Linda Fairstein - The DeadHouse

"I understand that dinner is part of my holiday surprise, but a hungry guy tends to get nervous when the woman he loves can barely boil water. Do you need help in the kitchen?"

"The ladies who feed you so well all summer have helped me put together this wonderful feast. You'll simply have to trust them, not me. It's all island food." I disappeared into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator, where everything had been stored for my arrival, along with explicit instructions. My first task was the hardest-to open a dozen Tisbury Pond oysters.

I had learned after many summers here how to use an oyster knife to pry the lids apart without drawing blood on both my hands. Fifteen minutes of lifting, twisting, and scooping the delicious creatures out of their shells, and I returned to the living room with one of Jake's favorite treats. The fresh, briny oysters tasted as though they had been pulled from the water just hours ago.

"You're off to a winning debut, darling. What's next?"

"You open the wine. I'll set out the first course in the dining room."

There was a smaller fireplace in my dining room, as well. And I started that, after I lighted the six candles in the chandelier above the table. Jake found a bottle of Corton Charlemagne, grand cru, and worked on drawing out the cork.

"The first course, Monsieur Tyler, is compliments of the Homeport." Jake loved the chowder at the lobster house in nearby Menemsha, which-like every other restaurant on our end of the island-closes in the fall. "I actually had the good sense to freeze a quart of it. Cheers!"

When we'd finished the soup and I had cleared the dishes, I sent Jake back into the living room. "The next one is trickier." There was a tiny wooden shack in Menemsha called the Bite. And for years, the Quinn sisters, who owned the business, had been cooking and selling the world's absolutely most delicious fried clams. Jake detoured to the Bite, straight from the airport, on every trip to the house. He had even convinced NBC to have the Today show do a summer feature on the tasty little enterprise.

Before they closed in October, I had urged Karen and Jackie Quinn to sell me a batch of the batter in which they roll the morsels before deep-frying them. I bought clams to store in the freezer, and a Fry Daddy in which to attempt to concoct their magic recipe. When I was done with the effort, I carried a trayful into the living room.

"Not even close." Jake laughed. "Tell the girls they've got nothing to worry about. Must have something to do with their shack and its ambience."

The main course was the easiest. Chris and Betsy Larsen kept one of the family fish markets open in town all year long. They had boiled two three-pound lobsters for me in the afternoon, and the caretaker had brought them up to the house. I reheated them in the oven, melted some butter, and we feasted for an hour on the meaty tails and claws.

Jake added logs to the fire, and I stretched out on the living room floor while he opened a bottle of champagne. "Merry Christmas, Alexandra," he said, joining me in front of the hearth and filling a flute for each of us. I rested my head against his knee and wished him the same. We clinked our glasses together and I watched the bubbles rise and burst before I began to sip.

"Where are you?"

"Just thinking."

"About what?"

I rolled onto my back, a pillow from the sofa beneath my head, and stared into the flames. "How much my life has changed this year. What a sense of stability you've given me, in the middle of all the turbulence I see on the professional side every day."

"Can't you look me in the eye when you tell me these things?"

I slowly turned my head to glance at Jake, smiling. "I wasn't planning on saying them. I'm not sure that I've even stopped to reflect on them before now. I just know how very differently I feel about everything I do and think. If I hadn't been able to talk to you when Mercer was shot, I can't imagine what-"

"You don't let people in easily." He was stroking my hair and placing tender kisses on my nose and forehead. "You've got to be more trusting."

"The problem is that at the beginning I trust everyone. That's what's so damn disappointing. It seems as though every time I open the door to something new, the odds are twice as likely that it will slam shut on my fingers."

"Let's try to come up with solutions. For example, darling, think about this. Here's two of us, each with a ridiculously over-priced, way too large for one person who's hardly ever home, Manhattan apartment. Same general neighborhood-same proximity to your favorite restaurants, delis, liquor store, and Grace's Marketplace. Critical factors in a relationship."

I had been drinking enough to know that whatever Jake said, I wasn't going to have the appropriate answer. I could feel my pulse quickening and knew the silken pajama top couldn't muffle the sound of my pounding heartbeat. I shifted back to watch the flames dance in the fireplace.

"I think this morning's broken window and bumbling scaffolders were an omen, Alex. Why don't you give up that place and move in with me? I'm not even in town enough to get in your way very often." Jake had rested his glass on the floor and was massaging my neck. "Imagine that every single night could be like this one."

He couldn't see the tears that had welled up in my eyes. My head was swimming with conflicted feelings. It had been so long since the heartbreak of my fiancé’s death, and I had struggled for years to keep free of emotional attachments, fearing that I would lose whomever I let get close to me. For the first time, I had someone to come home to who listened to me talk about my passion for my work, the failures when I couldn't solve a victim's case and the triumphs when justice was actually achieved. Jake never carped when something kept me late at the office or when the phone rang in the middle of the night.

"I know what you're thinking now. You can't make this kind of decision yourself, without consulting your friends. This move will take a summit meeting. All the major powers have to be assembled. No problem, darling. I've covered summits for years. The Middle East, the former Soviet Union, the Pacific Rim, Camp David. How difficult can it be to move one five-foot-ten-inch, hundred-and-fifteen-pound prosecutor less than ten city blocks? Even a stubborn one? We'll bring Joan in from Washington and Nina from Los Angeles. We'll import Susan and Michael. Louise and Henry, are they on the island for the holiday? With Duane?"

I nodded my head, licking the tear that had dripped to the corner of my mouth and smiling despite myself as he ticked off the names of my friends.

"Well, I'll start with them at the crack of dawn. Take a doe sleigh up Herring Creek Road to get to them through the snow, if you insist. If I can't win you over myself, then I'll bring in all the allies I need to persuade you that it's the only sensible thing to do. Get Esther on the line. Get me Lesley Latham. Where are Ann and Vernon?"

I wanted to speak but knew that I would break the spell of the moment. Nothing Jake could say would convince me to move in with anyone, without being married. And he wasn't any closer to thinking about that permanent kind of commitment than I was. I knew him well enough to know that. I cherished my freedom and my independence. As much as I loved being with him and around him, it had only been half a year since we met, and we both had such frenetic lifestyles that it was impossible to know whether we could sustain the intensity of our relationship.

Jake put on his best anchorman's voice. "News flash. Ladies and gentlemen, this bulletin just in to our desk. Exclusive from Liz Smith. We take you live to Chilmark, on Martha's Vineyard, where former prosecutor Alexandra-"

"Former prosecutor?" I rose on one elbow and faced Jake, sure that the tip of my nose must be red, betraying my tears.