Читать книгу A Family Likeness - Margot Dalton - Страница 8

ROGER STROLLED into the kitchen and patted Gina’s shoulder as she worked at a little side table near the window.

Outside, the late-evening sun was setting behind the mountains, casting long purple shadows across the yard. The lake glistened with fiery streaks of orange, and the twilight air was warm and murmurous with crickets and the music of bullfrogs by the water’s edge.

“What’s this one?” he asked.

Gina squinted at the scrap of wire and golden feathers in her vise. “A yellow nymph,” she said. “Like the ones I made last year, but with some minor improvements.”

“Those yellow nymphs were great flies. Remember the big trout I caught, Gina?”

“How could I forget? You’ve mentioned it practically every day for the last year.”

“You’re just jealous,” he said placidly. “We should try to get up to Bear Creek again. We’ve hardly been fishing at all this spring, and June’s almost over.”

Gina sighed, winding her thread carefully. “It’s always so busy around here.”

“Well,” Roger said, pouring himself a cup of coffee from the pot on the counter, “if we wait till we’re not busy, we’ll never go.”

“That’s certainly true.” Gina frowned at the partly shaped fishing fly on her vise, then rummaged in a tackle box full of colored feathers, scraps of fur and spools of thread. “I think I’m going to add some black antennae,” she said. “Something that wobbles a bit.”

“Do nymphs have antennae?” Roger asked.

He crossed the room to the big oak table, the antique lights overhead reflecting on his bald pate with its scant fringe of silver.

“Who cares?” Gina said cheerfully. “Never question an artist. I’m the one who tied the fly that caught your prizewinning trout, remember?”

Roger sat at the table, stirring cream into his coffee. “I remember, all right. Speaking of being busy,” he said thoughtfully, “when do Mr. Colton and his daughter arrive?”

“Next week. At least, that’s when the rooms are booked, but he’s going to be arriving on his own. He faxed a confirmation last week. I gather she’s going to be coming a week or two later.”

“It seems strange,” Roger said. “I mean, booking the patio room just to have it available, even though the girl won’t be here for maybe two weeks. At a cost of more than a hundred dollars a day, too. Isn’t that a real waste of money?”

“It appears,” Gina said, “that money isn’t a problem for Mr. Alex Colton.”

“I didn’t think college professors made that kind of income.”

“Neither did I. But, you know, he seemed so casual about the cost. He was perfectly willing to accept my terms. In fact, I could probably have charged him twice as much and he would have agreed without an argument.”

Roger sipped his coffee and looked out the window at the glowing sunset colors reflected in the waters of the lake. “Well, it’s sure an advantage to have those rooms booked full-time. No turnover. Less work for you.”

“Maybe.” Gina snipped at the colored thread. “And maybe not.”

Roger glanced at her in surprise. “What do you mean?”

Gina selected a bit of black wire, wrinkling her brow thoughtfully. “What if they’re awful guests?” she asked. “What if we find after a while that we can’t stand them, like that Kimmer family last summer, but we’re stuck with them for two whole months?”

Roger grinned. “Remember how Mrs. Kimmer demanded a computer printout of the fat and cholesterol content in every breakfast?”

“And Mr. Kimmer kicked Annabel, and he and Mary almost came to blows over it?”

“And—” Roger grimaced “—the way they kept letting those awful kids of theirs slide down the banisters all the way from the attic, and take their towels outside to play in the mud.”

“Oh, they were a charming group, all right,” Gina said dryly. “That’s my point.” She put the wire down and turned to look at her caretaker. “What if these two are horrible like the Kimmers and turn out to be really disruptive? We’ve never had somebody here for two whole months, Roger.”

“I’m not worried,” he said calmly. “I met Alex Colton and had a talk with him that day he booked the rooms. He struck me as a decent sort of fellow. I liked him.”

Gina was silent, idly flexing her pliers.

“His daughter sounded nice, too,” Roger went on. “In fact, Colton told me she’s a real outdoors type. I was wondering,” he added almost shyly, “if maybe she’d want to go fishing with us sometime. Wouldn’t it be fun to have a kid along, Gina? Somebody young and enthusiastic?”

Gina considered this, startled by the idea. “I’m not sure,” she said at last. “I don’t know much about teenage girls.”

“Didn’t you grow up with a little sister?”

