Dearly Beloved
Authors: Wendy Corsi Staub
Dearly Beloved
Wendy Corsi Staub
Back in the mid-1990s, I was an established author of young adult suspense and paranormal fiction when seemingly overnight the market for those books all but vanished. My editor suggested that I try my hand at an adult thriller, but I had mixed feelings about shifting gears. He soon went from suggesting to insisting, and, of course, I acquiesced. Little did I know that a brand-new career was about to be born!
Around that time, my husband and I visited New England’s Block Island in the off-season. Spooked—and inspired—by the desolate atmosphere, I sat down and wrote
Dearly Beloved
. I set the novel on a fictionalized Atlantic coastal island and created a madman who lures three unsuspecting women there in the dead of winter to play out his own vengeful fantasy. To my surprise, my editor loved the book, and when it was published in 1996, so did readers.
Flash forward sixteen years and eighteen adult thrillers (many of them bestsellers), and I find it hard to believe that I was ever ambivalent about the shift to adult fiction! I found my creative voice and hit my stride spinning twist-filled grown-up tales about characters to whom I could relate: ordinary people living ordinary lives. Ordinary people who were about to discover that danger can strike when—and where—they least expected it . . .
Until now, my first six thrillers have been available only in print format. But I’m excited to reveal that HarperCollins has acquired the rights and is publishing them all as e-books! First up, fittingly, is
Dearly Beloved
. If you missed it the first time around and are in the mood for a good old-fashioned thriller that will keep you turning e-pages into the wee hours, look for it July 24, wherever e-books are sold.
Thanks for reading!
Wendy Corsi Staub
Contents
S
andy Cavelli glances at her watch as she hurries up the icy steps of the red-brick post office. Four-fifty-nine. She has exactly one minute to retrieve today’s mail before the place closes for the day.
She hurries over to the wall that is a grid of rectangular metal doors and eagerly turns her round key in the lock of post office box 129. Jammed, as it always is on Mondays.
Connecticut Singles
magazine comes out on Friday mornings, and Sandy is beginning to believe that every guy in the greater Hartford area who doesn’t have a weekend date spends Friday and Saturday flipping through the classifieds in the back of the magazine, answering ads.
She removes the bundle of letters from the box and does a quick mental count. Nine—no, ten. Ten eligible single men have responded to her ad this week. So far. If everything goes according to the pattern that has established itself over the past month, only two or three more letters will trickle in over the next few days. Then, if she chooses to run the ad again—she has to decide by six o’clock Wednesday—there will be a new stack of letters waiting in the box next Monday.
Renting a post office box was definitely a good idea, Sandy reminds herself, even if it has set her back over thirty dollars. This way, she doesn’t have to deal with the questions her parents would undoubtedly have if she’d suddenly started getting a blizzard of mail at home every week. They would never go for the idea of their daughter’s placing an ad to meet a man through the classifieds. Christ, they still wait up if she stays out past midnight!
Sandy walks slowly toward the double front doors, flipping through the envelopes as she goes. As usual, a few of them don’t have return addresses; the ones that do are mostly from Hartford or the immediate area. . . .
But look at this one, from a post office box on Tide Island!
Intrigued, Sandy shoves the other letters into her oversized black shoulder bag, then slides a manicured nail under the flap of the envelope.
“Miss? We’re closing,” a uniformed postman says. He’s jangling a ring of keys and waiting expectantly by the front door.
Sandy looks up. “Oh, sorry.”
“No problem.” He smiles. His teeth are white and straight, and his eyes crinkle pleasantly. “Pretty cold out there, huh?”
“Yup. It’s supposed to snow again overnight.”
She doesn’t recognize him. He must be new. Almost every face in Greenbury is familiar; she has lived here all her life.
She isn’t usually drawn to redheads. Still, he has a nice, strong jawline. And his hair is a burnished-auburn shade, and she likes the way it is cut—short on the sides, up over his ears, and slightly stubbly on top.
“More snow? Where was all this white stuff a few weeks ago, for Christmas?” he asks good-naturedly, reaching out to open the door for her.
“You got me.” Sandy shrugs and glances automatically at the fourth finger of his left hand.
Married.
Oh, well.
“Thanks. Have a good night,” she says, walking quickly through the door.
She pauses on the slippery top cement step to finish opening the letter she is still clutching.
A brisk wind whips along High Street, sending a chill through Sandy as she slits the envelope open the rest of the way. Her teeth are starting to chatter. It’s too cold to read this letter out here, no matter how intrigued she is. She tucks it and the others into her purse and fumbles in her pockets for her gloves. Swiftly she puts them on and clings to the ice-coated metal railing as she picks her way down the four steps to the sidewalk.
