Woman in Black (59 page)

The quicksand feeling in her belly intensified at the thought. But wasn't he already long gone, as far as she was concerned? Hadn't she made certain of that?

She looked around her, once more taking in the sights and sounds and smells of the town she'd once viewed as a place of last resort. With the onset of the warm weather, the downtown area that had been bleak and gray all winter had come to life, blossoming like the begonias in their hanging peat baskets along Main Street. The shops were bustling and the sidewalk cafés thronged. There was a line now outside Rumson's Ice Cream, and on the sidewalk outside the gourmet store on the corner of Main and River, shoppers were clustered around a clerk offering free samples. Farther off in the distance, she could hear the pealing of carillon bells, no doubt in celebration of yet another wedding (she'd booked a number of honeymoon trips already this season), reminding her that everywhere around her, lives were being lived. Couples were taking leaps of faith. Futures were being mapped out. While she would be sitting home alone, night after night.

At last, she roused from her thoughts and glanced at her watch, surprised to find that she'd been sitting out here for nearly half an hour. With a sigh, she rose to her feet and headed back to work. Barb looked up from her desk as Lila walked in. “Everything okay?” she asked, in the tone of someone who was really asking,
Trouble at home?

“Couldn't be better,” Lila replied, smiling as if she hadn't a care in the world. Barb was a good person, but she was also an inveterate gossip, and Lila didn't want everyone in town knowing her business. She breezed past Barb on her way to her desk, where the lives of her clients—Nancy McCormick, for whom she was arranging a trip to Barcelona, which the newly liberated divorcée was calling her “consolation prize after thirty years with the same miserable man”; the husband who'd had her reserve a room at a resort in Cabo San Lucas for him and his mistress under the names “Mr. and Mrs. Clarren”; and eighty-year-old Mrs. Syms, who claimed to have found the fountain of youth on a Royal Norwegian cruise and who was eager for another go at it—would keep her from examining her own too closely.

The rest of the day flew quickly by, and when she glanced at her watch again, it was ten past five. Barb was getting ready to leave, and Janet and Cheryl Ann had already taken off for the day. Lila removed her headset and unplugged it from the phone. She turned off her computer and scribbled a note on a Post-it that she stuck to one of the pending files. When everything on her desk was tidied up, she sat back for a moment, staring off into space and absently rubbing her scalp where her headset had left a faint indentation. She was tired, but it was a mental exhaustion rather than the physical one she'd felt working for Abigail. And with it came the satisfaction of knowing that she was relying on her talents and wits rather than on sheer grit and determination.

The jingle of keys—Barb getting ready to lock up—brought her back into focus, and she stood up, retrieving her purse from under her desk. She thought about picking up something for supper on her way home, maybe some of that smoked turkey from the deli that Neal liked so much. But she immediately thought better of it. Neal could feed himself. He didn't need her to look after him. Hadn't he made that perfectly clear? She surprised herself by letting out a low chuckle, feeling strangely liberated.

She glanced up to find Barb giving her a coy, knowing look. “You look like the cat that got into the cream. Got something lined up for tonight?” Code for
Do you have a date?

“No, nothing special,” Lila replied.

But Barb must have thought she was merely being circumspect, for she coaxed, “Oh, come on, you can tell
me
.” The older woman's eyes shone in anticipation of a shared confidence, especially one that might involve a mystery lover.

Lila only shrugged and said cryptically (and a bit meanly), “You wouldn't believe it if I told you.”
I have a hot date with a Stouffer's frozen lasagna and the new Tony Hillerman novel. I'm so boring I don't even flirt with men over the Internet. Old Mrs. Syms leads a more exciting life than I do. At least she has Bingo and shuffleboard
. Barb stood poised a moment longer, smiling expectantly, as if awaiting the punch line of a joke, but when Lila said no more, her face fell. Instead of chirping her usual sing-song good-bye as they headed out the door, she said with forced cheer, “Well, I'm sure you'll be having more fun than me. Joe's idea of a date is pizza and beer in front of the TV.”

