Читать книгу: «The Phoenix», страница 2
East Hampton, NY
‘Goddamn it!’
Mark Redmayne shielded his eyes from the sun as he watched his golf ball veer wildly to the left of the eleventh hole before landing with an audible plop in the depths of the lake. He stiffened. Damn. A brilliant but ruthless businessman, Redmayne was in his early fifties, although he had the physique of a much younger man. Coupled with his stiff, soldier-like bearing, it helped preserve the aura of barely repressed violence that hung around him constantly, intimidating rivals and friends alike. Mark Redmayne was not a man one wanted to cross.
He was playing like an amateur today. Technically, of course, he was an amateur, but only because he didn’t have time to play golf professionally, not because he wasn’t good enough. Running a Fortune 500 company turned out to be a tiresomely full-time gig. And then of course there was Mark Redmayne’s other job. His duty. His calling. That was even more demanding. Especially on days like today.
He’d come to the golf course this afternoon to try to detach. It wasn’t working. His conversation of a few hours ago with Gabriel, one of The Group’s very best operatives, continued to haunt him.
‘It’s her, sir,’ Gabriel informed him bluntly over the telephone. ‘She’s alive and she wants us to know it.’
‘She’s not alive. She’s dead,’ Mark Redmayne said, as if by saying the words forcefully enough, he could make it so. ‘We killed her.’
Pinching the bridge of his nose to try to shut off the headache hammering wildly inside his skull, he gazed out of his office window. Below him, Manhattan lay spread out like a dream, a glorious kingdom he had conquered. Mark Redmayne hadn’t founded his company, but under his leadership he had grown it from the modest printing business his father had left him into a global multi-billion-dollar empire. It was incredible the effect a tragic childhood could have on one’s ambition, one’s determination to succeed at all costs. Business success, however, meant nothing to Mark Redmayne compared to this. The Group, and the work they did under Mark’s leadership – that was reality. That was what mattered.
‘We killed them both,’ he muttered, as much to himself as to his operative on the other end of the line.
‘Maybe not,’ said Gabriel.
‘“Maybe?” … Don’t you give me “maybe not”!’ Redmayne exploded. ‘I was there, OK? I watched that chopper go down.’
Most of The Group’s agents were terrified of the boss’s temper, and with good reason. Mark Redmayne wasn’t known for his compassion; his retribution, once invoked, was ruthless. But Gabriel was one of the few people immune to his outbursts. Nothing could sway him from the facts.
‘Athena Petridis’s DNA was never found, sir.’
A muscle on the side of Mark Redmayne’s jaw began to twitch.
‘Because her remains were destroyed in the fire.’
‘But her husband’s weren’t?’ Gabriel challenged. ‘They were in the cockpit together, side by side. If his bones didn’t burn, why should hers?’
‘I don’t know,’ Redmayne admitted grudgingly. ‘I just know that they did. This discussion is over.’
He hung up, which was childish, but he didn’t have the strength or the patience to listen to any more of the agent’s doubts. Largely because they were his doubts too. As soon as he saw the picture, the dead child with his branded foot, he knew. Athena Petridis, that bitch, that witch, that untouchable monster of a woman … was alive.
Mark Redmayne had hated the Petridises for a very long time. There was a special place in his psyche for people who hurt children. The terrible secret of his own childhood – the single, awful event that had made him who he was and led him to The Group in the first place – had fanned the flames of his loathing into a raging, crazed, homicidal inferno which no force on earth could ever put out.
But what if somehow – impossibly – Athena Petridis had survived the crash that had killed her husband? And she was out there right now, laughing at them, laughing at him, for having the audacity to think he’d won. For twelve years, she’d played dead, lulling The Group, and the world, into a false sense of security. But now, with this sick, cruel message, this violation of an innocent child – L – she was back.
‘I’ll fetch you new balls, sir.’ Mark Redmayne’s caddy looked nervously at his employer. Mr Redmayne was not used to losing, and had a reputation for taking his frustrations out on the closest underling to hand. This time, however, to the caddy’s relief, he seemed oddly calm.
‘No need, Henry. There’s nothing wrong with my old balls. I just need to remember I have them.’
‘Sir?’
‘And then I need to start playing a bit better.’
Back in his Bombardier Challenger Learjet after the round, Mark Redmayne made the call he’d been putting off since this morning.
‘Let’s say you’re right.’
‘Sir.’ Gabriel waited.
