Passing Through Paradise (14 page)

“Like this?” His thigh brushed against hers, and his grin was a little wicked. “This, I can manage.” The music changed again, this time to something old and bluesy.

“So far so good,” she said. His hand was startlingly rough. A workingman’s hand. “Now. Listen for the beat. Then we’ll move off with you stepping forward on your left foot.”

He looked down.

“Don’t look down,” she said.

“But—”

“You know where your feet are, Malloy.”

“Then where do I look?”

Again, she hesitated. “At your partner.”

His gaze settled on her, ocean-blue eyes filled with unspoken inquiries. The air between them seemed heated by a languid, tropical breeze from a far-off place. She had no idea how he did it, but he managed to make her feel that stare all the way to her toes.

“Like this?” he asked again.

Agitated, she took a half step back. “The idea is to hold your partner where you can talk to her. It’s a social thing.”

“Sorry. They didn’t teach us this stuff in work skills class.”

She bit her lip. Now that he’d revealed his college failure, she understood why he was sensitive about that. “I didn’t mean to sound condescending.”

“But you were doing so well.”

“Do you want to learn this or not, Malloy?”

“I do.”

For no particular reason, that struck her as funny. “Then let’s give it a try. Take one step forward.”

His long stride nearly knocked her over.

“Maybe half a step,” she amended, clutching him. His upper arm was solid iron.

He tried again. On the next upbeat, his left foot crushed down on her right.

Sandra emitted a yelp and jumped back. “Careful, Malloy. You don’t want to cripple your partner for life.”

“Maybe we’d better quit while you’re still uninjured.”

She gave her foot a shake. “I never pegged you for a quitter. Besides, better you make your mistakes on me, not Mary Margaret. Now, wait for the beat . . .”

They pushed off, and this time it started to work. To the tune of “Night and Day,” they danced around the barren, windswept yard. The whole world felt different just for these few moments. The shadows lifted from her thoughts until she wasn’t really thinking at all. She became aware of an overwhelming fullness of heart, growing from the long-buried need deep inside her. Oh, she had missed this. Closeness. Human contact. The simple act of dancing in a man’s arms felt so good, and so right, and yet at the same time, it hurt and stung, like fingers thawing out after a long freeze. It had been ages since she’d actually been close to someone.

She stared at a point past his shoulder, hoping her feelings were not written all over her face.

“I thought you were supposed to look at your partner,” he reminded her. His voice was tender, intimate. Close to her ear.

The song ended. She dropped her hands and pushed away from him, probably too quickly. “That’s all there is to it,” she said, flustered. “Eight counts, and you’re Fred Astaire.”

“The realization of a lifelong dream.”

“You need to practice. A lot.”

“Thanks. I sure as hell don’t want to embarrass Mary Margaret.”

“I think that starts with the teenage years,” she said. “Right now, she worships you.”

He put his tool belt back on, then opened a large metal chest in the back of his truck. An array of round, steel-toothed saw blades gleamed from the box. “Yeah?”

“Most twelve-year-old girls do.”

“She’s almost thirteen. I better brace myself.” He selected a blade and fitted it in the big power saw his crew had set up at the rear of the house.

Sandra felt relieved to see him going back to work—but a little bereft, too.

“By the way,” he said over his shoulder, “I gave her two of your books to read.”

Sandra felt a funny twist inside her. “Really?”

“Got them from the library.
Beneath the Surface
and
Every Other Day.
I had to ask the librarian for them. They weren’t on the shelf.”

Sandra flushed. “A lot of children’s books get challenged at public libraries.” She shook her head. “Right here in New England, the cradle of liberty.” Though her editor often tried to console her, claiming she was in good company, with Mark Twain, Maya Angelou and Judy Blume, she hated the idea that her books weren’t immediately accessible to the readers she wrote them for.

“So I imagine you howled good and loud when you learned they were banning your book.” Mike twirled a wing nut on the saw.

She stared at his hands, his fingers. Large and capable, yet they’d felt so gentle when he’d held her. “I’m . . .I was a politician’s wife. My job was to smooth things over, not make waves.”

“Wait a minute. Your husband was a Democrat. The ACLU endorsed him. You’re telling me he tolerated censorship of his wife’s books in his own backyard?”

She let out a thin sigh and dropped her gaze. “Victor learned early on to pick his battles. He had to let go of a lot of things in order to get elected.”

“Like the First Amendment?”

“You don’t need to be sarcastic.” She felt a bitter defensiveness and realized she hadn’t even begun to deal with what happened to Victor.

“I’m no politician,” Malloy said. “Still, I can’t believe you’d let some fascist fringe group get away with this. Doesn’t it make you crazy, knowing someone’s censoring your work?”

