Cottage by the Sea Read Online Free Page B

directionless younger sibling would find a sense of purpose and some personal pride. And it had been there, during the last weeks of Grandma Barton's life, that Chris and Ellie had fallen into each other's arms with the doors locked, the blinds drawn, and the voice mail picking up on the first ring.
    No good deed goes unpunished.
    No kidding, Grandma, she thought bleakly.
       For the thousandth time Blythe's mind scanned the details of the double betrayal, searching for some overlooked clue that might finally explain such sordid treachery.
       "He was my husband!" she raged inside the dimly lit cottage, her fists clenched rigidly by her side. Her outburst was muted by the hand-hewn beams of her supposed place of refuge. "She was my sister, for God's sake!" And, perhaps worst of all, the furtive lovers had even brazenly claimed to be overwhelmed with work and had both remained in California the day Lucinda Barton was buried in the snowchoked cemetery that November afternoon.
       Blythe began to pace in aimless circles around the luggage piled in the center of the room. With bitterness guaranteed to give her heartburn, she recalled racing to catch the last flight out of the minuscule airport nestled under the shadow of the Grand Tetons, desperately seeking solace in her husband's arms by nightfall. She could remember perfectly which parking space she'd chosen that day on the Paramount lot. She saw herself rushing across the pavement toward Chris's director's trailer stationed next to soundstage 27. Various members of the crew on their dinner break had watched her try the door, find it locked, and dig in her purse for her keys. Once she'd gotten it open, she merely stood on the trailer's threshold, staring inside. There, on the daybed, she beheld her husband—stark naked and sprawled across the tanned thighs of his twentynine-year-old sister-in-law. Both were fast asleep.
       Blythe sat down on the largest piece of her luggage and closed her eyes.
       If only she could cry, instead of think.
       The story of the affair had been gossip too lurid, too
    juicy—and too valuable—not to have been sold to one of the sleazier television newsmagazine shows by someone on their film crew. Like a scalpel probing a wound, her mind once more conjured up the salacious tabloid headlines, the TV trucks from the networks and CNN parked in front of her condominium complex when the news of the incestuous tryst between the Oscar-winning director and his wife's sister became public.
       All around Blythe in the small, dark room whose stone foundations burrowed into ancient Cornish soil, the evil specters of the last seven months seemed to rise and mock her vain attempt to escape the hurt and humiliation she'd endured.
       What hope for the future could there be when the past was so ugly and would probably remain with her, wherever she went?
       Blythe stared at the relentless downpour slanting against the window and gripped the back of a Windsor chair to keep from fleeing into the night. Then, with a sudden sense of purpose, she rummaged inside her Vuitton suitcases and pulled out the bottle of duty-free Glenfiddich whiskey she'd impulsively purchased en route.
       By midnight she'd drunk herself into oblivion.
    ***
    The first sound Blythe became conscious of the following day was not the rhythmic surge of the surf a hundred feet below the cottage facing the sea. Nor was it the din of rain slapping against the slate roof above her head. What forced her to full consciousness was an irritating series of peremptory honks from a car horn that grew louder by the minute. The staccato beeping made the pounding in her head worse. This was soon followed by repeated thuds from someone thumping on the thick oak door studded with heavy wrought-iron hinges
    and a large iron keyhole.
    "Mrs. Stowe? Hello? Are you there?"
       Blythe struggled to rise above the feather duvet smothering the double bed that was tucked under the eaves