‘Let’s say she’s alive.’
‘She is alive, sir.’
‘So you say. But what leads do you have?’
‘None yet, sir.’
‘Well find some if you expect me to take you seriously,’ Mark Redmayne commanded, and hung up.
Opening his briefcase, he looked again at the picture of the dead boy. No name. Just a tiny, maimed corpse, washed up on the beach like so much trash. That was how Spyros Petridis had treated the poor and the powerless. Like trash to be discarded. And his she-devil wife had helped him do it.
No governments had had the balls to take on the Petridises. It had been left up to them, to The Group, to do what needed to be done. To right what was wrong. To track down evil wherever it lurked, and destroy it whatever the cost. The Group operated outside of laws, outside of boundaries, outside of national interest or political or religious affiliation. They took risks no one else would take. And they covered their tracks. Always.
Killing Athena Petridis once had been Mark Redmayne’s duty.
Killing her twice would be his pleasure.
Sikinos, Greece
Sister Magdalena, Mother Superior of the tiny Convent of the Sacred Heart, bowed her gray head in prayer. Dusk had already fallen, and through the windows of the remote, Byzantine chapel set deep in the island’s wilderness, one could glimpse the setting sun bleeding its dying rays into the sea.
Forgive me my transgressions, the elderly nun murmured, her arthritic fingers worrying at the rosary beads around her neck. Help me to find the right path, Lord. Guide me through the darkness.
Most of the nuns were at supper in the refectory, a simple repast of tomatoes, olives and vine leaves stuffed with wild rice. But Sister Magdalena always fasted on this day: the anniversary of Sister Elena’s arrival.
Sister Elena and the visiting priest, Father Georgiou, were the only other souls in the chapel tonight. Across the stone-flagged nave, inside an exquisite, medieval carved wooden confessional, Sister Elena was receiving the sacrament.
‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.’
The Mother Superior could hear only mumbling: first Elena’s soft, singsong tones and then Father Georgiou’s deep baritone. Although of course she knew the words by heart.
‘Name your sins, my child.’
What sins could Elena possibly have? This kind, gentle, endlessly patient soul? This stoic, even cheerful, sufferer of torments that would have broken any ordinary human being? Poor Sister Elena. She had lost so much. Her youth, her beauty, her loved ones. Even now, all these years later, the doctors said she was in constant physical pain. And yet her faith remained as strong as ever, a shining beacon of hope through the dark night of despair.
She should be leading us, Sister Magdalena thought, for the thousandth time. Not me. I’m like John the Baptist, unfit even to wash her feet. And yet Sister Magdalena accepted that this was God’s plan. Elena had come to them on the boat from Ios like baby Moses in his basket of reeds, a helpless refugee. Although she had never spoken of what or whom exactly she was fleeing, no one doubted the sincerity of her plight. Back then she’d been too weak to lead the community. Now she was too humble, too devoted to her own spiritual life of purity and sacrifice.
Sister Elena emerged from the confessional. Seeing the Reverend Mother kneeling there, she bowed her head once respectfully, then hurried back to her cell to begin her penance. Could words and prayers and fasting really right the wrongs of the past? Or the present, for that matter? It was a nice idea. Evil and goodness existing like numbers on some sort of balance sheet that could be moved around at will. If only that were true.
In the privacy of her bare room she began removing her garments one by one and laying them neatly on her bed. The heavy wool tunic, belt, scapular and veil, all black, followed by a black veil, extra-thick in Sister Elena’s case, then a white one, and finally the white ‘coif’ or headdress worn by all the fully professed sisters at Sikinos. Finally she stood naked, relieved to be free of her torturous habit on this stiflingly hot night.
There was no mirror in the cell, nor any other accouterment of vanity, but at night the fifty-year-old nun could clearly see her reflection in the glass windowpane. Her figure was still beautiful, slender yet rounded, with full high breasts and a narrow waist tapering into softly curved hips and thighs almost as firm as they had been in her youth. From the neck down, she was still a beautiful woman. But her face was marked with sin.
My face is my penance, she reflected.
Then again, there was more to life than physical perfection.
Power, for instance.
Reaching into the pocket of the tunic lying neatly on her bed, she pulled out the piece of paper Father Georgiou had given her, unfolding it carefully with slow, practiced hands. Newspapers were forbidden at the convent, along with all other contact with the outside world. Just seeing the words H Avγ
(Athens top-selling daily newspaper translated as ‘The Dawn’) at the top of the page after all these years gave Sister Elena a little thrill.
