She Loves Me Not Page 4

  In Manhattan, people pay little heed to newcomers. One can come and go without arousing undue attention.

  Out here, it takes time to become integrated into the community, to become one of the locals. Time, and patience.

  He’s painstakingly laid the groundwork in Laurel Bay, same as before.

  And now, at last, he’s made his first move.

  The rest will follow.

  Standing on the tips of his toes, he is able to peer through the ground-level window into the house. Through a veil of ivory lace, he plainly sees her sitting on the couch, writing something.

  When he first saw the sheer panels covering her windows, he was torn between amusement and anger.

  Doesn’t she realize how flimsy the curtains are? Doesn’t she know that anyone can see her inside?

  Perhaps that’s what she wants.

  Perhaps she knows he’s here, watching her.

  Perhaps she’s merely pretending not to be aware of his presence, inwardly taunting him, daring him to reveal himself.

  But he won’t. Not yet. Not until it’s time. And when it is, she’ll be sorry. She’ll beg for mercy, just like before.

  And he’ll laugh.

  Just like before.

  Just before he kills her . . .

  Again.

  Chapter Two

  “Well, look at you!” Bill Michaels greets Rose from behind the register as she dashes through the door into Bayview Books the next morning at ten.

  “Good morning, Bill.” She’s already shrugging out of her camel-colored coat, shivering in the twenty-degree windchill. After flipping the CLOSED sign in the window to OPEN, she strides toward the back room, with Bill falling into step beside her.

  “You look like a rose today, Ms. Rose.” His aquamarine eyes twinkle at her from behind trendy wire-rimmed glasses. “You should wear that color more often.”

  Sam used to say that, too. He always urged her to wear pastels instead of her usual monochromatic wardrobe: black, brown, gray, navy. In fact, he’s the one who bought her this soft raspberry-colored cashmere sweater the last Christmas they had together. It was an extravagant gift, but as he pointed out, it wasn’t just Christmas time. It was the one-year anniversary of her new lease on life.

  Before now, she wore it only once, the week he gave it to her. She felt conspicuous in it even then, and it lay forgotten on her closet shelf for more than a year. It was just as well. Her somber-toned wardrobe suited a grief-stricken widow.

  But this morning, as she tied pink ribbons into Jenna’s hair and buttoned Leo’s red cardigan, they asked her if she was going to wear something special for Valentine’s Day, too.

  So here she is, in the sweater that brings back memories of that cozy Christmas morning with Sam.

  “Is Luke here yet?” she asks Bill, hanging her purse and coat on a hook in the stockroom.

  “He was, but he went across the street to get coffee.”

  Good. That’ll take awhile, especially if he lingers at Milligan’s Cafe to chit-chat with the cluster of morning regulars.

  Rose isn’t in the mood to deal with her new boss just yet—not that he’s technically new at this point. It’s been a few months already since he bought the business from Netta Bradley. Sweet, elderly, easygoing Netta Bradley, who choose to run a bookstore because she had an affinity for literature and small-town folks. She’d no doubt have continued to manage Bayview Books until her dying day if she hadn’t fallen from a stockroom ladder and broken both hips, which led to a series of surgeries and her reluctant retirement.

  Enter Luke Pfleuger, a former Madison Avenue executive. According to Netta, after being laid off from a large Manhattan advertising agency, Luke successfully sued his employer for age discrimination. He used his settlement to purchase the bookstore and a seaside cottage in East Hampton.

  Unlike Netta, Luke is a stickler for punctuality. Rose is supposed to be here fifteen minutes before the store opens.

  This morning, she had to cram a day’s worth of errands into the hour after she deposited the kids, along with dozens of cupcakes and valentines, at school and day care. Then it was on to the bank, the dry cleaner’s, the post office, and the library with a stack of overdue books that racked up eleven dollars’ worth of fines. At the pharmacy, she dropped off several orange plastic prescription bottles for expensive monthly refills. Even with insurance, her medication costs more than she can afford. But she has no choice. It keeps her alive.

