A Charmed Place Read Online Free Page B

covered her face at the memory, moaned, and said, "I've never been so embarrassed in my life."
    Norah threw her head back and laughed, displaying a graceful curve of throat. "Joannie!" she hooted. "Who cares? The man puts his pants on one leg at a time, the same as everybody else. He's not worth blushing over. Oh, and Maddie? That was his sister, I'm sure of it. She was delivering some kind of good-natured harangue when we walked up to them. I doubt that a lover would dare."
    With that, Norah threw her Mercedes into fast reverse, sending white quahog shells spinning beneath its tires. Maddie stared at the ruts created in the rain-soaked drive and shook her head. Her father would've felt vindicated: he'd wanted to go with asphalt.
    But Maddie had overruled him, because she was a romantic. A cottage called Rosedale deserved a drive paved with seashells, she'd said. She remembered the wry look on her father's face as the dump t ruck rumbled up the sandy, pot- holed road past the ten other laid-back cottages that made up Cranberry Lane , and then emptied its load of horrendously stinky clamshells onto their driveway.
    "The smell will go away," she'd insisted. And it had. But her father had never lived to know that.
    Maddie sighed and tried not to look at the lighthouse as she carried the flower clippings out to the compost bin. She felt a sudden surge of indignation over Norah's driving. Really, the woman was impossible. From now on, Maddie would make her park in the lane.
    ****
    All day, he'd had glimpses of her. In the garden; at the mailbox; coming and going past her kitchen window. But he hadn't yet got a good look at her, and it was killing him.
    From where he was positioned—at a bedroom window that looked over a small bight of water toward her cottage—he could tell that she looked much the same. The granny-print dresses that were all the rage back then had made a comeback; she was wearing one now. And her hair—it was still the same reassuring warm brown, thank God, and not fashionably streaked with blonde. It was shorter now than waist-length, of course; less obviously erotic. When he saw her for the first time yesterday, he felt a pang that she'd cut most of it off. But by today he could see that she'd done the right thing. She wasn't a kid anymore.
    And neither was he. That was the hell of it. Neither was he.
    Were her eyebrows still thick and straight? Her eyes still denim blue? Did she still have that oddly lilting laugh? Had she had that chipped tooth capped? These were questions that consumed him as he worked ineffectually at the well-worn oak desk that came with the lightkeeper's house.
    Her breasts, he remembered, were slightly uneven; she had been comically tragic about that. He prayed with all his heart that she hadn't gone and done something stupid to make them match.
    He remembered all the rest of her body as well, but it was hard to tell now if her hips were the same, if her waist was as slender, if she'd gained or lost weight. The dress she wore was anything but revealing. It was a hell of a lot easier to see, for example, that the tall, flashy redhead had a dynamite body and that her short, dark-haired friend didn't.
    He'd been able to see them clearly enough as they got into the Mercedes, though he scarcely remembered them from Annie's. But Maddie? Blocked by the damned house. For two cents he'd bulldoze it. Make her homeless. Make her seek comfort and refuge in the keeper's house. Make her seek him.
    At least then he could see her up close. He had the profound sense that if he could just see her, up close, he would know. He'd know if she had the answer to a question he couldn't begin either to ask or to answer: Are you sorry?
    He saw movement in the kitchen again, but again, he couldn't see a face. It may have been the girl, home now from an outing with her friends. How old was she? Fourteen? Fifteen? Where was he that many years ago? He thought about it and came up with a place: Africa , covering yet