But not as much of a thrill as the photograph.
The dead child. The sign. Right there, for the whole world to see!
There were many of them out there, children and adults alike, branded like this young boy. Brothers and sisters in fire. In pain. Reaching down, Sister Elena ran her fingers over the grooves of the brand seared into her own flesh, at the top of her inner thigh. A simple letter ‘L’, the same mark as on the migrant boy. How ironic that it should be this child, this nameless refugee – this nobody – whose death had brought their signs out into the open. Put them on the front page of the newspaper, no less, and all over the television news.
God bless you, child.
Putting her hands up to her face, Sister Elena let the paper flutter to the ground, aware of an unfamiliar sensation she couldn’t quite place.
Then, all at once, it dawned on her what that was.
Sister Elena had just done something that she hadn’t done in well over ten years.
She’d smiled.
PART ONE
CHAPTER ONE
Jim Newsome felt the sweat trickle down between his shoulder blades and the dust sting his eyes as the preacher droned on.
‘Mimi Praeger … good Christian … good neighbor … back home with the Lord …’
The punishing sun made it hard to concentrate. A wiry outdoorsman in his late sixties, with thin lips and the erect, stiff bearing of a soldier, Jim Newsome stood beside his soft, round wife Mary, betraying no outward sign of his discomfort. But inside Jim was seething. Who in their right mind held a funeral service outdoors, at noon, in the height of summer? All around, the air shimmered with a dry, painful heat, all wind and dust and cracked earth. The kind of heat that made your throat hurt and your skin prickle with the whispered threat of fire. This was desert heat. Only they weren’t in the desert. They were in Paradise Valley, California, at the Praeger ranch, an oasis of lush green pastureland. Or at least it had been, before the drought arrived, drying out the river beds and turning the meadows brown and brittle, like an old man’s skin.
‘As we gather to scatter Mimi’s ashes over the land she loved …’ The pastor took a sip of water, mopping his brow with a handkerchief, his face tomato-red. ‘Let us call to mind our own failings …’
Jim Newsome tuned out. The rancher’s failings were his own business, not some milksop of a preacher’s, barely out of short pants. Jim would call them to mind when he was good and ready.
Instead, he scanned the faces of the mourners gathered outside old Mimi Praeger’s cabin, a simple, pine post-and-beam structure that belonged to another era, another time. More than thirty people had shown up for the service, a good number, especially when you considered how much Mimi had always kept to herself. For years she’d lived totally alone up here, miles from the nearest gas station, and a full day’s walk to the tiny convenience store on Prospect Road. Then the child had come along – Ella – and for a few years it had been the two of them, grandmother and granddaughter, like a pair of pioneer women against the world. But children grow. When Ella finally left the cabin for college in San Francisco, it had just about broken poor Mimi’s heart.
A lot of people never forgave the girl for that.
‘She’s got a nerve showing her face here, if you ask me,’ Jim’s wife Mary had observed caustically, watching Ella Praeger talking to the preacher before today’s service. In a fitted black shift dress and patent leather boots, and with her long blonde hair tied back severely in a single, too-tight braid, Mimi’s granddaughter had certainly come a long way from the scruffy, oddball tomboy kid the locals remembered.
‘She could hardly not come,’ replied Jim. ‘She’s family, after all. Next of kin. And this is her land now.’
‘Not for long,’ Mary Newsome sniffed. ‘You think she’s going to want to hold on to this place, now she has her fancy-pants city life? She’ll sell just as soon as she gets an offer, you mark my words.’
‘Maybe,’ said Jim.
Jim Newsome couldn’t find it in his heart to judge Ella Praeger as severely as his wife – or the rest of the valley, for that matter. It must have been tough growing up out here, with only old Mimi for company. Both parents dead. No TV. No friends. No fun. Little wonder the girl had turned out strange. Withdrawn. Brittle. That kind of loneliness wasn’t healthy for a young person. Or any person, for that matter.
Ella Praeger took the urn from the preacher’s clammy hands and solemnly carried it to the foot of the oak tree. Her grandmother had loved this tree. Ella would watch her stroking it sometimes, running a gnarled hand up and down its ancient bark affectionately, as if it were a pet dog.