  “You have nasty dark circles under your eyes,” Bill notes, peering closely at her face. “Late night again?”

  “Don’t ask. I think I made it to bed by two A.M., and then Leo was up from three to four.”

  “Why?”

  She shrugs. “He’s just been restless lately. Maybe it’s nightmares. He used to sleep like a rock. I should probably take him to the doctor and see what they say about it. I should probably do a lot of things, but—” She breaks off to cover an enormous yawn with her hand.

  “Don’t be hard on yourself, Rose. You’re juggling a lot, raising two kids on your own.”

  Yes, and he doesn’t even know the whole story. There are some things she just isn’t comfortable sharing with anyone—not even Bill, with whom she’s forged a close friendship in the eight months they’ve been working together at the bookstore.

  Aside from Leslie, her coworker has become her closest confidant these days. She had other friends before her illness, before Sam’s death. There were mommies from Jenna’s play group, women she’d met at Lamaze while pregnant with Leo, couples with whom she and Sam socialized occasionally.

  They hovered around her worriedly for a few months when she was so sick, but Sam and his family took such good care of her she didn’t need to lean on anyone else. Most of her old friends came around again to offer support when she was newly widowed, but by then, Rose was used to keeping her distance.

  It’s much simpler that way.

  Now the only people she speaks to on a regular basis are Leslie and Bill.

  Scott Hitchcock, too. But he was Sam’s friend, never hers. He comes around to play with the kids and see if she has any leaky faucets that need checking. Sometimes they have coffee and chat, bound by shared grief and their separate memories of the man they both loved.

  She knows Hitch misses Sam desperately. Leslie and his parents do, too. Hell, everybody does. Sometimes it seems that not a day goes by in Laurel Bay when she doesn’t run into somebody who wants to reminisce about her husband.

  But their lives have all gone on without him, while for Rose and the children, nothing will ever be the same.

  Yes, their lives have resumed a comforting rhythm of daily rituals. But even on her brightest days, Rose is never quite able to shed the sensation that doom lurks like a serpent in the shadows, waiting to strike again when she least expects it.

  Leslie flips through the CDs in the Rock section, wishing she knew what her fiancé does and doesn’t have. She knows Peter likes Dave Matthews, and the Barenaked Ladies. But does he already own all of their CDs?

  She has no idea—and she knows what her brother would say about that.

  Oh, shut up, Sam. The fact that I have no idea what’s in Peter’s CD collection has nothing to do with whether I know him well enough to marry him, she silently retorts.

  Leslie met Peter Lenhard when he took her yoga class back in October. He said his doctor recommended it for his chronic back pain. He made it through only one class, asked Leslie out on a date afterward, and they were engaged by Christmas. Unofficially, of course. They’ve gone ring-shopping a few times, and Peter says he’s saving to buy her one.

  They spend most of their time at her place. Peter rents a basement apartment in a private home in Mastic, and says that his elderly landlord warned him against having female guests on the premises, especially overnight ones. In Leslie’s opinion, that was out of line, but Peter insists that the rent is so cheap he’s willing to put up with Mrs. Callahan’s restrictions.

  You’d li
ke him, Sam, she tells her big brother now, as she flips through another stack of CDs. He’s a carpenter, like you were. And he takes care of me, like you did.

  Giving up on the music store, Leslie wanders back out into the mall. It’s quiet at this hour on a weekday morning, the cavernous corridors populated by the occasional stroller-pushing young mother and a smattering of senior citizens walking in groups.

  Mom and Dad would fit right in with them, Leslie thinks, eyeing a passing cluster of silver-haired mall-walkers wearing jogging suits. Her parents are making a conscious effort to stay fit—or so they say. Leslie suspects that Dad hasn’t really given up red meat, that her mother’s water aerobic class is weekly rather than daily, and that neither of them has shed a pound, let alone fifteen each. If Sam were around, he’d get a kick out of their parents’ exaggerated fitness claims.

  Oh, Sam.

  Leslie misses him desperately, even after thirteen months. There are some things only a sibling understands.

