ago, but I’ll have it done immediately. I’m just sorry you found it at all, let alone that it upset you so much.”
“I just—” Risa began, but Conrad held a gentle finger to her lips.
“Shhh,” he said, then gently kissed her face, his lips touching her forehead, her cheeks, her eyes, and finally her lips, each kiss easing her pain and banishing her fears.
Then they were making love, and it was even better than she had imagined it in her fantasies, and the last of her doubts fell away as Conrad took the nightgown from her body and his lips moved lower, caressing every inch of her skin, arousing intense new sensations. The night stretched before her, and the last of her tears dried away, and she began to move beneath him, loving him as she’d never loved anyone before.
The night would, after all, last forever, and they would fall asleep in each other’s arms as dawn began to break.
And she would never doubt him again…
MOLLY ROBERTS FROWNED as the sound of a doorbell echoed in the living room of her little house in Alhambra, and paused in her knitting to gaze more intently at the television set. This was the third time today that she’d watched this episode of
“Move over,” she said to Weiner, the larger — and lazier — of her two dachshunds, who had been steadily encroaching on the lap robe that covered her knees, and who was now entangled in her yarn. She gave him a small and ineffectual shove, and was about to try to push him away entirely when the doorbell rang a second time.
Then, before the sound had completely died away, there was a heavy pounding on the door.
Both dogs leaped up and began barking at the door, but Weiner quickly tumbled over, his hind legs wrapped tightly in the skein of yarn, while Schnitzel leaped at the doorknob as if he intended to turn it himself.
“Wait, wait,” Molly cried out, trying to hold onto her half-finished sweater and get up without tripping over everything to get to whatever urgency had come to her door. The sweater slipped off its needle, but she let it lie in a heap on the floor, the empty needle still in her hand.
She skirted the piles of newspapers and magazines and looked out the peephole.
A nicely dressed woman, clearly in distress, with mascara running down her cheeks as if she’d been crying, stood on the porch. As Molly watched, the woman raised her hand to pound on the door yet again. “Isn’t anybody home?” she called.
“What is it?” Molly called back, not opening the door. She wasn’t dressed for company — indeed, she hadn’t dressed for company in years. Why would she when the only people who ever came to the house were delivery people who brought her groceries, and Dr. Hansen, who came whenever Weiner or Schnitzel were sick?
“Please,” the woman on the porch sobbed. “I–I’ve run over a dog….”
Molly gasped. Even her terrible fear of the world outside vanished as she actually felt the pain of the unfortunate animal that had been hit by the woman’s car. She slid the chain off, threw back two dead bolts, and opened the door. “Where is it?” she asked, doing her best to keep her own two dogs from running out of the house.
“I don’t know what happened,” the woman said. “I was just driving down the street when he suddenly darted right in front of me. I couldn’t stop!” Her eyes streaming with tears now, the woman held out a tiny — and unnaturally still — little schnauzer, as if offering it to Molly. “Is he yours?”
Molly’s hands flew to her face and she took a step back. “Oh, no. He’s not mine.” Her eyes flicked to her own dogs for an instant, both of whom had fallen silent, as if they knew something terrible had happened to one of their kind. “Is he breathing?” Then, without thinking about it, Molly spoke words she rarely uttered. “You’d better come in. I can call a vet.” Turning away from the door, she started toward the phone, Dr. Hansen’s number already snatched out of her memory. “Is he wearing a collar? Does he have a tag?”
For the first time in months another person stepped into Molly Roberts’s house, and as she heard the door close behind the woman, Molly felt the same kind of fear creeping up the back of her neck that had prevented her from leaving for the last five years.
Except it wasn’t quite the same feeling.
The fear her agoraphobia brought was a sort of general panic that made her want to get back into her house.
This time, oddly, she had the strangest feeling that she wanted to get
But that made no sense; her house was her safe place — it had always been her safe place. Besides, what possible danger could there be? This poor woman had run over a dog and run for help to the first place she saw a light. Molly took a deep breath and reminded herself that the woman would only be there for a few minutes and then she’d go away, and she would reknit her safe space around her as carefully as she’d rebuild the sweater she was working on.
“He’s got a collar, but there’s no tag,” the woman said.
“We’d better call the police, too,” Molly said as she reached for the cordless phone that always sat on the end table next to her favorite seat on the sofa. But before her fingers closed on the phone, she heard a soft thud, the kind of sound the tiny dog would have made if the woman had dropped it on her hardwood floor.
One of her own dogs whimpered.
The phone forgotten, Molly was about to turn around to see what had happened when an arm gripped her around the throat and jerked her backward so hard she lost her balance.
“There’s a terrible odor in here,” the woman whispered into her ear, “but at least you won’t have to smell it anymore.”
A knife glinted in the light of the television set.
Molly felt a sensation of pressure slide across her throat, then felt something pouring down the front of her robe.
Realizing what was happening, she began flailing her arms, the knitting needle in her left hand lashing backward toward her attacker. She tried to jab at the woman, and finally felt the needle make contact, but it was too late. Suddenly, the mere act of breathing became far more important than trying to protect herself. Her knees weakened as she reached for something to hold onto — but there was nothing.
She fell back onto the mound of mail that had accumulated over the years, gasping, reaching for her puppies to tell them one last time that Mommy loved them.
Too late — the woman was already standing over her, the bloody knife glimmering as she clutched it.
Molly closed her eyes and felt herself slipping away as the blade plunged through the skin of her cheek, then dug deep, as if the woman was trying to dig her nose off her face. But now the pain began to fade, and a welcome darkness gathered around her, and she whispered a last good-bye, hoping her two dogs could hear her.
Then Molly Roberts was gone, unaware that her attacker had moved on from her face and was laying her belly open, quickly cutting out the treasures that lay within.
22
RISA STOPPED SHORT AS SHE WALKED INTO ALISON’S SUITE AT LE Chateau at exactly nine o’clock the next morning. Alison was sitting up eating a breakfast far larger than she herself had consumed that morning, and looking as if she was on about the fourth day of a very restful vacation, rather than less than twenty-four hours out of surgery. “Am I in the right room?” she asked.
“I feel great,” Alison said as her mother kissed her cheek. “All these bandages make me feel like I can barely breathe, but I hardly hurt at all.” She peeled off a piece of croissant, smeared it with butter and jam, and popped it into her mouth while Risa settled into a chair next to the bed. “The only thing I really hate is the IV.”
“Which will come out as soon as you’ve finished your breakfast,” Conrad said as he strode into the room, pausing to look at Alison’s purple-jacketed medical chart.
“Hello, my darling,” Risa said, rising to return his kiss as he moved on to her, then dropping back into the chair when Conrad shifted his attention to Alison.