“Sure,” Gina said. “But Claudia’s ten years younger than I am, Roger. She was eight when I left home, and I’ve hardly seen her at all since. It’s too expensive to travel between here and the Maritimes.”

“How long ago was it that time she came out here? Five or six years ago?”

Gina considered. “It would have been eight years, I guess. That trip was my gift to Claudia the year she graduated from high school, when she was eighteen. My goodness—” Gina sighed “—I can’t get over the way the years fly past.”

“Does she still have that trouble with her leg?”

“Not much. She hardly limps at all anymore.” Gina turned to stare out the window. “But it’s taken years of hard work and therapy.”

“What happened exactly?” Roger asked. “I don’t think you ever told me the whole story, just that she’d been in some kind of an accident.”

“It was after I’d been out West a couple of years, when Claudia was ten. I was in Vancouver when I heard.” Gina shuddered. “My mother decided to take Claudia with her for a summer holiday in New England. She’d been driving all day and was exhausted, but I guess she didn’t realize how exhausted. She dozed off on the freeway in Maine and drove under a semitrailer parked by an off-ramp.”

Roger took another sip of his coffee and listened in sympathy.

“It was so awful,” Gina went on. “Mom’s injuries were mostly superficial, but Claudia’s right leg was almost severed just above the knee. They rushed her to the hospital and used all kinds of microsurgery techniques to reattach the nerves and tendons, then did bone grafts to restructure the leg.”

“Wonderful, isn’t it?” Roger said. “What they can do with medical science these days.”

“Oh, it’s wonderful, all right,” Gina said gloomily. “Really wonderful.”

“Gina?” he asked, puzzled.

She met Roger’s gaze, thinking about the nightmare her family had been forced to endure. “My mother’s kind of an absentminded professor, Roger. Not practical at all. She didn’t think to buy medical insurance for herself or Claudia before traveling out of the country.”

His eyes widened. “My God,” he breathed. “So how much did a procedure like that cost?”

Gina brushed a hand across her forehead. “Some of the surgeons donated their time, and we had Claudia transferred back to the Maritimes as soon as she could travel. But the bill for her treatment was already over forty thousand dollars by the time she was moved.”

“Could your mother afford that?”

“My mother could hardly afford to put meals on the table,” Gina said bleakly. “She was about to lose her little house, her teaching job, and any possibility of earning enough in the future to pay for the years of extended therapy that Claudia was going to need.”

“So what did you do?”

“We managed.” Gina stared at the lake. The sun had completely retreated behind the mountains now, and the black still depths of the lake seemed to echo the void in her heart, the aching sorrow and yearning that never went away. “We managed somehow. We all made some…pretty big sacrifices.”

Roger studied her thoughtfully for a moment. “Your sister is a real stunner, as I recall,” he said at last.

“She certainly is.” Gina gathered herself together. “Claudia looks a lot like our mother. I wasn’t lucky enough to get the red hair or the peaches-and-cream complexion.”

“Well, you’re a beauty in your own way, Gina,” he said gallantly. “Red hair or not.”

She smiled at him. “And you’re a sweetie. But I’m realistic about myself, Roger. I know what my strengths and weaknesses are.”

“I’m not sure you do. I don’t know if you’ve ever been fully aware of your strengths.”

Gina shook her bead. She and Roger had been friends for almost twelve years, but except for some casual teasing, they usually tended to avoid this kind of personal discussion.

“Speaking of strengths and weaknesses,” she said, removing the completed fly from her vise and picking up another bit of wire, “do you ever regret moving .here, Roger? Do you miss having a desk and an expense account and a brass nameplate on your door?”

“Not a bit. I live alone, and I’m sixty-two years old. Why would I want to sit behind a desk all day? I want to enjoy my days, because if I can’t, what’s the sense in living?”

“But do you really enjoy it here?” she asked, suddenly anxious to hear his answer. “I mean, looking after the hotel for me and keeping things running smoothly, is that enough of a challenge for you?”

“At my age, I don’t want challenges anymore, Gina. What I want is comfort. And I find my life here very comfortable.”

“Good,” she said in relief. “Sometimes I’m afraid you’re getting restless.”

“You’re supposed to quit saying things like that,” he reminded her, then pushed his chair back and got up to open a cupboard door. “What happened to the banana loaf Mary baked this morning?”

