Tempting Fate

Ten

Dani didn’t relax until she was on her pine-scented driveway. When she reached her cottage, she paced in the garden, debating all the different reasons her father could be in town that didn’t have to do with her, her missing keys or Zeke Cutler.

“You should learn to relax.”

She whirled around at the sound of her father’s voice. He walked through the gate, looking as devil-may-care as ever. “Pop,” she said. “How can I relax with-”

But she stopped midsentence when Zeke followed her father into the garden.

Her father walked past her to the kitchen door. “Sit down before you run out of gas, Dani. I’m going to get something to eat. Then you can skewer me, okay?”

He disappeared into the kitchen, and Zeke came onto the stone terrace, moving with that surprising grace and economy. “We walked up together from the track,” he said. “Your father’s an interesting man. He told me he used to play spy in the rose garden when he was a kid.”

“I don’t understand him.”

“Oh, I think you do. Maybe too well.”

“Are you packed yet?”

“Haven’t even seen the damage. Think I should sue the Pembroke?”

The humor danced at the back of his eyes and played at the corners of his mouth. He had a way of making her think things and notice things-about him, about herself-that she’d prefer not to think or notice.

When she got rid of him and her father, she’d call Mattie and insist they have a heart-to-heart talk about the Cutler brothers of Cedar Springs, Tennessee.

Her father emerged from the kitchen with a peach, a paring knife and a paper towel. “You know, you don’t have much over me in lifestyle. I scoured the entire kitchen for a napkin and had to settle for a paper towel.”

“I only have cloth napkins.”

“La-di-da.” He plopped down at her umbrella table and ate a slice of peach off the end of the paring knife. He’d lost weight in the months since Dani had last seen him. He had a gaunt look that made her wonder if he shared her affliction of insomnia. His clothes seemed even more threadbare than usual. “Place looks good. First time your mother and I took you up here after you could talk, you said you’d paint the cottage purple. You were just a little tot. How the hell old are you now?”

“Thirty-four.”

He shuddered. “I must be getting old. Well, kid, it’s good to see you. Going to have a seat, or are you planning to give me the third degree standing up?”

Zeke appeared to be observing the proceedings between father and daughter with great amusement. He’d already taken a seat at the table.

Still keyed up, Dani brushed crumbs off the table.

“You’ll give yourself ulcers,” John said.

She shot him a look. “Why are you here?”

“In Saratoga?” He lifted his bony shoulders in a shrug that was not convincingly innocent. He’d always been a notoriously rotten bluffer, in life and in poker. “It’s blistering hot this time of year in Arizona.”

Weak, Dani thought. Very weak. “You could afford a plane ticket?”

“I’m here.”

“It was hot in Arizona last summer and the summer before.”

“The truth is,” her father said, “the thought of coming here used to scare me to death. I had enough reminders of your mother in my life. Lately, though…” He leaned back and stared up at the clear, beautiful blue sky. “I don’t know. Reporters have been pestering me for a quote about Lilli, the Chandler Stakes, even that gold key you found. I suppose it’s all been working on me. I woke up the other morning and thought, my God, it really has been twenty-five years.” He set his paring knife down on the table. “So I booked a flight and here I am.”

“Nice try, Pop,” Dani said.

He ignored her. “This place-” Squinting, he looked around the transformed garden, then waved one hand, as if to take in all of his great-grandfather’s property. “It isn’t what it used to be. It’s changed. Everything around here’s changed. I don’t feel as if I’m stepping back into my past.”

He was lying. Dani knew it, and so, she felt, did Zeke. It wouldn’t have surprised her if her father had already told Zeke the real reason why he was in Saratoga. He had always found it easier to talk to anyone but his own daughter. They were so different. For years she’d struggled to embrace the past-to remember her mother in every detail, to relive every moment of their too-short time together. All her father wanted was to run as far as he could from the past. Yet now here he was in Saratoga, immersed in it.

But Dani didn’t press the point. “Did Mattie send you?”

“I haven’t talked to her in a couple of weeks.”

“Then she called Nick about the burglary, and he sent you.”

John sighed, but it couldn’t have been a surprise to him that she understood the peculiar dynamics between him and his parents-and where and how she fit into their jumbled worlds. “They’re worried,” he said.

“Nobody needs to worry about me.”

“But they do. We’re your family, Dani.”

Quietly, without a word, Zeke retreated to the kitchen. Dani appreciated the gesture. But she was still determined that he leave the Pembroke.

She changed the subject. “Grandfather said he spoke to you.”

They both knew she was referring to her Chandler grandfather, not to Nick. “Yes, he was cordial. Of course. He invited me to join him for dinner tonight. I refused, but he knew I would.” He grinned, his dark eyes sparkling. “Haven’t had dinner with the old fart in over twenty years. He’d slip me a batch of poisoned mushrooms and bury me in the backyard with that dead mole you found when you were six or seven.”

