"Oh, so you do use the shops, do you?" Sarah said, a brow lifting.

"Certainly do. I bought all of my Christmas gifts here last year, and I fully intend to do the same again. I'm frequently over here browsing around."

"Funny, we've never seen you," Sarah murmured.

I said, "It's nice to meet a satisfied customer. You are, aren't you?"

"Very much so," Richard assured me, smiling. He took a swallow of wine and went on, "And I love Nora and her cooking. To tell you the truth, I don't know what I'd do without her. I buy most of my meals from the café takeout-her soups, her salads, and that delicious cottage pie."

Sarah and I exchanged dismayed glances, and before I could say a word, she exclaimed, "It's a good thing you do like it, because that's what you're getting for dinner tonight. Nora's chicken soup and cottage pie."

"Oh," he said. "Oh, that's great. Great. As I said, I am her biggest fan."

"I could make something else, spaghetti primavera, if you like!" I suggested swiftly, feeling embarrassed.

"No, don't be silly. The cottage pie's wonderful."

"Bet you had that last night?" Sarah said, making it sound like a question.

"No, I didn't!" Richard protested, and then he broke off. His mouth twitched and he started to laugh. Glancing at me he shrugged. "But honestly, I don't mind eating it again."

The expression on his face was so comical I found myself laughing with him. Between chuckles, I said to Sarah, "We're going to have to start cooking again. We don't have much choice."

"You're right, Mally," she replied, gazing at me for the longest moment.

Richard asked me more questions about Indian Meadows, how I had come to start the shops, and I told him.

He mentioned the Lettice diary and confided how fascinating he had found it.

Sarah listened to us talking, occasionally joined in, went and got the bottle of wine from the kitchen, and kept filling our glasses.

At one moment she came back from the kitchen and said, "I've put the cottage pie in the oven," and pulled a funny face. We all laughed.

Later, when I went into the kitchen myself to check on things, Sarah followed me. "I can do it, really I can," I said. "Go and keep Richard company."

"He's all right, he's looking at the books on the bookshelves. Listen, I want to tell you something."

She sounded so peculiar, I turned around to face her. "What is it?"

"It's lovely to hear you laugh again, Mal. I haven't heard you laugh in years. That's all I wanted to say." stood there returning her loving gaze, and I realized that she had spoken the truth.

As it turned out, laughter was the keynote of the evening.

Richard Markson had a quick wit and a good sense of humor, as did Sarah, and their repartee was fast and furious. At one moment they were so amusing I found myself chortling yet again, and so much so I had to stop serving the cottage pie for fear of spilling it.

I sat down at the table for a second, letting my laughter subside, and I looked from one to the other, thinking how well matched they seemed. It struck me that he was the nicest man Sarah had brought around in a long time, and it was quite apparent that he liked her a lot. And why wouldn't he? My Sashy was beautiful and smart, kind and loving, and quite irresistible at times, like tonight. She was inimitable.

Rising, I went back to the oven and brought out the cottage pie again.

Sarah said, "Why don't you put the dish in the middle of table, Mal? We'll help ourselves."

"Good idea," Richard agreed.

I did as Sarah suggested and sat down.

After taking a sip of wine, I watched as Richard served himself, then stuck his fork into the pie on his plate. How awful that Sash and I hadn't been more inventive with the dinner. But how could we have known that he was a regular customer of the take-out kitchen? I began to eat, and a bit later, when I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that he was relishing the pie.

It was over the Brie cheese and green salad that Sarah zeroed in on him. Leaning back in her chair, she asked in an offhand way, "How long have you had a weekend place up here, Richard?"

"Just over a year."

"Your Cape Cod looks very charming from the outside. Do you own it?"

He shook his head. "No, it's a rental. Kathy Sands found it for me, and she's-"

"Kathy was our real estate broker for Indian Meadows," I cut in. "She's a terrific woman, don't you think?"

He smiled. "Yes, she is, and I started to say that she's been looking for a house for me to buy, but the houses are all far too big for me."

"Oh, so you live alone then, do you?" Sarah asked, throwing him a quizzical look.

"I'm single," he said. "And I certainly don't want a large house to roam around in alone."

"That's understandable," Sarah murmured. "I'd feel the same. But of course I come here every weekend to be with Mal." There was a little pause before she said, "I've never been married, have you?"

"No, I haven't," he said. "I've roamed the world as a journalist, been a foreign correspondent until recently, and I guess I was always too involved with my job to think of settling down. I came back to the States three years ago and took a job with Newsweek." He pursed his lips, gave a half shrug. "I decided I'd had enough of foreign places. I wanted to come back home to little old New York."

"Are you a New Yorker?" I asked.

"Born and bred. You are too, aren't you, Mal? And you, Sarah?"

"Yes," I answered. "We are."

"We've been friends since we were babies," Sarah informed him, laughing. "Actually, you could say we've been inseparable since our prams. Anyway, what brought you up to this neck of the woods for weekends?"

"I was a boarder at the Kent School before I went to Yale, and I've always loved it up here. To my way of thinking, the northwestern highlands of Connecticut are God's own country."

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

Connectictut, January 1993

The night I met Richard I was quite certain it was Sarah he was interested in, not me. But within a few weeks of knowing him, he had made it absolutely clear he was drawn to me. He liked Sarah as a person, he said, found her delightful, in fact, but that was as far as it went.

I was so taken aback, I found myself stuttering that she was going to be hurt and upset. Richard assured me otherwise; he pointed out that she had no interest in him either.

This, too, had amazed me; after all, she was my oldest and dearest friend. I knew her intimately, as well as I knew myself. I was quite convinced he was wrong in his reading of her.

But he was right.

When I asked Sarah about Richard, she admitted he was not her type. "A nice man, too nice, Mal," were her words. "I've got a horrible feeling I always fall for the rats like Tommy Preston."

Once I recovered from my surprise, I found myself agreeing to go on seeing him. But I did so cautiously. I realized it would take a long time for me to allow him into my life. I had been alone for four years now, and I saw no reason to change the situation.

But as Sarah said, Richard was a nice man, warm, kind, and thoughtful, and he did make me laugh. That dry humor of his constantly brought a smile to my face, and I discovered I looked forward to seeing him on Friday or Saturday, or sometimes Sunday, when he came up for weekends. And yet, for all that, I did withhold part of myself.

I think he knew it, of course. He was too astute not to understand that I was afraid of a relationship, in many ways.

He knew all about me and what had happened to my family. He had never come out and said so, had merely alluded to it. But he was a newspaperman, and a very good one, and he had been living in London in December of 1988. The murders of my husband and children had made headlines there, as well as here.