“The guests gobbled every last crumb with afternoon tea.”

“Too bad,” he muttered, still peering moodily into the cupboard. “Where is the woman, anyhow?”

“She’s at choir practice. You’ll get as fat as Annabel if you keep eating Mary’s baking,” Gina warned him, though from the look of his long angular body she doubted there was much fear of that.

She paused suddenly and narrowed her eyes. There was something different about Roger tonight.

“Why are you here now?” she asked. “You don’t usually come over after supper.”

“I needed to pick up something.”

“What?”

“Just some tools,” he said evasively.

“Why?” Gina asked.

“I’m working on something.”

“But you don’t even have a workbench at your house, do you? I thought you did all your woodwork here at the hotel.”

“What is this?” Roger asked mildly. “An inquisition? Am I not free to drop by the hotel after hours if I want to?”

“Of course you are,” Gina said. “But you look…different tonight, that’s all.”

“In what way?”

“I don’t know.” She studied him. “Maybe you’ve changed your hairstyle.”

He chuckled. “And you, young lady, are becoming far too impertinent.”

Gina smiled and returned to her task, while Roger poured himself a second cup of coffee. For a while there was a companionable silence in the kitchen.

But after a few minutes the peace was broken by the closing of a door, a noisy storm of barking and a gentle tread in the hallway. Mary entered the room, laden with books. Annabel tumbled at her heels and yelped hysterically.

“For God’s sake,” Roger said. “Feed that animal, won’t you? She’s being even more annoying than usual.”

Mary lowered her books onto the table and gave him a level stare. Then she sniffed dismissively and turned away. Gina smiled to herself.

“How was your choir practice, Mary?” she asked.

“It was exciting.” Mary crossed the kitchen and took a can of dog food from the cupboard. She opened it and measured the contents into a bowl with calm deliberation, while Annabel writhed on the hardwood floor in an agony of anticipation.

“Choir practice was exciting?” Roger asked.

Mary washed her hands at the sink and continued to address Gina as if he hadn’t spoken. “Mr. Bedlow gave the soprano solo to Marianna Turner.”

Gina’s eyes widened. “No kidding. Even though everybody knows?”

“What does everybody know?” Roger asked, watching with a bemused expression as Mary put Annabel’s bowl on the floor and the animal began to wolf it down as if she hadn’t eaten in weeks.

“About Mr. Bedlow and Marianna Turner,” Gina explained.

“What about them?”

“Oh, Roger,” Gina said. “How could you have possibly missed such a juicy tidbit of gossip?”

His look of surprise was almost comical. “Dried-up old Cecil Bedlow? And that plump young schoolteacher? There’s gossip about those two?”

Mary forgot she was no longer on speaking terms with the caretaker. “There certainly is,” she told him, tying on her apron, then began opening doors and cabinets, assembling the ingredients to prepare batter for the next morning’s fruit crepes.

“Was Marianna embarrassed?” Gina asked.

“I think so. Whatever’s happening, it’s more on his side than hers, in my opinion. I think poor Marianna just doesn’t know what to do about him.”

“You’re always so generous, Mary,” Roger said. “Other women would probably be catty about a situation like that.”

Mary ignored the compliment. “So we didn’t get much of anything else done,” she concluded, “except for the opening bars of the ‘Hallelujah Chorus.’ We’re singing it at the Canada Day picnic next weekend.”

“Well, of course,” Roger said solemnly. “That’s a rousing picnic song. Handel should blend right in with the fried chicken and the kids’ sack races.”

Mary gave him a stern glance. “Well, that’s good. Because your chamber-music group is booked to do four sets of Elizabethan madrigals on the entertainment stage by the hamburger tent.”

“Elizabethan madrigals!” he exclaimed, recoiling in alarm. “You’re joking.”

“It’s right there on the program, next to the Tiny Tots Highland Dancing.”

Roger subsided behind his coffee mug again. “This town is a mad, mad place,” he said sadly. “Utterly insane.”

“Oh, come on,” Gina said. She left the worktable to get herself a mug of coffee, pausing on the way to drop a kiss on the top of Roger’s shiny bald head. “You love living here. And you have lots of fun at the picnic every year, no matter how much you complain and make fun.”