It got more affection than she ever showed me, Ella thought. But she wasn’t bitter. Mimi Praeger was who she was: a survivalist and a loner who had chosen a life completely at one with the land. She had taught Ella the things she knew. How to chop down a tree, how to fix a roof and build a boat, how to start a fire and shoot a rabbit and gut a fish and clean a gun. She had tried to teach her how to pray. Ella knew that her grandmother had loved her, in her own reserved, uncommunicative way. She had done her best to raise her dead son’s only child, a burden she never asked for.
When Ella was eleven, a woman had come to the cabin – she was from social services, Ella now realized, although back then nothing was explained – and after the woman’s visit, Mimi had reluctantly allowed Ella to attend school in the nearest town. It was a two-hour journey, there and back, involving three buses and one long walk along a frightening, unlit road, and it was Ella’s first experience of life outside of the ranch. Of television and internet, of different clothes and cars, of pop music and fast-food restaurants and people. So many people. Ella observed all of it with a sort of detached wonder, like a visitor on a day trip to an exotic zoo. But while she excelled academically at Valley High, socially she never fit in. Never tried to fit in, her teachers believed. Ella brought home reports with words like ‘aloof’ and ‘arrogant’ mingled in with other, less damning adjectives. Gifted. Exceptional. Her language skills in particular were extraordinary, including a pronounced talent for computer languages, the newly voguish ‘coding’ that was becoming so highly prized by California colleges.
Unfortunately Ella’s grandmother did not approve of computer science, for reasons that again were never explained to Ella, and those classes were dropped. But Ella’s GPA remained stellar, even as her struggles with social skills intensified. Ostracized by her peers at school, for her old-fashioned clothes and standoffish manner – (with the exception of the boys who flocked to sleep with her, delighted by Ella’s matter-of-fact promiscuity once she hit puberty and her complete disregard for the concept of ‘reputation’, so important to the other high school girls) – Ella’s isolation intensified. She lived in two worlds – the world of school and the world of Mimi’s ranch – but didn’t fit in to either of them.
Mimi’s horror when Ella accepted a place at Berkeley took Ella by surprise. She’d assumed her grandmother would be happy and proud of her achievement, but once again she seemed to have missed those all-important signals.
‘But I thought you wanted me to go to college?’ Ella said imploringly.
‘What on earth made you think that?’ her grandmother wailed. ‘You can’t go to the city, Ella. I need you here.’
‘But … you always encouraged me to study.’
‘Not so you would leave! After everything I’ve done for you, Ella.’
‘What for, then?’
‘For yourself!’ Mimi banged a veiny fist on the simple kitchen table that the two women had eaten on every day for the last thirteen years. ‘To fulfill your God-given potential. Not so that you could run off to one of those dreadful, godless colleges and expose yourself to … to …’
‘To what, Granny?’ Ella had shouted back, in a rare loss of temper. ‘To life?’
‘To danger,’ the old woman replied, shaking a finger at Ella. ‘Danger.’
Feeling the clay urn in her hands, that conversation came back to Ella as though it were yesterday. What ‘danger’ had her grandmother been so afraid of on her behalf? What fate in the city could possibly be worse than the slow death by suffocation of life up here on the ranch, in the middle of nowhere? Especially these last few years, when it didn’t even rain. Even God, it seemed, had abandoned them.
Turning around just once to look at the group of mourners assembled on the hillside, Ella wondered what these people were doing here. Most of them she recognized vaguely as the owners of neighboring ranches, or faces from church or the store. But not one of them really knew Mimi, or her. They weren’t friends. Ella’s grandmother didn’t ‘do’ friends. Perhaps as a result, Ella had never acquired the skill of getting people to like her, of forging bonds of affection the way that other people seemed to do so effortlessly. Instead, like Mimi, she tended to say exactly what she thought, blurting out observations or responding to questions with a blunt honesty that frequently landed her in trouble.
There was one man among the mourners whom Ella didn’t recognize, standing at the very back in a dark suit and mirrored sunglasses. Other than Ella herself, he was the only person present in ‘city’ clothes, and he looked as out of place among these simple, farming folk as a unicorn in a cowshed. He was tall and slim, and when he took the sunglasses off, Ella could see that he had a classically handsome face, like a model from a men’s clothing catalog. Strong jaw. Tanned skin. She wondered briefly what he would be like in bed, before refocusing on his identity. Maybe he’s a real-estate agent, come to make an offer on the ranch? Ella thought. It didn’t occur to her that such an approach at a funeral service might be considered insensitive, even offensive. The man’s presence made her curious, not angry.