Then she gingerly goes, slipping and sliding every few steps in her black-suede flats, along the nearly empty street to her car in the Greenbury municipal lot around the corner. Her footsteps sound lonely and hollow on the brittle frozen pavement.
Just a month ago, in the height of the holiday season, downtown Greenbury was strung with twinkling white lights and festive red bows bedecked the old-fashioned lampposts. Carols were piped into the frosty air from speakers at the red-brick town hall, and High Street bustled well past five o’clock on week nights.
The picturesque, historic village is only fifteen miles outside of Hartford. Even the lifelong residents are aware of the postcard beauty in its white-steepled churches, window-paned storefronts, and broad common dotted with statues and fountains. And as one of the few small towns in central Connecticut that still has a thriving downtown commerce area, Greenbury performs a feat that’s becoming nearly impossible in America. It actually draws shoppers away from the malls and superstores that dot the suburban Hartford area.
But now that Christmas is over, the businesses along High close early and downtown is almost deserted in the frigid January twilight.
Sandy’s car is one of few left in the parking lot, which is really just a rutted, grassy area behind the town hall. She hurries toward the Chevy, stepping around patches of snow and absently noting the dirty chunks of ice that cling to the underside of the car just behind each wheel.
She doesn’t bother kicking it off. The car is ugly enough anyway, with rust spots all over the body and a sheet of thick plastic covering the triangular opening in the back where a window is missing. She’s come to loathe the old clunker; it belonged to her father, and she’s long past being grateful to him for handing it down to her without making her buy it.
She’s been saving for a new car—a new
used
car, of course—ever since she started working at the Greenbury Gal Boutique last spring. She blew a good chunk of her savings on community college tuition in August, and the spring semester bill will be due next week when she registers for classes. But that will still leave nearly four thousand dollars in her account. She socked away over five hundred dollars in December alone, when her commission checks were considerably higher than usual. Of course, that won’t keep up. The store was dead all day today, and her hours have already been cut way back.
Sandy settles into the front seat, her breath puffing out in little white clouds. She whispers “brrr” and turns the key in the ignition. After a few tries, the engine turns over, and she adjusts the heat control to high. A blast of cold wind hits her in the face and she closes the black plastic vents. She’ll probably be home before the hissing air actually becomes warm, but she leaves it on high anyway.
Eagerly, she reaches into her purse and retrieves the letter with the Tide Island return address. She takes out the single sheet of paper inside and notices that it’s real stationery, creamy and heavy.
That’s a first,
she thinks, pulling off her right glove with her teeth and leaving it clamped in her mouth.
Most of the men who have responded to her ad so far have written on either yellow legal paper or their company letterhead.
The interior light of her car burned out long ago. Sandy tilts the paper so she can see better in the filtered glow from the streetlamp a few feet away.
Dear Sandra:
I saw your ad in
Connecticut Singles
and was struck by how similar our interests are. You sound like the kind of woman I’ve been waiting for my whole life. Like you, I never thought I’d resort to personal ads to meet someone; but since I’m a medical doctor with a thriving practice, my hectic lifestyle makes it hard to meet anyone the traditional way. I’ve enclosed a photograph of myself . . .
Photograph? Sandy frowns and checks the envelope. Yes, she missed it. There’s a picture tucked inside. She grabs it and holds it up in the light.
He’s gorgeous!
is her immediate reaction.
He has rugged, outdoorsy good looks—and what a bod! He’s shirtless in the photograph, which was taken on a sailboat as he hauled the sheet in, or whatever people do on sailboats. Even in the shadows, Sandy can make out his bronzed, hairless chest and bulging arm muscles. He’s grinning into the camera, revealing a face that she instantly decides is honest, intelligent, and friendly.
She anxiously turns back to the letter.
. . . so that you’ll recognize me when we meet—which, I’m hoping, will be soon. However, I’m on call at the hospital every weekend until mid-February. I’ve taken the liberty of assuming you’ll agree to spend a romantic weekend with me on Tide Island, where I have a weekend house. Since I realize you may be hesitant about staying with a stranger, I’ve arranged accommodations for you at the Bramble Rose Inn. Your expenses will, of course, be paid entirely by me. I’m a romantic at heart, and hope you’ll agree that prolonging our meeting until Valentine’s Day weekend will add to the enchantment of what may become a lasting relationship. The innkeeper of the Bramble Rose, Jasper Hammel, has agreed to act as our liaison. You can call him at (508) 555-1493, to accept this invitation. I’ll look forward to our meeting, Sandra.
Fondly,
Ethan Thoreau