“My goodness.” Mary paused with a sifter of flour in her hand. “I almost forgot,” she said, staring at Gina. “The choir practice wasn’t the only exciting thing this afternoon.”

Gina carried her mug back to her table and began construction of another yellow nymph. “So what else happened, Mary?”

“I got some library books.”

“How does the woman ever survive her days?” Roger asked with a grin. “Fraught as they are with such drama and excitement.” He rolled his eyes eloquently in Gina’s direction, making her giggle. Unruffled by his teasing, Mary began to mix the batter for her crepes in a big blue enamel bowl.

“I went to the library,” she repeated, “and picked out a lot of books for myself. I also got some new books on gardening and furniture restoration for you, Gina, in case you ever have time to read.”

“Thanks,” Gina told her. “That was thoughtful of you, Mary.”

“How about me?” Roger asked. “Did you get any books for me?”

“Two political biographies and a new mystery,” Mary replied calmly. “Although I probably needn’t have bothered, since you seem to be so busy these days.”

The words were innocent enough, but Gina was surprised by the unusual edge in Mary’s voice and the way Roger seemed to duck his head in embarrassment.

Suddenly the room was full of tense undercurrents. Confused, Gina looked from one to the other, about to ask what was going on, when Mary resumed her story.

“And while I was browsing through the newspapers, I discovered the most amazing thing.”

“An appropriate location to make amazing discoveries,” Roger murmured, his equilibrium apparently restored. “Among the well-stocked shelves of the Azure Bay Library.”

Mary ignored him and addressed Gina. “Remember the day you brought that man into the kitchen and introduced him to me? The one who’s staying all summer with his daughter?”

Gina nodded. “Alex Colton. He’s arriving in a few days.”

“And remember how I told you after he left…” Mary paused to add more milk to her batter. “I told you I was absolutely positive I’d seen him somewhere, and you said I was probably wrong because he’d never been in the valley before?”

Gina nodded, baffled. “I remember. Why?”

“Well, I was right,” Mary said, crossing the kitchen to rummage through the pile of books and magazines.

Gina got up again and crossed to the big central table, cradling her coffee mug in her hands and sitting down next to Roger.

Mary opened a recent copy of a newspaper and laid it out on the table in front of them. “See?” She stood back with an air of triumph.

Gina gazed in astonishment. Alex Colton’s picture appeared at the top of a newspaper column on the financial pages. She studied the image, struck once again by the man’s appealing masculine look, and the contradictory mixture of sensuality and asceticism in his face.

“I’ll be damned!” Roger exclaimed. “Alex Colton is a columnist? I thought he was a college professor.”

“Not just any columnist. He’s Alexander Waring.” The usually reserved Mary clearly enjoyed the sensation she was causing. “He writes this column about investment and personal finance,” she told Gina. “It’s syndicated, and Roger and I read it all the time. His column’s in a lot of the big papers, but it never used to have his picture at the top. He also has four or five books in the library.”

Roger leaned closer to examine the paper. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he repeated. “Alexander Waring. I have two of his books at home, you know. He has terrific money sense.” Roger shook his head in amazement. “And to think I talked with the man about woodwork and cello music, and didn’t even know who he was.”

“Well, I don’t know as much about the world of high finance as you two obviously do.” Gina took the paper from Roger and studied the picture. “Is he really good?”

“He’s one of the best,” Roger said. “His books give down-to-earth advice on investing and money management, things an ordinary person can actually use. And sometimes,” he added with a smile, “they’re really funny. The man must have a great sense of humor.”

“Can I borrow one of them?” Gina asked. “It’s probably…it’s time for me to start learning something about money management,” she said lamely when the other two looked at her in surprise.

Roger’s eyes were bright with teasing. “That’s all you want to learn?”

“Of course,” Gina said. “You know, I just remembered—he did say that he planned to do some writing this summer. He asked me about electrical outlets on the gold-room balcony for his computer.”

“I suppose he has to keep writing even during the holidays,” Mary said. “He could hardly take two whole months off, after all. A lot of people swear by that column of his.”

“Really? You think he’ll still be doing the column?” Gina asked with sudden excitement. “Maybe he’ll mention the hotel. Anything that brings us to the attention of the public is good for business.”

“As long as he writes about how good the food is,” Mary observed placidly.