She stuffed her hands into her jacket pockets. “Malloy, at this point in my life, pretty much everything makes me crazy. I ‘ve learned to pick my battles, too. Right now, book banning isn’t one of them. And by the way, the books were challenged by law-abiding citizens, not fascists.”

As she spoke, he measured and marked lumber, pausing every few seconds to consult a computer-generated diagram.

“I figured an author would make a priority of free speech and freedom of the press.”

“Don’t get me wrong, Malloy. I love my work. I love being an author. That means I have to protect myself. I don’t want my personal problems to cast a shadow on my publishing career. In case you’ve forgotten, I’m in a bit of trouble here. The last thing I need is for WRIQ to do a feature on my controversial books. Haven’t you ever had to go against your principles for the sake of being practical?”

“Yeah,” he said, picking up a pair of safety glasses. “I guess.”

“When Victor was alive, I kept the writing quiet for a totally different reason. Writing was my refuge, my safe and private place in a very public world. It worked for us, balancing his busy career with something that was mine alone.” She picked up a stray nail from the driveway. “At first, I worried that his folks would have a problem with my books. They’re—Ronald and Winifred Winslow — they’re pretty conservative.”

“So did they have a problem?”

She hunched her shoulders inside the jacket. “No. But only because they never read my work. To them, my writing was simply a little hobby, like doing needlework or collecting dessert plates. I think if they showed a deeper interest, they’d— “ She stopped herself just in time. “Anyway, they were very proud of Victor, and regarded me as an adjunct to him. A wife, not a writer.”

She tossed the nail into the trash container parked at the side of the house. “I wanted my books to stand or fail on their own merits rather than always wondering if my work was published because people were curious about Victor Winslow’s wife. I didn’t want to be regarded as the Marilyn Quayle of children’s literature.” She stared at a spot beyond the dunes, surprised at herself for speaking so frankly. “I was a writer before I was Victor’s wife. Now I ‘m not his wife anymore, but I ‘m still a writer. To be honest, it’s the only part of my life that makes sense right now.”

“I guess I can understand that,” he said.

“So how did Mary Margaret like the books?”

“I think she likes them a lot. I’ll ask her tonight when we talk on the phone.”

He probably called his kids all the time. What must it be like, having kids but not being there to tuck them into bed each night? She wanted to ask, but the dance of uncertainty between them stopped her. They weren’t exactly friends. They were merely being cordial because they had a contract together.

“She was pretty impressed when she realized she’d met you,” he commented.

“I was impressed with her, too.” Sandra recognized a kindred soul in Mary Margaret Malloy—the lonely intelligence in the girl’s eyes, the serious set to her mouth, the watchful silence. The intensity of Mary Margaret’s stare had hinted that she was the sort of girl who was always probing for things that weren’t there. Not seeing the things that were. Oh, Mary Margaret, learn to look and see what is, Sandra thought. You’ll spare yourself a lot of pain.

“If she has any questions about the books, or just wants to tell me what she thought, you could bring her by again. Or she could write me a note.”

“She might like that.” He stacked the lumber to be cut alongside the saw. In the front yard, the crew finished their lunch and rumbled back into action. The radio started playing “Stairway to Heaven.”

“So I guess I’d better get back to work,” Sandra said. “Holler if you need anything.”

He lowered his safety goggles and bent from the waist, positioning a board in front of the saw blade, eyeballing it like a pool shark lining up a shot. “Will do. And thanks for the dancing lesson.”

“Don’t forget to practice tonight.” She took a step backward, curiously reluctant to return to the house. “Every night.”

“You got it.” Flashing a reckless grin, he tripped the switch of the saw, and with a powerful roar and the reek of hot wood, sliced the board in half as though it were butter.

Chapter
16

S
o I see you were getting pretty cozy with the client,” Phil said, ducking his head under the sloping attic roof. He didn’t look at Mike but concentrated on tracking an electrical cable and checking it against the diagram on his chart.

“She was showing me how to dance,” Mike said. If only that was all that was going on between them. He tried to think of her like any other client; restoring someone’s house involved a certain level of intimacy that didn’t hap pen under ordinary circumstances. Until today, it had been a forced closeness, an accidental touch, two strangers on a bus. Now the chemistry was different with Sandra. In bringing Mike into her house, she brought him too close for comfort. He saw the way she lived, the things she ate, smelled the light, soapy perfume that hung in the air of her bedroom. Each day, he delved deeper into restoring the old Victorian beauty, and had to remind himself that this was about the house, not the owner. Yet he discovered layers and secrets within her, too.

“Dancing, huh?” Phil poked around a crate of old books.

Mike pried bits of ancient caulk from the ocean-view dormer windows. “Mary Margaret has a dance coming up and I don’t want to embarrass her.”