Unscrewing the top of the urn, Ella peered inside at the dust – all that was left of her grandmother. Not even the hardy, rugged Mimi Praeger could outrun old age forever. These ashes were now the sole remnants of Ella’s entire family, in fact. With more violence than she intended, she flung out her arm, scattering the ashes to the wind.
Mimi’s neighbors gasped at the abruptness of the gesture, the shocking lack of ceremony. Ella sensed their disapproval but chose to ignore it, turning and walking purposefully back up the hill towards the cabin – her cabin, now – with her purse swinging jauntily over her shoulder and the empty urn in her hand.
‘Like she’s throwing out the trash,’ Mary Newsome whispered to Jim, shaking her head disapprovingly. The small gaggle of ranchers closest to Mary murmured their agreement. Poor Mimi. After all she did for that girl.
‘Come on, now. Let’s not be too quick to judge. Grief takes people in different ways,’ Jim Newsome reminded them. ‘Remember, that young lady’s lost just about everybody.’
Inside the cabin, Ella hurried into the bathroom and locked the door behind her. Sitting down on the toilet seat, she slumped forward with her head in her hands and massaged her throbbing temples. Please no. Not now. Not with all these people here.
The headache she’d woken up with this morning was coming back, although thankfully not as strongly as before. This morning, as so often lately, the white noise inside Ella’s skull had been deafening, to the point where she couldn’t get out of bed. And when she did, finally, stagger to her feet, an overwhelming nausea had seen her staggering to the bathroom in her tiny Mission District apartment, throwing up the entire contents of her stomach.
‘It’s a brain tumor,’ Ella had informed her doctor two weeks ago, sitting in his plush corner office at San Francisco’s Saint Francis Memorial Hospital. ‘It’s growing. I can feel it.’
‘It isn’t a brain tumor.’
‘How do you know?’ Ella demanded. ‘How can you possibly know that?’
‘Because I’m a neurologist.’
‘Even so …’
‘And because I’ve comprehensively scanned your brain with the very latest technology. There is no tumor.’
‘You’ve made a mistake.’
The doctor laughed. ‘No mistake, I assure you.’
‘Yes. You must have made a mistake.’
He looked at his patient curiously.
‘Do you want to have a brain tumor, Miss Praeger?’
Ella thought about this for a moment. On the one hand, a brain tumor was a bad thing. Brain tumors could kill you. I don’t want to die. On the other hand, a brain tumor might be an explanation for all the crazy shit going on inside her head. The headaches and vomiting were only part of it, the part Ella had told her doctors. It was the rest of it that really scared her – voices; music; high-frequency throbbing that sounded to Ella like some sort of coded transmission. That stuff had been going on for a long time. As long as Ella could remember, honestly, although in recent months it had gotten a lot worse. If I don’t have a brain tumor, I’m crazy. I must be.
‘Would you like to talk to someone?’ the doctor asked, his amusement shifting to concern. ‘A psychologist, perhaps? Oftentimes the sort of symptoms you describe can be brought on by stress. I could refer you to—’
But Ella had already gone, running out of his office, never to return.
The next day, her grandmother died. Peacefully, in her sleep.
‘Were you close?’
Bob, a shy, balding, middle-aged man who worked at the coffee shop near Ella’s work and was the closest thing she had to a friend, asked when Ella told him.
‘She was my closest relative, yes,’ Ella responded. ‘My parents are dead.’
‘Sure, but I meant emotionally. Were you close to her emotionally?’
Ella looked at him blankly. She liked Bob, but found him strange. Evidently he felt the same way about her, because when she’d suggested they sleep together months ago, he’d declined. Even though he wasn’t homosexual.
‘I’m married, Ella,’ he explained.
‘I know,’ she smiled. ‘So you like having sexual intercourse with women.’
For some reason Bob found this funny. ‘Well, yeah …’ he laughed. ‘I do.’
‘I’m a woman,’ Ella pointed out, with an endearing case closed finality to her tone.
‘You are a woman,’ Bob agreed. ‘A very beautiful woman. And I’m flattered … I mean, I appreciate the offer. But …’
‘You don’t want to have intercourse with me?’
‘OK firstly, just a little FYI – people usually use the word “sex”. “Intercourse” kind of sounds like a biology textbook.’