Lila turned as she was leaving to flash Barb an enigmatic smile. Let the poor woman have her fantasies.

An hour later, after stopping at the supermarket for groceries and then at the gas station to fill up her tank, she was in her car headed home when, on a whim, she found herself taking the turnoff to Rose Hill instead. She hadn't been back since the day after the fire, when she'd gone to see if there was anything worth salvaging of her possessions (there hadn't been—what little she'd had had gone up in smoke along with everything else when the garage had caught fire). What would have been the point? There was nothing there for her now. Nothing but …

Her thoughts turned to Karim, and she was forced to admit there was a part of her that was hoping she'd run into him.

She pulled into the drive to find that most of the debris had been cleared away. All that was left of the house was the foundation, with crumbling sections of wall sticking up here and there like broken, blackened teeth. She paused to reflect for a moment before getting out of the car. It made her sad, seeing Abigail's former pride and joy reduced to rubble. Not as sad as she'd felt in losing the Park Avenue penthouse where she'd enjoyed some of her best years, but as in the passing of an era. So much history here, all of it wiped away in an instant.

She noticed Karim's Dodge Ram parked off to one side of what used to be the garage, and her heart bucked up against her rib cage. A moment later she spotted him off in the distance, shirtless, prying at something in the dirt with a shovel. He waved to her as she climbed out of her car, then bent once more to his task. It wasn't until he'd finished that he set aside his shovel and started toward her. Even then, he appeared to be taking his time, walking at a leisurely pace that seemed to mock the wild beating of her heart.

When he finally reached her, he greeted her pleasantly enough. “Lila. What brings you here?” His expression registered neither delight nor annoyance at her unexpected visit.

“I happened to be driving by, and I thought I'd stop in and see how it was coming along. Aren't you working awfully late?” she asked, as if she hadn't been hoping to run into him.

He gestured toward the heap of rubble in the driveway—broken bricks and chunks of concrete, pieces of charred lumber, shards of glass. “I have a dump truck coming first thing Monday morning to haul all this off,” he explained. “I wanted to make sure everything was ready.”

The job had left him filthy. With his chambray shirt tied around his waist, she could see the tracks on his dusty arms and chest where rivulets of sweat had run down them, and noted that the bandana knotted around his forehead had done little to keep away the fine ash that had settled over his curls, turning them a premature gray. Yet Lila had never seen a more welcome sight.

“Were you able to salvage much?” she asked in an effort to make conversation. She already knew the answer from having talked to Abigail.

“Very little, I'm afraid,” he told her. “What wasn't lost in the fire was too damaged to be of much use.”

She glanced about in shared dismay. “It's hard to believe anyone actually lived here. It looks more like an archaeological dig.” Her gaze took in patio and pool in back, now little more than a hole in the ground, and the piles of excavated dirt where the rosebushes and trellises had stood.

He nodded. “In some ways, it was. We had to sort through the ruins carefully so as not to destroy anything we dug up. But, as you can see, my work here is almost done.”

“So what's next?”

He took a swipe at his sweaty brow with the back of his forearm. “I may head up north. My cousin Ahmed owns a restaurant in Providence, and he's looking for a manager.”

She experienced a little inner jolt. “Providence, Rhode Island? I didn't know you had family there.”

“Just my cousin. He came to this country many years ago, as a student, and stayed on after he graduated to go into the restaurant business. Now he and his wife are looking to open a second restaurant, which is why he needs someone to manage the one he currently owns.”

“Providence is a long way off.”

He shrugged, looking out over the ruins of Rose Hill. “There's not much to keep me here.”

Had he forgotten so quickly? Had she meant so little to him?
Lila wondered. Then she was quick to remind herself that
he
was the one who'd been spurned, not the other way around. Why shouldn't he move on? She certainly hadn't given him a reason not to. Nonetheless, she found herself pointing out, “I'm sure Abby will want you to stay on if she decides to rebuild. You'll have plenty of work to do around here, in that case.” She looked around her at the once manicured grounds rutted with tire tracks from heavy earthmoving machinery, the trampled shrubs and flowerbeds once so lovingly maintained.