“And doesn’t devote whole columns to disruptive pets.” Roger glanced at Annabel, who’d emptied her dish and was now clattering it noisily around on the floor in a vain attempt to discover stray morsels clinging to the sides or bottom.

Mary glared at him. “Most people,” she said coldly, “have better things to do with their time than sit around insulting poor defenseless animals.”

“Ah, yes. My cue to depart.”

Roger got to his feet, smiled at the two women and strolled from the room. They could hear the sound of a truck starting outside, followed by the slow rumble of his departure along the lakeshore road.

“He isn’t going home,” Gina said, leaning forward to peer out the window. “He must be going into town.”

She seated herself at the worktable again, setting the newspaper down carefully next to her tackle box. Mary continued to work at the central table, mixing batter in the bowl with fierce strokes.

“Mary?” Gina said.

“What?”

Mary bent down to take Annabel’s feeding dish away. The poodle sank onto her fat haunches and watched with a comical look of dismay.

“Did you notice something different about Roger tonight?”

“Of course I did,” Mary said curtly.

“What is it?”

“He’s all dressed up. He’s wearing his second-best pants, those gray pleated corduroys, and the new sweater I gave him for Christmas.”

Gina’s eyes widened. “You’re right,” she said, putting down her pliers. “I remember when he got that sweater, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen him wearing it before.”

Mary murmured something to the poodle, then returned to her task.

“Why would he be all dressed up?” Gina said, puzzled. “This is just an ordinary Saturday night, isn’t it? I mean, their chamber group isn’t playing anywhere. He always tells me when they have a concert in case I want to go along.”

“Oh, it’s certainly not a concert,” Mary said.

Gina pushed her chair back, completely intrigued by now. “Mary, I want you to tell me what’s going on.”

“Nothing very important. Roger has a lady friend, that’s all.”

“You’re kidding.” Gina gaped at the cook, astounded, while Mary continued to whip the batter. “How could Roger possibly have a girlfriend without me knowing?”

Mary remained silent and tipped the contents of the blue bowl into a pitcher, then stored it away in one of the two oversize fridges along the wall.

“Look,” Gina persisted, “are you serious? I mean, about Roger having a lady friend?”

Mary poured herself a mug of coffee and sat wearily at the table. “Oh, yes,” she said. “I’m quite serious.”

“I can’t imagine,” Gina said, “who the woman could be. I don’t think there’s anybody in town who’d be even faintly eligible. Although—” she frowned thoughtfully “—when one considers Cecil Bedlow and Marianna Turner, I guess anything’s possible.”

“It’s not somebody from town,” Mary said, bending to stroke Annabel. “It’s a stranger. A woman who’s staying at Fred’s motel out near the winery.”

“How did Roger meet her?”

“Apparently she came to one of their chamber concerts and struck up a conversation with him. Roger’s taken her out several times since then for drives and coffee.”

“Why,” Gina said plaintively, “does nobody ever tell me anything?”

Mary shrugged. “I thought it was no big deal at first. Apparently this woman is one of the shareholders in the winery, and she wanted to come out and look at her investment firsthand. At least, that’s what Fred says.”

“Well, Fred should know. He runs the motel, after all.”

“Fred’s not all that bright,” Mary said sadly. “Even if he is my second cousin.”

“So how long has this woman been staying at the motel?”

“About two weeks.”

“Have you met her, Mary?”

“Annabel, stop that whining!” the housekeeper warned with unusual sharpness. “Stop it this instant!”

The poodle slunk away into the hallway, casting a bitter glance over her shoulder as she did so.

“Mary?” Gina prodded.

“Yes,” the housekeeper said, rubbing the back of her neck with a weary sigh. “I’ve met her, all right. She was in the drugstore yesterday, and Maybelle introduced us. I knew the woman was interested in Roger, so I took a real good look at her.”

“What’s her name?”

“Lacey Franks.”

“And how old is she?” Gina asked.

“Probably about fifty, but she looks ten years younger than she is. Dyed hair,” Mary said. “Bright clothes and lots of makeup, but she’s careful with it so you can’t tell.”

Gina wound another fishing fly onto her vise, gripping the pliers in silence.

“She’s very stylish.” Mary looked down ruefully at her cotton dress and brown cardigan. “And she dresses to show off her figure, too. Yesterday when Maybelle introduced us, she was wearing a little yellow tennis dress with a sweater tied over her shoulders like the women in the television ads.”

