A String of Beads (Jane Whitefield, #8)(32)

Chelsea set the vase on the table in the dining room, then frowned and moved it to the mantel, where the mirror doubled the colorful petals of the flowers. “Do you like it better there?”

He started to answer, but only got in “Sure” before she spoke over him. “I do too. The mantel is a good place to see them when you come in. It’s sort of the center of the house—at least visually.”

Crane said, “I was just thinking. It’s eleven thirty. Maybe you and I could go to an early lunch, and get in somewhere before everybody else shows up and there’s a big wait.”

She held her hands out from her sides in a gesture that seemed to say, “Can’t you see the way I’m dressed?” What she said aloud was, “That’s so sweet. But I’ve got so many chores to do that I really don’t have time for anything today.”

She saw his face go dead, as though something living behind the face had been injured and contracted. “Okay,” he said. “Another time.” His voice was hollow and emotionless. He took two steps toward the door.

“Dan,” she said carefully. “It’s only been a short time. A few weeks. And it isn’t as though he had some long disease so I had time to get used to the idea. Or even that he died in some accident, the kind that happens all the time. A guy stood out there in front of this house and shot him right here. When I came out of the bedroom he was lying just about where you’re standing now, and his head looked like it had exploded. I’m just not ready yet to do things for fun.”

Crane became solicitous. “I understand. Believe me. It was just a thought. When you feel ready, you should start going out again and seeing people. When you do, if you want company I’ll be here.”

“I know you will,” Chelsea said. She took another step in his direction and then stopped. She had wanted to herd him out the door by occupying the space as he gave it up, so he couldn’t come back into the center of the room. But she also didn’t want him to think that she was coming closer to hug him.

He waited.

“Well,” she said. “I’d better get back to work.”

He relented. “Me too. I’ll talk to you soon.”

“Bye.” She sensed that she had said it too soon. It would have been more graceful if she had waited until he was out the door, and then she could have said it and shut the door. This way she had to stand in silence while he left.

He opened the door, went out to the porch, and closed the screen door gently so its spring wouldn’t snap it back and slam it, the way they always did—the way they were supposed to. Slamming shut kept out the flies. As he went down the porch steps, she thought it was just like him. He had to control everything, including things that were none of his business and took care of themselves.

Chelsea stepped backward to stand far back in the living room where he couldn’t see her to watch him climb into his Range Rover, back it up a couple of times to turn it around, and lumber down the gravel driveway to the highway. That car was a mistake too. It was a big, fat boxy thing. She had looked the model up on the computer and seen that it had cost him more than a hundred thousand dollars. For a lot less money he could have bought something a woman could enjoy riding up to a restaurant or a fancy party in—a normal car she could get into without climbing steps in heels, or having them catch on something and make her fall flat. He acted as though he was thoughtful, but he just wasn’t. When he turned onto the highway and sped away toward the west, she felt the tension go out of her neck and shoulders.

DANIEL CRANE DROVE ALONG THE flat, straight highway past a sign that said BUFFALO 20 MILES. All along here the older homes were set far back from the road at the ends of long gravel driveways like Chelsea’s. They had been farms a generation ago, with crops between the road and the house. Usually there were vegetables planted there because they were easier to hoe, weed, watch, and pick if they were close to the house. A lot of these houses had even had rough, heavy wooden tables that stayed at the ends of their driveways all year, some with roofs over them so they could be used as roadside vegetable stands. But the big tractor--cultivated cash crops and the dairy pastures were all on the back hundred acres. Most of those back hundreds had been sold off long ago and turned into suburban tracts, with new streets running through them.

He had grown up going past those places and thinking what relics they were. What prosperous people around here had been doing for some time was to buy a place like that, drive a bulldozer through the old farmhouse, and build a much bigger house surrounded by the tall, old hardwood trees that had once shaded the farmhouse. They paved the gravel drive, put a rail fence or a stone wall or a hedge along the highway, and they had themselves a nice two- or three-acre estate. That was what he had done. Or the last owner before him had anyway, and it was the same thing. Now he lived in a neighborhood full of doctors and lawyers, all of their houses secluded on woodsy lots. Sometimes as he passed, he saw the kids walking the hundred yards or so down those long driveways to get to the end so the school bus could pick them up. They looked pretty cold sometimes in the winter, but it was worth a little discomfort to live in a house like that.

As Crane drove around Western New York, he looked for neighborhoods with plenty of big, new houses set far apart. Behind them they had pools and tennis courts, and the best of them had horses grazing on pastures that were relics of the farming days. Lately whenever he went through an area with old farmhouses like Chelsea’s, he knew that the next time he passed through, the developers would have begun their transformation, tearing them down to build houses for the upwardly mobile. He would have made a good land developer himself, but what he did produced more money.