He nodded thoughtfully. “She has spoken to me about this, yes.” He didn't volunteer any more than that.

Having reached the limits of polite conversation, Lila gave a little sigh and said, “Well, I suppose I ought to be heading home before my ice cream melts.” She gestured toward her car, with its bags of groceries visible in the backseat. She felt keenly disappointed for some reason, though she couldn't think why. She hadn't come here for anything in particular.

Or had she?

Karim surprised her by asking, “Would you like to have a look around before you go?”

She gave one last, fleeting thought to her ice cream before deciding that if she was so pathetic that she'd choose Häagen-Dazs over a few more minutes with Karim, she might as well hang it up entirely.

“Maybe just a quick look. I can't stay long.”

He took her on a tour of the once grand home, keeping a hand lightly cupped under her elbow as he guided her over piles of broken bricks and pieces of lumber. They made their way through what had been the living room, once filled with valuable antiques that she had come to know more intimately than any pieces of furniture she'd ever owned, of which only a few charred sticks remained. In the former kitchen, the blasted hulk of the stove stood like a relic from some ancient civilization, and broken floor tiles lay strewn over the exposed concrete subflooring like so many scattered playing cards. She peered up the tumble-down staircase, its remaining risers ascending into nothingness. It left her feeling more than a little sickened, thinking of the even greater tragedy that had been so narrowly averted.

“It's a shame, isn't it?” she remarked, pausing to take one last look over her shoulder as they were walking back to her car. “Whatever Abby decides, something will be put up here eventually, but it won't be the same.”

“No, it won't,” he agreed.

“If she does decide to sell, it'll be a financial decision more than anything. It's either that or buy out Kent's share, and I'm not sure she can afford to do that.”

“It's a pity,” he said, shaking his head. Lila assumed he was referring to Rose Hill until he observed, “Two good people. And yet two good people don't necessarily make a good marriage.”

“No, but I think they're both happier this way.” Lila was thinking of the other day when she'd bumped into Kent and his lady friend in the supermarket. They'd both been radiant with the flush of new love. “Or at least happier than if they'd stayed together.”

“I suppose you're right.” Karim's gaze drifted off, and she thought she caught a glint of sadness in his eyes.

Impulsively she asked, “Are
you
happy, Karim?”

He brought his gaze back to her. “Why do you ask?”

“I don't know. I guess seeing all this …” she gestured around her, “got me thinking. I mean, in traditional cultures, fires are used for cleansing or chasing away evil spirits. I wonder if any evil spirits got chased away here.” She spoke with a lightness that belied her emotions.

With his shadow stretching over the debris-littered ground, he looked taller than his normal height, like a figure out of a mythic tale from one of those traditional cultures. “Have yours been chased away, Lila
jan?
” he asked softly.

The endearment, as much as the intimacy of his tone, caused her to go as warm as if the sun now setting had been directly overhead. She knew from the way he was looking at her that it wasn't an idle question, and she chose her words carefully. “I suppose so, in some ways. I've been so busy with my new job that I haven't had time to think about much else. But it's more than that—I feel like I'm starting to let go of some of that old stuff. It's amazing, really. I never thought there'd come a day when I wouldn't wake in the morning with a pit in my stomach.”

“Then I'm happy for you,” said Karim, sounding as if he meant it. “And your son? How is he doing?”

“Funny you should ask. He just announced that he's moving out.”

Karim gazed at her intently, as if trying to read her thoughts. “And is this a good thing?”

“At first I wasn't so sure,” she said. “But Neal seems to think it'll be the best thing for both of us, and I'm starting to think that maybe he's right. It's like you said—children move on, and if you don't make a life of your own, you're going to be in for some lonely days.”

Karim gave a small smile. “I confess my advice was somewhat self-serving.”

“Either way, you were right. I should have listened. Not that it matters anymore. It's obvious you've moved on.”