Sue loved it instantly.
“But we’d have to tear the place down,” Bob said, struggling to extricate his beanpole frame from her little Echo. “Start from scratch.”
“Not necessarily,” Sue shouted over her shoulder as she squelched through the mud toward the house. Bare canes of climbing roses clung to the brick, promising a beautiful display in the summer, and spring crocuses were already poking their tips through the decaying leaves. “It’s as solid as a tank. It’s real brick all the way around, not a phony façade. It just needs a second storey. Imagine the view we’d get over that valley.” She tilted her head up to the towering pines and maples that ringed the house. “And these trees! They must be as old as the house. Probably planted by the original owners. Oh, Bob, just think what we could do with all this land! A pond, a horse stable …”
Bob headed across the yard to the shed, which he pried open with a screech. “It’s full of junk,” he called out. “It’s going to be a real job just to clear it all out. Most of these tools probably haven’t worked in twenty years.”
Three sharp blasts of a horn startled them. Bob whirled around just as an aging Honda CR-V slewed into the lane. It jerked to a stop beside their car and a middle-aged woman climbed out. She was wearing a windbreaker that was much too large for her and her white hair stood out in all directions.
“What are you doing?” she cried.
Bob was frozen, with that deer-in-the-headlights look that Sue knew all too well. She stepped back into the drive. Aware that her pink-and-green neon ski jacket did not exactly scream cop, she tried for her most formal tone. “Mrs. Carmichael? Sorry to startle you. I’m Sue Peters and this is my husband, Bob Gibbs. We’re detectives, we work under Inspector Green. He told us …” Her voice faded under the woman’s scowl. “Maybe we jumped the gun. He mentioned you wanted to sell, and we’ve been looking for the perfect place for months.”
The woman’s glare softened marginally at the mention of the inspector. Sue walked closer, trying to disguise her limp. On damp days, or under stress, the old injuries still ached. The doctors said they always would.
“Well, he didn’t tell me,” Mrs. Carmichael said, slamming her car door and crossing her arms. “I wish he had. I would have told him not to rush out looking for buyers just yet.”
“Well, he didn’t really —” Sue broke off. The inspector had not actually said the house was on the market yet, but Sue had wanted an advance peek. What could be the harm in scouting the place out? The land and the location were the key elements anyway. “We figured it would be nice to save us all the real estate fees.”
“B-but we don’t mean to intrude, ma’am. We — we should have called.” Bob, already hustling down the lane, shot Sue an I-told-you-so glance. It had been her idea to drive out to Navan unannounced. But she had been so excited by the possibility they might have finally found their house that she brushed aside all his concerns.
Mrs. Carmichael merely stared at them stonily, making no move toward the house. “I’m not selling,” she said. “I toyed briefly with the idea and I did mention it to Inspector Green, but I’ve changed my mind.”
“Well, we’re not in a rush,” Sue said, careful to avoid Bob’s eye. He’d been listening to her increasingly frustrated rants for months. “We’ve been looking so long, if it’s a few more months till —”
“I’m not selling, period.”
Sue cast a longing look at the sorry little house, with its overgrown roses and magnificent view. She felt a tug of kinship. “If we’ve come at a bad time …”
“No.”
Belatedly, Bob came to life. “Thank you for your honesty, Mrs. Carmichael. Sue, let’s check out that other place.”
“What other place?”
He gave her another look. The time-for-a-sock-in-it-Sue look. In the ten months since their wedding, she had become much better at reading him. Just because he stammered and became all flustered under stress, it didn’t mean he was a pushover. In his own quiet way, Bob could be as immovable as a tank. A trait she would have to learn to manage. But not now. Not with the outraged homeowner about to erupt.
Marilyn Carmichael softened as they retreated toward their car. “I’m sorry. It’s a bad time at the moment. The place is a mess. I’m still sorting through things and I can’t think beyond that.” She pressed her hand to her mouth as if she were struggling for control.
As Bob babbled apologies, Sue climbed into the car, puzzled. Green had said the woman was anxious to sell, anxious to move on. Grief takes many forms and travels many paths, as Sue knew only too well. The road to recovery from a catastrophic loss was not smooth or straight. It was full of setbacks, shocks, and disappointments.
As they bumped back down the muddy lane toward the main road, she looked back at the little house, where Marilyn still stood in the drive, her arms crossed and her body rigid. Watching them.
“You shouldn’t have told them!”
Green was surprised by the vehemence in Marilyn’s voice when he phoned to apologize. Meeting Gibbs and Peters in the cafeteria that morning, he’d found them strangely evasive. Since Gibbs usually became red and tongue-tied in his presence, Green would have given it little thought if bulldozer Peters hadn’t had difficulty meeting his eyes.
A simple question had elicited a mumbled confession from Gibbs that their impromptu visit to Navan had not gone well. Not well, Peters burst out. The woman had refused to let them in the door and had virtually kicked them off the property.
Twenty years ago, Green had met this ferocious side of Marilyn Carmichael. When her emotions were fired up, she was a formidable force, but Green was surprised that a simple visit to the house, no matter how unexpected, would have roused her to the point of rudeness. She might be feisty, but her British courtesy was deeply ingrained.
That emotion was all the more puzzling because barely two weeks earlier she had been looking ahead to the sale of her house and the chance to start afresh. Now she seemed back in the mire.
On the phone now, he tried for a reassuring tone. “I’m sorry, Marilyn. You’re right. I was trying to be helpful.” He didn’t add that although he had told the newlyweds about the house, he’d stopped short of suggesting a visit, particularly unannounced. He should have known Peters would seize the opportunity and charge ahead under full steam.
“It was an invasion of my privacy.”
He was chastened for a moment as he finally grasped the subtext. The Carmichaels had endured twenty years of prying eyes and invasive questions, both from media and community. Their life had been laid bare and dissected. If Marilyn had become hardened and less forgiving, she could hardly be blamed. The sight of a strange car in her drive must have flooded her with old fears.
Nonetheless, he sensed another emotion lingering beneath the surface of her indignation. “Marilyn, is there something —”
“I’ve decided not to sell, that’s all.”
“Fair enough.” He trod carefully. “As you said, you have friends there now. The book club and the arts fair …”
His voice trailed off when she left him dangling awkwardly in silence. Mumbling reassurances into the empty air, he hung up and sat looking at the phone. Worry piqued him. Marilyn sounded brittle and on the edge again. On his last visit, she had appeared to be looking forward to her new life, so he had been lulled into complacency. But Marilyn could act with the best. She could hide her deepest pain. Living with her broken husband and navigating the complex feelings of her children, she had had plenty of practice.
And then there was the gin …
“I’ve seen her crash before, when the trial was over,” he said to Sharon later that evening. He had waited until she had a rare moment of peace, nursing their daughter who