  Now she’s an only child. There’s no longer somebody with whom she can exchange an amused or knowing glance at family gatherings—not that there have been many of those since the funeral.

  Mom and Dad couldn’t bring themselves to return to Long Island this past summer as they usually do. They said it would be too painful to be in Laurel Bay without Sam. Now they’re even talking about selling the house.

  Grief does funny things to people. You’d think Mom and Dad would want to be here as much as possible, to help their widowed daughter-in-law and fatherless grandchildren. That duty, however, now rests squarely on Leslie’s slim shoulders. Not that she’s complaining. She adores her niece and nephew, and Rose is the sister she never had.

  Okay, so maybe she never really longed for a sister. Life was pretty cushy, growing up in Sam’s sheltering shadow. They were an unlikely team, the four years between them bridged by a shared interest in sports and an irreverent sense of humor. Sam looked out for her from the day she was born. Mom liked to tell stories about Sam forcing her to walk several yards behind as he pushed his baby sister’s stroller along Center Street, so that everyone would think he was “Wes-wee’s Daddy.”

  Now there’s a gaping cavity in her life where her protective big brother used to be. Unaccustomed to this hollow vulnerability, Leslie knows it must be far more difficult for Rose, having survived a life-threatening illness and surgery only to find herself abandoned with two young children.

  An only child, Rose lost her mother while she was still in college, shortly before she met Sam. Leslie met her sister-in-law’s father only once, at their wedding. He was there with his second wife and Rose’s three teenaged half sisters, all of them sun-kissed California blondes.

  Leslie can recall just one occasion when Sam and Rose brought the kids to visit their maternal grandfather on the West Coast. And he’s never returned to Long Island. Not even when Rose was so sick . . . or when Sam died.

  Leslie can’t help feeling that Rose needs somebody to look out for her. Somebody other than a shell-shocked sister-in-law who, in the wake of Sam’s death, has been left feeling that the world is a perilous place.

  Only lately, when she’s with Peter, has Leslie felt remotely safeguarded. Her fiancé is quieter and more low-key than Sam, but carpentry isn’t all the two men have in common. When Peter is around, Leslie is certain nothing bad can happen to her. And when he isn’t with her, she finds herself increasingly fearful that something might happen to him.

  More fallout from Sam’s accident, she supposes. Life has seemed precarious ever since her stalwart big brother proved tragically mortal.

  Realizing she’s stopped walking and is staring into the window of a store filled with clothing suited for teenyboppers half her age, Leslie snaps out of it and checks her watch. Okay, she has exactly an hour and fifteen minutes before she has to meet one of her clients for a training session at the gym. She’d better get busy finding something for Peter.

  She continues along the corridor, vetoing the bookstore—Peter doesn’t read—as well as Brooks Brothers, the jeweler, the pet store . . .

  Leslie finds herself backtracking a few steps, drawn to a little black puppy in the window. He’s just sitting there with a big red bow around his neck, watching her with a wistful expression that clearly says Please take me with you.

  Leslie’s apartment building has a strict no pets policy, and she’s certain Peter’s rigid landlady wouldn’t welcome a puppy.

  “Sorry, fella,” she tells the little puppy, pressing her hand against the glass. “I’d buy you if I could.”

  He looks even more forlorn.

  Leslie forces herself to keep walking—then stops short.

  She can’t buy the puppy for herself or Peter.

  But she’s just been struck by an idea so brilliant she can’t believe she never thought of it before.

  Smiling, she makes a beeline back to the pet store.

  Working quickly, Rose and Bill unpack several new cartons of books and load them onto carts, with only two interruptions to ring up sales. At this time of year the shop is quiet, drawing familiar local bookworms and an occasional browsing stranger who’s just passing through.

  “Something tells me this is going to be another long, slow day.” Bill stacks several copies of Emeril Legasse’s latest cookbook on the bottom shelf of the cart, then says, as Rose starts to lift a heavy stack of hardcovers. “Here, wait, I’ll get that.”