Phil cast a look over his shoulder. “You definitely need more practice.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, pal.” He went back to work, but kept thinking about Sandra. She’d felt like heaven in his arms, soft and warm, smelling of fresh air and clean skin. And holding her, he’d remembered how much he liked holding a woman close. Furtively, he had leaned down to let her hair blow across his lips.

After dancing with her, he’d been irritable and out of sorts, and work wasn’t helping much, either. She’d unknowingly delivered a searing reminder that some needs couldn’t be filled by work or by being a good father to his kids. She reminded him that there was only so much loneliness a person could bear. And there was only one way to scratch a certain itch.

He drew a bead of caulk along the edge of the windowpane. Why her? he wondered. She was Victor’s widow, for chrissake, and plagued by troubles he didn’t want to touch. She was the last woman in the world he should have the hots for.

Finishing the window, he cleaned off his putty knife and decided to inspect the long, hand-hewn rafter beam for signs of rot. The unfinished room held the cobwebby chill of long neglect, a virtual welcome wagon for squirrels or raccoons, particularly in winter. Taking out a flashlight, he navigated a path through the cast-off belongings of several generations: crates and boxes with hand-lettered labels, broken furniture, abandoned toys, a rotted beach umbrella, old lamps and appliances collecting dust. In one corner lay the scattered twigs and swatches and empty seed hulls of an abandoned squirrel’s nest.

At the end of the attic, near the top of the narrow stairs, was a stack of recent arrivals—he could tell from the newness of the boxes. Some were mystery cartons, their contents unknown; others were identified in a hasty scrawl: “Old manuscripts.” “Campaign ‘98.” “Wedding gifts.” “Personal corresp.” “Misc.”

The crates and luggage concealed a row of rafters and possibly another critter habitat. He moved the boxes one by one, realizing with a lurch of his gut that these were the souvenirs of Sandra’s life. Her life with Victor.

Most were sealed with wide brown tape, though the “Wedding gifts” box contained some sort of knickknack in the shape of a circus tent, and the flaps didn’t quite close over it. The box labeled “Misc.” was unsealed, and by shining his light, he discovered a collection of plaques and framed certificates. “To Sandra Winslow, in appreciation of service . . . ” Interesting. She had received commendations from Literacy International, the National AIDS Foundation, the Stuttering Foundation of America, Big Brothers and Sisters, a half-dozen others. He remembered, almost against his will, what Ronald Winslow had said about Sandra: “She’s hiding something. She’s always been secretive.”

Restacking the boxes out of the way, Mike shook his head. “You’re barking up the wrong tree, pal.”

“How’s that?” called Phil from the other end of the attic.

“Nothi — shit.” As he lifted a large box marked “Old linens, etc.,” the bottom dropped out of it. A collection of miscellany spilled across the floor—a cigar box held shut with a rubber band, a tackle box spattered with paint, a bunch of pillowcases and doilies, and an empty wheeled suitcase, carry-on size. When he picked it up, the top of the case flopped open. It was empty, but he could hear something sliding around inside. He hoped he hadn’t broken anything.

He gave it a gentle shake, and a sheaf of papers and envelopes slipped out of the lining of the case, spilling across the floor. Cursing softly, he stooped to pick them up. Then it struck him—the case had a crudely homemade false compartment. Someone had slit the lining and then refastened it with a few staples.

“You need some help picking that stuff up?” asked Phil.

“Nope, I’ve got it.” A chill slid across the back of Mike’s neck. Turning the beam of the flashlight away, he told himself not to pry into this. But the watery winter light through the windows slanted across the papers like a spotlight. Letters, mostly. He didn’t recognize the handwriting—even now, after all these years, he would know Victor’s precise handwriting.

Phil got to work on the wiring, oblivious, whistling between his teeth.

Mike glanced down. Some of the letters were addressed to Victor at a post office drawer in Hillsgrove, near the airport, and had been postmarked in Florida, but it was too dim to read the city or date. Other letters were typed and addressed to “The Hon. Victor Winslow” at his State House office.

Mike had no idea what he was looking at. He just knew he didn’t want to see anymore. He scooped the papers together and stuffed them back into the lining of the case. He noticed a few receipts, too. And a computer disk with a lined label bearing one simple mark:
M.

Mike wondered if this was something Victor had hidden away, or if it was Sandra’s doing.

He stuck the suitcase back into the torn box. Everybody had secrets, he told himself. Everyone had things they hid—from family, friends, the world.

But not everyone was a murder suspect.

He thought about Victor’s parents, filled with anguish and rage. The contents of the suitcase might be of great interest to them.

He shoved the box out of the way and got back to work.