The Unquiet - J. D. Robb [135]
“What? Who is it?”
“No one.” She turned the dead bolt and stepped out cautiously. “There isn’t anyone here. I thought I heard someone knock. I guess I was wrong.”
The long, chipped-rock drive that curved uphill through a sparse woods to the house was empty—well, except for her secondhand Volvo that stuck out like a prune in a bowl of raspberries in front of the elegant house.
Then she saw it . . . or not. Smoke . . . or fingers of fog . . . or a trick of evening light and shadow. The figure of a man, a tall boy . . .
No. Nothing. There was nothing there—despite the certainty in her mind of what she’d seen.
She used her middle finger to firmly push the crease between her brows away and shook her head as she stepped back into the house, once again feeling the . . . unquiet inside herself that had been plaguing her for months. “Don’t you ever get tired of being right?”
“No, dear,” she said without hesitation. “What am I right about this time?”
“I need this. Getting away. Getting some rest. Taking time to clear my head. Thank you for setting this up for me. It was a great idea.”
“Let’s hope it works, huh?”
They talked for a few more minutes, and her mother ended the conversation with, “Don’t forget to check in once in a while. I’ll be thinking of you.”
Ivy smiled as she broke the connection and slid her cell phone into the back pocket of her jeans. Her mother always requested a check-in, but it was never necessary. She’d call again in a few hours when the sun had set to make sure all the doors and windows were locked and again in the morning to be certain her only daughter hadn’t been throttled during the night. She was a worrier.
Stepping barefoot out onto the warm gray flagstone patio, Ivy sighed and curled up on a chaise to peruse her temporary domain. Beautiful was an understatement. So was magnificent. A wordsmith by profession, and still she found some things simply defied language.
A half width of the large terrace ran the length of the house and surrounded the Rossinis’ lap pool and convenient hot tub, which was quartered off on the near end, situated next to a fire pit and a stand-alone bar that was empty at present—she’d checked. Beyond, all the way to the cliffs, was a neatly manicured but mundane lawn . . . made spectacular by large asymmetrical chunks and blocks of pale granite strewn across the grass like so many pieces to a giant’s puzzle. Some stood alone while others were a backdrop for blooming bushes and flowers. Here and there, trees seemed to have pushed straight up through the rock.
Wild and raw, then artfully domesticated . . . inevitably awe inspiring.
To think of the thousands of tons of granite extracted from the hillside in just such slabs and hunks to create the precipice just a few yards away was mind-boggling. At least 100 feet of the total 380 feet of the old quarry jutted jagged and coarse above the water on this end of the great lake created by the Mumford Dam—named after the quarry and the small mining town that were flooded out of existence when they stemmed the Lackey River for hydroelectric power and, more important, to prevent spring floods in the lowlands.
Ivy stood again, feeling fidgety. After a daylong drive, maybe stretching her muscles and exploring the terrain would help. First things first, she decided, wandering out across the cool, soft grass toward the cliffs.
As nice as the house was and as striking as the scenery could be, perhaps water wasn’t the best milieu in which to find the peace she was looking for—not that this beggar could afford to be choosy. In fact, she couldn’t afford much of anything now that she’d taken the leap and quit her day job to write full-time.
The wind picked up as she neared the high rim of the lake, grabbing at her hair and flapping the sleeves of her cotton shirt. It carried an early spring chill that hadn’t been evident back at the house. It was nice. Clean, fresh. And she had to admit there was something . . . consoling in the endless splashing and lapping of the water against the cliff’s face. A few more yards and she could see