  “Thanks, Bill.” She wonders, as she often does, whether Netta told Bill about her surgery, or if he’s simply the gallant type. He always seems to be hurrying to lift unwieldy boxes for her, as though he’s concerned she might strain herself. Someday maybe she’ll tell him about the illness that nearly ended her life—and the miraculous operation that saved it.

  Maybe.

  “A long, slow day is perfectly fine with me.” She yawns. “I’m too tired to deal with people.”

  “Yeah, but time flies when we’re busy. Remember what it was like when we first started working here?”

  She nods. “We were lucky if we had time for a lunch break.”

  “Right, and if we did have time, it took forever to get waited on at the cafe, even for takeout.”

  While the town’s year-round population is growing steadily, it’s the hectic summer months that keep the small independent bookstore afloat. Laurel Bay lies squarely on the well-traveled route between New York City and the Hamptons. From Memorial Day to Labor Day, its streets are choked with traffic; its sidewalks invaded by upscale tourist types.

  Sam resented the seasonal flood of strangers. He complained about the long lines at the drive-through ATM, about the litter, about the BMW convertibles arrogantly taking up two spaces in the supermarket parking lot.

  Having grown up in a bustling Brooklyn neighborhood, Rose tends to take the summer commotion in stride. Sam’s rants amused her, particularly since his carpentry business depended on a healthy local economy.

  “If Laurel Bay was a ghost town, you’d be out of work,” she used to tell him.

  “Then we could spend every second together,” he’d say, hugging her close.

  “We’d probably get on each other’s nerves.”

  “No, we wouldn’t.”

  “We’d be flat broke.”

  “Why? You have plenty of money in the bank.”

  “For our future. And the kids’ college. We can’t touch that. We’d have nothing to live on.”

  Then he’d say, imitating Patricia Neal in the old movie The Homecoming, “We’d live on love.”

  And they’d laugh.

  Now here she is, flat broke anyway, longing for Sam, living on if onlys.

  She and Bill take their time shelving the new stock, chatting about their Valentine’s Day plans. Rather, Bill’s Valentine’s Day plans, which are infinitely more exciting than Rose’s quiet evening ahead. He tells her that his friend Jeffrey has arranged a blind date for him with a handsome Broadway dancer.

  “I thought you didn’t like
creative types, Bill,” Rose teases.

  “I don’t, but he’s too good-looking to pass up. And he’s got orchestra seats for the new Sondheim revival.”

  “So basically, you’re using him.”

  “Basically, yes. But don’t tell me you’ve never used a man, Rose. Something tells me you weren’t always so sweet and innocent.”

  It strikes her as an odd accusation, considering her status. She met Sam ten years ago. Before him, there were a few boyfriends, but nobody serious. She was too busy putting herself through college and trying to make it on her own in New York to date much, let alone indulge in femme fatale behavior.

  Bill, apparently unaware that her grin has faded, glances toward the plate-glass window. “Uh-oh. Here comes trouble. I’d better go get the other cart.”

  “And leave me up here alone with him?”

  “Better you than me. At least he’s civil to you. He just grunts at me and looks like he wishes I’d go back to Christopher Street, or wherever it is homophobics like him think I belong.” Bill disappears into the back room as the street door opens, its brass bell tinkling on a gust of cold air.

  “Good morning.” Luke strides briskly into the store, wearing a long black cashmere overcoat and carrying a steaming paper cup of coffee in his leather-gloved hand.

  “Good morning.” Rose picks up the pricing gun and aims it at a paperback’s cover.

  “It’s gorgeous out there today, isn’t it?”

  She looks up, surprised. It wasn’t like Luke to make small talk.

  “Cold, though,” he adds.

  Rose follows her boss’s gaze to the wide, plate-glass window. Bare tree branches cast sharp shadows in bright winter sunlight. Across the street, beyond the row of storefronts, is a cloudless ice-blue sky.

  “Yes, it’s cold.” Rose can’t think of anything else to say, but it seems as though he expects more from her.

  She clears her throat, wishing he’d move on. Instead, he pauses to straighten a nearby Valentine’s Day display of romance novels and self-help relationship books. He works with precision, carefully aligning each book on the shelf.