Gina shook her head in amazement. “And our Roger is interested in her? He’s actually taken her out on a date?”

“More than once,” Mary said darkly. “Maybelle told me she saw them sitting in a booth at the Clamshell eating lobster, holding hands and laughing together like teenagers.”

“Well, for goodness’ sake,” Gina said, pleased by this image. “Isn’t that nice.”

Mary folded a plastic covering over one of the mixing bowls.

“Where does this Lacey Franks live?” Gina asked. “Does the local gossip network know anything about her?”

“Only that she’s supposed to be rich and her home address is somewhere in West Vancouver.”

“That’s a pretty posh area, isn’t it?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Mary said. “I really wouldn’t know.”

The cook got up, removed her apron and hung it in the pantry. With a softly worded good-night, she made her way out of the kitchen, leaving Gina sitting alone at the window, gazing thoughtfully out at the darkness.

ALEX COLTON, TOO, was gazing into the darkness through the window in his study. The sun had vanished below the horizon in a fiery ball of orange, and the light across the waters of English Bay had faded quickly.

At last he got up and prowled restlessly around the little room, picking up papers and setting them down again, scanning the shelves for a book to take up to his room later. But nothing looked interesting.

“Lord, how I need a holiday,” he muttered, returning to the window. “Or at least a change of scene.”

He thought about the vine-covered mansion in the Okanagan, and the newly papered room where he would soon be staying. The place was enormously appealing, especially with that air of bygone elegance that so perfectly suited the peaceful drowsy warmth of its rural setting.

It was odd, Alex mused, that Janice had never mentioned the hotel to him. She’d obviously learned about it years ago and set aside that brochure in anticipation of a time when they could travel there on a family vacation.

But for the past two years, Jan hadn’t been well enough to travel anywhere. And in the final months of her life, she often hadn’t even been able to remember her husband’s name or their daughter’s face, let alone the address of a resort hotel.

Alex gazed blindly out the window at the dark silvered water, trying to fight off the image of Janice’s twisted face, her body ravaged by an illness so brutal that in the end, it destroyed every vestige of dignity and composure. With a little shock of alarm, he realized he could no longer remember her as she’d looked before the illness. He picked up a photograph from his desk and studied the smiling image in the gold frame.

Jan had been slim and blond, with a delicate, almost angelic beauty that belied her determined nature. When they were first married all those years ago, he’d been surprised and a little taken aback to learn just how formidable—and stubborn—a woman she really was.

But even Jan’s strength had been no match for the crippling illness that was hidden in her body, biding its time, waiting to claim her.

He shook his head moodily, still watching as the last of the twilight glow faded beyond the horizon and the first stars began to glimmer over the waters of the bay. He found his mind returning to the old hotel on the lake and the young woman who apparently owned it. She’d been in his thoughts a lot these days, more than he liked to admit.

Slowly Alex sank into an armchair by the window and allowed himself to reconstruct the image of Gina Mitchell’s face. Everything about the woman was appealing. He liked the open frankness of her expression, the level brows and calm hazel eyes, her dusting of freckles and that cropped curly mass of dark hair. He even admired the boyish athletic look of her body.

He smiled, recalling the way she’d emptied her pockets and solemnly lined up those delightful little objects along the top of the stone wall. At that moment he’d been completely enchanted by her. He would have liked to reach out and touch the skin of her bare arm, ruffle her hair, maybe—

Alex shook his head abruptly, the smile fading.

Not a very attractive line of thought, he told himself, for a man whose wife had been dead for little more than three months.

But Jan had been lost to him for a long, long time. When her symptoms had become too obvious to ignore and she’d finally allowed herself to be examined, the diagnosis itself had been a sentence of death. Both of them knew it. But before death had finally claimed her, the illness had been lingering, so excruciatingly painful both physically and mentally that it had drained every bit of strength from all three of them.

For the last three years, Alex and his wife had no physical relationship apart from the care he gave her and the comfort he could sometimes provide by holding her in his arms. Toward the end, even his touch was too painful for her to endure.

Alex didn’t like to dwell on his own suffering, because he knew that his daughter had endured far more pain. As a girl just entering adolescence, growing into the knowledge of her own womanhood, Steffi had watched her mother fade from strength and beauty to utter dependence. She’d witnessed the deterioration of that lovely body and powerful mind, and gradually come to understand that nobody in her life, not even her father, could protect them from this horror.

