tarot, but mostly for fun.”

It didn’t surprise him, he realized, not in the least.

“Anyway, I’ll make up a casserole or two, something you can just heat and eat. I’ll be going to the market before I come back. I marked my days on the calendar there so you’ll have a schedule. Do you want me to pick up anything for you, besides more Mountain Dew?”

Her brisk, matter-of-fact details clogged up his brain. “I can’t think of anything.”

“If you do, just write it down. What’s your book about? Or is that a secret?”

“It’s . . . A disbarred lawyer looking for answers, and redemption. Is he going to lose his life, literally, or get it back? That kind of thing.”

“Do you like him?”

He stared at her a moment because it was exactly the right question. And the kind he wanted to answer rather than brush off or avoid. “I understand him, and I’m invested in him. He’s evolving into someone I like.”

“Understanding him is more important than liking him, I’d think.” She frowned as Eli rubbed at his shoulder, the back of his neck. “You hunch.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Over the keyboard. You hunch. Most people do.” She set the laundry aside, and before he realized what she meant to do, she’d stepped up to dig her fingers into his shoulder.

Pain, sudden and sweet, radiated straight down to the soles of his feet. “Look, ow.”

“Good God, Eli, you’ve got rocks in there.”

Annoyance edged to a kind of baffled frustration. Why wouldn’t the woman leave him alone? “I just overdid it yesterday. Clearing the snow.”

She lowered her hands as he stepped back, opened the cupboard for the Motrin.

Partly overdoing, she thought, partly keyboard hunch. But under all that? Deep, complex and system-wide stress.

“I’m going to get out for a while, make some phone calls.”

“Good. It’s cold, but it’s beautiful.”

“I don’t know what to pay you. I never asked.”

When she named a price, he reached for his wallet. Found his pocket empty. “I don’t know where I left my wallet.”

“In your jeans. Now it’s on your dresser.”

“Okay, thanks. I’ll be right back.”

Poor, sad, stressed Eli, she thought. She had to help him. She thought of Hester, shaking her head as she loaded the dishwasher. “You knew I would,” she murmured.

Eli came back, set the money on the counter. “And thanks if I don’t get back before you leave.”

“You’re welcome.”

“I’m just going to . . . see what the beach is like, and call my parents, my grandmother.” And get the hell away from you.

“Good. Give them all my best.”

He stopped at the door to the laundry room. “You know my parents?”

“Sure. I’ve met them several times when they’ve come here. And I saw them when I came to Boston to visit Hester.”

“I didn’t realize you came into Boston to see her.”

“Of course I did. We just missed each other, you and I.” She started the machine and turned. “She’s your grandmother, Eli, but she’s been one to me, too. I love her. You should take a picture of the house from down at the beach and send it to her. She’d like that.”

“Yeah, she would.”

“Oh, Eli?” she said as he turned to the laundry room and she walked over to pick up the laundry basket. “I’ll be back about five-thirty. My schedule’s clear tonight.”

“Back?”

“Yeah, with my table. You need a massage.”

“I don’t want—”

“Need,” she repeated. “You may not think you want one, but trust me, you will after I get started. This one’s on the house—a welcome back gift. Therapeutic massage, Eli,” she added. “I’m licensed. No happy endings.”

“Well, Jesus.”

She only laughed as she sailed out. “Just so we understand each other. Five-thirty!”

He started to go after her, make it clear he didn’t want the service. And at the jerk away from the door, dull pain shot across the back of his shoulders.

“Shit. Just shit.”

He had to ease his arms into his coat. He just needed the Motrin to kick in, he told himself. And to get back inside his own head without her in it, so he could think about the book.

He’d walk—somewhere—call, breathe, and when this nagging stiffness, this endless aching played out, he’d just text her—better to text—and tell her not to come.

But first he’d take her advice, go down to the beach, take a picture of Bluff House. And maybe he’d wheedle some information out of his grandmother about Abra Walsh.

He was still a lawyer. He ought to be able to finesse some answers out of a witness already biased in his favor.

As he followed the path he’d cut down through the patio, he glanced back and saw Abra in his bedroom window. She waved.

He lifted his hand, turned away again.

She had the kind of fascinating face that made a man want to look twice.

So he very deliberately kept his gaze straight ahead.