‘Right,’ said Ella. She’d been told this before, but her grandmother had always been a stickler for proper terminology, and old habits were hard to break.
‘And secondly, it’s not that I don’t want to have sex with you, Ella. It’s that I’m married. My wife would not be happy at all if I did that.’
Ella looked even more perplexed. ‘But your wife won’t know. She won’t be there with us. Will she?’
‘None of us will be there!’ said Bob, who seemed to have accidentally stumbled into an episode of The Twilight Zone. ‘Because you and me sleeping together is really not a great idea. Just out of interest, is this how you usually …? I mean, have you asked other guys you don’t know that well if they want to, you know …?’
‘Have sex with me?’ Ella offered helpfully, pleased to have remembered the phrase du jour.
Bob nodded.
‘Sure,’ said Ella.
‘And how have they responded?’
‘They do want to. The married ones too. Unless they’re homosexuals.’
‘OK,’ said Bob, rubbing his eyes. ‘You know, you can also say “gay”.’
Mimi would have hated that, thought Ella. Her grandmother hadn’t exactly been ‘evolved’ on LGBT rights. ‘I’m tired of hearing about their rights,’ the old woman used to say. ‘We should be talking about their wrongs!’
‘I’ve actually had intercourse – sex – with one hundred and fourteen people,’ Ella informed Bob matter-of-factly, and not without a touch of pride.
His eyes widened. ‘One hundred and fourteen? Wow, that’s, er … that’s a solid number. Again, just some friendly advice – you don’t actually need to share that kind of personal information with everyone.’
‘I’m not sharing it with everyone,’ Ella smiled. ‘Just you. Could I have another latte?’ If she and Bob weren’t going to have intercourse then she might as well enjoy another hot beverage. ‘With almond syrup in it?’
After this conversation, for reasons Ella didn’t fully understand, Bob began taking a more active interest in her welfare. It was Bob who’d explained to her that she would have to organize some sort of service for her grandmother. He’d even offered to drive her out to the cabin, if she needed company or a shoulder to cry on.
‘You mean I have to go? Myself?’ Ella sounded surprised.
‘You don’t “have” to go. But you’re her next of kin, and she left you the ranch,’ Bob explained. ‘So, yeah. I’d say it’s sort of expected.’
‘Expected by whom?’
‘By everyone.’
‘Like who?’
Bob tried another tack. ‘Your grandmother would have wanted it.’
‘Would she?’
‘I expect so.’
‘OK but she’s dead now.’
‘Yes, I know she’s dead, Ella. But she raised you. This is your chance to say goodbye.’
Ella frowned, like a mother being forced to explain something painfully simple to a child. ‘You can’t “say” things to dead people, Bob. That’s ridiculous.’
Still, in the end Ella had taken Bob’s advice, because he was her friend and because he understood the world better than she did. She’d arranged today’s service, and posted notices in the local paper, and had a caterer provide sandwiches and drinks, and worn the black dress Bob’s wife Joanie suggested and carefully listened to Bob’s instructions on how to behave. ‘Just scatter the ashes, and if you can’t think of anything else to say to people, just say “thank you for coming”.’ So Ella had driven out here on her own, despite her terrible headache and having to pull over to the side of the road to vomit and despite her sadness that this was not her chance to say goodbye to her grandmother, whom she loved. She’d missed her chance to say goodbye, just like she’d missed it with her parents, and now she was all alone in this world and losing her mind and she didn’t even have a brain tumor to explain it. And now here she was sitting in this tiny bathroom with the timber walls and the framed Bible verses hanging over the basin, in this cabin where she’d grown up so lonely she’d almost died.
I almost died.
I would have died if I’d stayed here.
Anybody would.
Why couldn’t Mimi understand that?
A knock on the door broke her reverie.
‘Ella?’ It was the preacher. Reverend … Something. Ella couldn’t remember any more. ‘Are you all right in there, my dear? Your guests are starting to head inside. I know people want to offer their condolences.’
Ella splashed cold water on her face and popped two ibuprofen from the bottle in her purse. Opening the door she pushed past the preacher and hurried back out on to the porch, looking for the man in the suit. If he made Ella an offer for the ranch, she’d consider it. But he was nowhere to be seen, not outside or milling around the food tables with the rest of the locals.
Bob was wrong. It had been a mistake to come back here. Ella might be different but she wasn’t stupid. She could feel people’s eyes crawling over her, disliking her, disapproving, just as they had when she was growing up.
