Carla Neggers - The Carriage House

She thrust the garland at Andrew and stepped back quickly, as if she didn't dare get too close. He eyed the flowers. "I'll give it to her when she comes downstairs."

"Don't make her write a thank-you note like last time. It was adorable, but, Andrew, she's only six. She can't be expected to write thank-you notes."

After Lauren's last gift, Dolly had scrawled "Thank you" in milky pink gel ink and had drawn a picture of a cat. She'd spent a lot of time on the cat. Andrew shrugged. "Okay. No thank-you note."

A knowing smile lifted the corners of Lauren's mouth. She was an odd mix of contrasts. Elegant, breezy, gracious, often tactless. Andrew hoped her need to give Dolly little gifts would run its course.

She shifted, glancing out at the street. She could hold her own with high-powered executives, at fundraisers and cocktail parties, with her husband's brainy friends, but Andrew and his six-year-old daughter put her at a loss. "I suppose I should be running along."

"Thanks for stopping by."

She gave him a chiding smile. "Always so polite."

"Not always."

She left, and Andrew gave Dolly the garland when she burst back onto the porch with a stuffed whale he'd forgotten she had. Of course, she loved the garland. She gasped in delight, and after he helped her open the bag, she put the flower crown on her head.

"Oh, Daddy, I am a princess!"

He laughed, and they set about pouring more lemonade and playing stuffed animals. Dolly tried to boss him around, wanting him to do precisely what she wanted him to do when she wanted him to do it, but he held his own.

When she got home, Lauren grabbed the poodles and let them chase her around the yard until she was panting and sweating. The dogs collapsed in the shade, their little chests heaving. She wished she could lie there with them in the grass, knowing nothing more than they did.

She didn't know where Richard was. She didn't care.

This was her problem, and hers alone.

She sank onto a teak bench, surrounded by rhododendrons and white lilacs. She could hear the trickle and gurgle of the nearby waterfall fountain, a new addition to her gardens, carefully constructed of stone and water plants. Ordinarily she would have found its sounds soothing, but today they were irritating, everything setting her on edge.

After leaving Andrew's house, she'd turned around on the dead-end side street where Jedidiah Thorne had built his carriage house. Tess Haviland's car was parked in the driveway. She was out of sight, probably calculating whether she'd do better selling the place as is or fixing it up first. As is wouldn't cause Lauren a problem: she could snap it up herself. But if Tess decided to fix it up, or if she took an interest in the carriage house and kept it for herself, that could be a disaster.

Lauren brushed away tears that were hotter even than her flushed skin. If only she could go back a year, arrive at the carriage house sooner…and stop Andrew Thorne from killing her brother.

It must have been an accident, an act of passion and pent-up rage. Oh, God, she thought, who could blame him? He was raising his and Joanna's little girl alone. Ike had infected his wife like a virus, insidiously eroding all her defenses.

What must Andrew think now, with Tess next door?

He hadn't looked concerned when Lauren had brought him the garland. Despite his rough upbringing, he was nothing if not stoic, losing control only that one time in the carriage house, with tragic results.

The thought of him propelled Lauren to her feet. All her life, she'd been the one in the background doing what needed to be done to protect her brother, cleaning up after he'd been rude, impulsive, reckless or otherwise impossible.

She'd always made sure his excesses didn't hurt anyone else. She would do so again, no matter how unappealing her options, how much she still loved her brother and always would, and missed him-no matter how much she hated what she'd known for a year.

Her beautiful, outrageous brother was dead.

She had to concern herself with the living, with what was right.

Marcy, her favorite of the three poodles, rolled onto her back, and Lauren laughed, sinking onto the grass and rubbing the animal's stomach. "You know just what I need, don't you?" She felt the dog's quick heartbeat, let it strengthen her resolve. Marcy had been hit by a car two years ago, and yet, as tiny and broken as she was, she'd pulled through. "Let a little of your luck rub off on me, sweetheart, okay? Don't be stingy, because I'll need it."

Tess sat out on her kitchen steps, feeling the strain in her neck and back from crouching to fix the cellar window. She'd managed the repair job without actually going into the cellar. She had a new plan-she'd go back to Boston tonight and get Susanna to come up with her in the morning. They'd search the cellar together. Susanna could handle a skeleton. If it turned out to be a figment of Tess's imagination, she could count on Susanna not to tell the whole world. She kept people's finances to herself, after all.

It was a good plan. Sensible.

Tess didn't consider herself a coward for not wanting to investigate the dirt cellar on her own. She'd gone down there by herself in the first place, hadn't she? She had nothing to prove, and if a crime had been committed-at whatever point in the past hundred thirty years-it might be smart to have a witness.

She spotted Dolly slipping through the lilacs and eased off the steps, down to the driveway.

"Is it okay if I come over?" Dolly asked, still technically in the lilacs and thus her own yard. "Harl says I'm not supposed to be a pest. Am I a pest?"

Tess smiled. "Mosquitoes are pests. A princess can never be a pest."

The little girl giggled as if Tess had said the funniest thing she'd ever heard. She looked behind her, on the Thorne side of the lilacs, and yelled, "Daddy, she says it's okay!" She turned to Tess and jumped out into the tall grass. "He'll be right over."

Tess had the feeling Andrew and Harl weren't about to let Dolly come over unchaperoned until they were satisfied about what had happened last night. Under the circumstances, she could hardly take offense.

"I brought Tippy Tail some food." Dolly reached into her pocket and withdrew a crumpled, squished individual packet of cat food. She showed it to Tess. "It's her favorite."

"Do you want to put it in her dish?"

Her eyes widened with excitement at such a prospect. "Could I?"

"Sure. Just tiptoe so you don't disturb her and the kittens. We should probably wait for your dad."

She rolled her eyes. "He won't go through the bushes. He says he's too big. Do you think he's too big?"

Tess laughed. "No, Dolly, I don't think he's too big."

He materialized behind her. "Too big for what?"

It was a question to which there was no good answer, and Tess saw the glint in his eyes. She said, "Dolly wants to feed Tippy Tail. I said it's okay, but probably just two of us should go inside. Your cat's on the skittish side."

"You two go ahead."

That was all the encouragement Dolly needed. She bounded over to the steps, stopped herself, then did an exaggerated but very quiet tiptoe. She turned her face up to Tess and whispered, "I have a loose tooth. See?" It was the sort of non sequitur Tess was coming to expect from the six-year-old. "Harl says he can pull it out with his pliers."

"You don't believe him, do you?"

She nodded. "Uh-huh!"

"Dolly," Andrew said. "You know Harl's just teasing you."

She giggled again, and Tess realized that Dolly Thorne had her rather unusual babysitter all figured out. And her taciturn father, too, no doubt. She was no more worried about Harl really pulling her tooth with a pair of pliers than he intended to do so.