A Home by the Sea Read Free

her pocket. No scarf. No hat. No boots. Delicate evening heels that were never meant to face snow or rain.
    Noah saw her drop her gloves. She picked them up and then stopped, looking uncertainly down the street. Her face was toward the light and Noah could have sworn he saw something glinting on her cheeks. Tears?
    His hands tightened again. Why was she crying? Had something happened at the party? Had that man—
    Not your problem. You’re supposed to be having a nice, rowdy night in a smoke-filled room, remember? Forget about her.
    Noah forced his feet on through the snow toward his old, reliable Jeep. He located his cell phone and locked up the car. Suddenly impatient, he jogged back across the street.
    He turned his head. Through dancing snowflakes he saw her pass a small art gallery, open for an evening event. Then she stopped, scanning the parked cars and the nearby alley.
    Noah didn’t see anything but a row of garbage cans and locked cars. What was she looking for? Had she dropped something?
    He tracked her prints back to the townhouse, looking at the snow. Nothing on the ground. No scarf and no fallen purse. It didn’t make sense.
    A snow truck growled past, wipers flapping, its big tires throwing up snow in sheets. When it passed, she was gone.
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    G RACE REFUSED TO FALL APART .
    All she needed was one or two minutes. Time to calm down, pull herself together and take control. She was a pro at taking charge of her life, after all.
    She’d pulled herself together when her mother had stopped caring about her or anything beyond the inside of a bottle. A few months later her grandmother had come down with lupus. She had died within the year. Through it all, Grace’s grandfather had done everything he could to shield her from the dark realities of her life, and Grace had gone along, putting up a brave front, always optimistic and enthusiastic.
    Yes, she was famous for pulling herself together. People thought she was serene and unflappable. Grace worked hard to make them believe that be cause she wanted to be those things.
    But now as snow dusted her face, she felt the knife twist and twist again, stabbing deep. She had lost the man she loved a year earlier. After the funeral she had managed to pull her life together, helped by friends and the complex research jobs sheloved. She was actually starting to feel whole and happy again.
    Then she had found the letter.
    Then she’d had a call from an old friend, just bursting to give her the helpful news that the man she’d loved and lost had a wife in Thailand. And there had been more gossip about other women, scattered over his far-flung travels as a UN negotiator. He had quite a record as a lover, it turned out. Yes, it had been a nice call, just a helpful update from a concerned friend.
    Grace was still trying to recover from the news, and the pain was raw. Did you ever really know a person, she wondered? Or was everything just bits and pieces of a performance?
    She brushed away a tear as snow crept down her collar and in the process dropped her gloves in the swirling snow. When she bent to pick them up, she heard a low, muffled sound from the row of cars across the street.
    A cry?
    She crossed the street, wishing she had brought her boots. Ignoring her frozen toes, she stopped to listen.
    Another sound, plaintive and soft.
    The noise seemed to be coming from a small alley just beyond a nearby art gallery. A cardboard box tumbled toward her, carried by the wind. When Grace grabbed it, she saw that it was empty.
    The sound came again, only this time the mutedcry of pain and exhaustion tore at her heart. She plunged forward into the shadows, shivering as snow slid into her sling-back heels. Fumbling a little, she raised her small key-chain light and searched the alley.
    A pair of eyes flashed against the darkness, bright in the sudden light. Grace saw a dark shape against a Dumpster near the alley’s far wall. Bending down slowly, she saw a