He and Steffi had once been so close. Alex was desperately concerned about his daughter’s moody silence and increasing withdrawal. No matter what he did, she seemed to retreat farther from him every day into a place he couldn’t follow.

He put the worried thoughts from his mind and returned to his computer, forcing himself to spend a couple of hours in concentrated work on the final column before his trip to Azure Bay.

At last, when he was too tired to see the computer screen clearly, he got up and pulled the draperies across the darkened window, then went into the kitchen to make coffee and help himself from the bowl of cold pasta salad left in the fridge by his housekeeper. Finally he cleaned up the table and climbed the stairs, stopping outside a closed door in the upper hallway.

“Steffi?” he called softly. “Are you awake?”

No answer. After a moment he pushed the door open and went inside, pausing by his daughter’s bed to look down at her. She was in her long plaid nightshirt and sleeping soundly. Her lips were parted, hands curled under her chin like a small child, and she was bathed in the soft pink glow of a night-light shaped in the form of a rosebud, which had been in her room since she was a baby.

Alex smiled at the delicate cluster of glass petals. Every year or so, Steffi declared that she was old enough to sleep without a light. But after a couple of days the rosebud would reappear, and nobody would comment until her next attempt to leave it behind.

Nowadays he cherished any little habits of childhood that still clung to her. They helped to reassure him that he hadn’t completely lost her. At fourteen his daughter almost had the face and body of a woman. Only when she was sleeping like this could he see traces of the enchanting little girl she’d been.

There were people who’d considered them irresponsible for having a baby when they were aware of Janice’s illness. But those people, of course, didn’t know the truth about Steffi’s birth.

He felt a painful lump in his throat as he remembered how he’d adored that red-haired baby they’d brought home from the hospital all those years ago. What a miracle she’d been to him and his wife. Their lives had been transformed. The growing tensions between him and Janice had almost disappeared, replaced by happy sun-flooded years of laughter and absorption in the growing child they both so dearly loved.

A few years of heaven, Alex thought grimly, followed by years of utter hell. Life had a harsh way of balancing things out.

He could bear it for himself. But he hated his daughter’s having to endure those cruel checks and balances, Steffi, who had never done anything to deserve the kind of suffering inflicted on her family. During all her growing-up years, Steffi had been a pure delight, a ray of sunshine. How he missed that happy generous loving little girl.

Now she was as tall as her mother had been, with a curving figure and a sulky hostile expression that chilled him. Her lips, which were exactly like his own, were usually pressed together in a taut line, and her smiles were rare. He hardly knew what to say to this beautiful stranger, how to fight his way past her anger and pain to the child still living in there.

He reached down gently to brush a strand of hair back from her sleeping face, then adjusted the blankets. As he did so, he saw that Steffi had gone to sleep clutching her old stuffed bunny.

This favorite toy had once been soft pink plush, with a yellow velvet waistcoat and a jaunty expression. But years of love had worn the plush almost bare in places, and the long ears were limp and droopy from constant handling.

As far as he knew, she hadn’t slept with the bunny for eight or nine years. The sight of it now, cradled in her arms, was almost unbearably painful to him.

How lonely and distressed she must be feeling!

If only she would talk to him, even yell at him. Maybe then, Alex and his daughter could start to breach this grim wall of silences and be a family again. But Steffi was so cold and remote. After school and on weekends, she hiked by herself along the trails near their home, fished for hours down in the cove, tramped alone through the woods or sat up in her room with a book.

He should probably be glad she was spending the first two weeks of the summer with Angela Sanders and her parents on a long-planned trip to Disneyland.

As far as Alex knew, his daughter had almost as little to do with her school friends these days as she did with him. Steffi had once been such a bubbly gregarious child, but now she was usually solitary. Maybe a couple of weeks with her friend would be a good thing, though he yearned to have her with him at Edgewood Manor.

But she’d be home from California in a couple of weeks, and then they’d have the rest of the summer together.

Again he thought of the old hotel on the shore of Okanagan Lake. Alex hoped that the tranquillity of that lovely old house and the beauty of its setting would work a miracle, that somewhere within the sun-dappled walls of Edgewood Manor, he would find the touch of magic that would bring his daughter back to him.