Carla Neggers - The Carriage House

"What do you think?" he asked.

She laughed, her eyes crinkling at the corners, shining. "I think I need a good manicure."

Dolly jumped up, an even bigger mess than Tess. She spread out her dirty hands and came after Andrew, but he finally scooped her up and dangled her upside down by her ankles. She laughed and screeched and still managed to smear him with mud.

He plopped her back down, and she immediately charged off. "I'm going to get Harl!"

Harl headed her off before she got too close to his paint job.

"You two must be doing something right," Tess said. "She's a great kid."

"She came that way. She was a happy baby, too."

"Did it scare you-the idea of raising her on your own?"

The serious question caught him off guard, but he shrugged, pushing back the rush of emotion. Dolly. He'd do anything for her. It had been that way from the beginning. "You do what you have to do."

She seemed to understand, and he remembered that she'd lost her own mother at a young age and must have watched her father sort out his life after her death, carry on. She brushed some of the drying mud off her hands. "I should go clean up." But her light, lively eyes turned up to him, and she added, "Six-year-olds scare the hell out of me, more so maybe than missing skeletons and strange noises in the dark."

"I don't think so. I just think you're out of your comfort zone with kids.You can't let them scare you."

"I'm not afraid of them. It's myself. Saying the wrong thing that ends up sending them into therapy or an opium den-or worse."

"That's the trick, isn't it? To teach them that they are responsible for their choices, not their parents, not their teachers, their friends."

"Yes, but there are things we adults can do to totally screw up a kid's life. Like beat them to a bloody pulp, come home in a drunken stupor-"

"Die on them?"

His voice was soft, as soft as he could make it, but her mouth snapped shut. She took in a quick breath. "I can remember my mother sitting on the rocks not far from here, wrapped in a blanket while she watched me play. I think, somehow, I knew it wasn't her fault she was abandoning me. Kids can figure that out."

"Hang around Dolly a while. You'll see that kids can figure out most things. They know the difference between someone who genuinely cares and is doing their best, and someone who's pretending, going through the motions."

She sighed. "I'm not good at faking it."

He smiled, flicking a hunk of dried mud off her long, slender fingers. "I know."

"Andrew, yesterday-it was just a weird set of circumstances. We were operating outside our comfort zones." She spoke in a low voice, serious, but trying to apologize, he felt, for something she didn't regret. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you about what I saw."

"Do you want to go on as if we didn't-"

"Yes."

"Okay. Go ahead."

She frowned. "Not just me. You, too. It won't do any good if I'm the only one who pretends it didn't happen."

He'd started off toward the house, knowing he hadn't responded the way she'd expected. He'd never been one to operate off someone else's script. He was the antithesis of the Granthams' graciousness and easy charisma. No good at it. Felt phony. He was almost as bad as Harl at cocktail parties, remembering one at the Grantham house when Joanna was alive. She could do small talk, said it was a skill he could learn, like fishing or building a house. She'd wandered through the spacious rooms, smiling, playing her role as Richard Montague's trusted assistant. He was going to the Pentagon now, married to Lauren Grantham. Her brother was off somewhere. And Joanna was dead.

"Andrew?"

He was ten paces away from her, but turned, saw her expression. She wasn't panicked. She was-in-trigued, he thought. He moved closer. "I look life square in the eye," he said. "It's the only way I can operate. I have no regrets about yesterday." Then he added, "Except one."

"And that would be?"

Her eyes were gleaming, excited, no sign she'd ever had any intention of pretending nothing had happened between them. Repressing it, maybe. Or trying to. He noticed the shape of her mouth, its slight tilt at the corners. He smiled. "I shouldn't have made up the guest-room bed."

His Pentagon appointment was on hold.

Richard poured himself a scotch as he absorbed the news. Jeremy Carver had delivered it personally, calmly. He was in Richard's chair in the study now, watching his reaction. "Once we have a definitive answer on your brother-in-law's whereabouts, we can move forward," Carver said. "The senator believes it's in everyone's best interest to wait."

"The senator? Or you?"

"I speak for the senator."

"Yes, of course."

Richard tried to keep the contempt out of his tone. He was smarter and more educated, did more important work than almost anyone else he knew, yet he always had to go through the mind-boggling boredom of pretending he was just a regular guy who didn't think himself above anyone else. Anti-intel-lectualism reigned. He had no doubt if he weren't married to a Grantham, he wouldn't be on his way to Washington.

He sipped his scotch, felt it burn all the way down, waited a moment for the burning to subside. It was late evening. Lauren was with her book club. He'd hardly seen her at all today and wondered if she regretted last night. Maybe she was embarrassed. He smiled a little, thinking of it. To have sexual as well as intellectual power over her was something to relish.

But he had no power over Jeremy Carver. None at all. Carver would bail without hesitation. It wouldn't matter that Richard was the best mind for the job, that his experience and knowledge were without parallel. Carver only cared about what was good for his boss. Nothing else mattered. Richard admired that level of clarity. He seldom operated in such a simple, black-and-white world.

Someone had Ike's body.

Someone.

"Would you care for anything to drink? There's iced tea, sparkling water, springwater. Lemonade, too, I believe."

Carver shook his head. "No, I need to get back to Boston. I have a plane to catch."

"To Washington?"

He nodded. "I'll keep in touch. Listen, the minute we hear from Ike, or your wife tells us how we can get in touch with him, we're back in business."

"Lauren doesn't know where her brother is."

"No? Well, I think that's weird."

"You never met Ike," Richard said simply.

"We all have our family problems. The senator won't hold a difficult brother-in-law against you. But a scandal? A goddamn missing dead body? That's something else."

"I can't control Ike Grantham. That's putting an unfair burden on me."

"Yeah? Welcome to the big leagues, Dr. Montague."

Richard took another swallow of scotch, didn't even feel the burn. The light was dim in the study, producing no shadows whatsoever, the air outside still, gray with impending rain. "And Tess Haviland likely saw nothing in that cellar."

"Maybe, maybe not. Either way, I can't help but question her timing. You're up for a Pentagon appointment, and she's finding dead bodies in the cellar." Carver got to his feet, pointing at Richard. "She could be a problem for you."

"You mean that she's making trouble for me deliberately," Richard said quietly. "That assumes I have enemies."

Carver grinned and started for the door. "We all have enemies, Doctor, even a bright, important guy like you." He patted the door frame, turned and winked. "Produce Ike. Let me check out this Haviland woman, see if someone's paying her to make your life miserable. It could be one of the senator's enemies, you know."

"I'm an expert on terrorism, Mr. Carver, not politics."

"I know. Why do you think I'm here?"

Tess awoke in a panic. She was in her own bed in her own apartment, fighting a terrible sense of urgency, a crawling anxiety that defied rationality. She tried to focus on the familiar shifting shadows in her half-dark bedroom, the sounds in the courtyard outside her window. But her mind charged ahead, her heart racing. She couldn't breathe.