Dani laughed, surprising herself-and, she could see, her father. She’d carried the mole on a spatula she’d fetched from the kitchen and showed it to her grandparents at tea. They’d been apoplectic. Her mother had quietly maneuvered her out to the garden, where they’d had a proper burial. Lilli had cried. Dani, who’d adored small fuzzy animals, had wanted to find the culprit who’d killed the poor ugly little thing.

“When did you get in?” she asked, less confrontational.

“Early this morning.”

“Where did you sleep?”

“Didn’t.”

“Pop, why didn’t you knock on my door? You know I’ll always take you in-” She broke off, thinking her life-and maybe his, too-would be easier if she didn’t love him. It was that way with Pembrokes and their fathers. “Mattie’s room is free.”

“If it’s all the same to you,” John said, “I’ll just find something in town. I stayed with a trainer friend last night, but he’s having company tonight.”

“You don’t know Saratoga in August anymore. It’s me or the gutter.”

He made a face. Since her mother’s disappearance, she and her father under the same roof hadn’t been a winning combination. “Not much choice, then, is there?”

She looked at him. “Nope.”

“Well, you might not be welcoming me with open arms, but at least you haven’t told me you hope I fall into a well and drown. Not, I understand, that the thought hasn’t crossed your mind.”

She started to argue with him but realized he was just trying to jerk her string to keep her from asking questions-demanding answers-about what was really at stake. Zeke came out of the kitchen with her last beer but didn’t sit down. Dani looked from him to her father and back again. “You two know each other,” she said, and it came out an accusation.

Neither man answered right away. A squirrel ran up the crabapple tree at the edge of the garden, and a breeze cooled the suddenly very warm late-afternoon air.

Finally her father got up, threw his peach pit over the fence, stretched and yawned. “I’m beat-really, this trip’s taken everything out of me. I don’t travel the way I used to. Why don’t you two go to some nice, quiet place for dinner, and I’ll take a walk and get some sleep. We’ll have plenty of time to talk.”

“Pop-”

“Sounds fine to me,” Zeke said.

Her father planted a quick kiss on her cheek. “Good to see you, kid.”

It was two against one, and her father was adept at getting himself out of a tight spot. And he was fast. He was out the garden gate before Dani had figured out a good counterargument and worked up the energy to make it.

She was intensely aware that she was alone in her garden, again, with Zeke.

“I’ll walk back to the inn with you and see that you check out,” she said stiffly.

“That line’s wearing thin, Dani. I think we should do as your father suggests and head to town and a nice, quiet restaurant for dinner.”

“Why should I do that?”

“Because,” he said, “we need to talk.”

Zeke turned down Dani’s offer to cook on the grounds that he’d seen her kitchen, but agreed to ride with her in her car to town. She was a good driver. Even as distracted as she was, she concentrated on what she was doing. She found a parking space on Broadway in front of an attractive downtown restaurant with sidewalk tables that were tempting on such a beautiful day. But Dani led the way to a table inside, where it was quieter, pleasantly informal. A waitress brought them a small, steaming loaf of bread and dots of herbed butter.

“Is this all right?” Dani asked.

“It’s fine.”

She ordered a glass of the house red wine, and he did the same, watching her make a show out of examining the menu. She probably knew every item on it and had already decided what she wanted, but he figured she needed something to do besides look at him. He had no problem at all looking at her.

Their wine arrived. Dani immediately took a big drink of hers, then held on to the glass. “You don’t mind having a blocked view of the entrance?”

It was an obstructed view, not blocked, but he didn’t argue the point. “No, do you?”

She shrugged. “I’m just trying to figure out what kinds of things security consultants know, what they look out for. If I were to hire you, what would you tell me?”

Oh, sweetheart, he thought, if you only knew.

But he tried his wine and decided to take her question relatively seriously, even if it was intended to distract him. “I would teach you the basics of personal safety.”

“Which are?”

“First you have to know what personal safety is. To my way of thinking, it’s providing yourself with a stable environment in which you can pursue the activities and lifestyle you enjoy with limited fear of harm.”

“Does that mean you’d make me stop rock climbing?”

He shook his head. “That’s an activity you enjoy. I’m talking about ensuring yourself the kind of environment in which you can do your rock climbing, or whatever else you do for fun, without fear of intrusion.”

“You mean like burglars and kidnappers and such?”

“I mean,” he said, not especially appreciating her cheeky tone, “that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”

She drank more of her wine; he noticed that her eyes were as black as Mattie’s and maybe even more dazzling. “Give me some examples.”

“I encourage common sense and reasonable precautions-”

“For rich girls?”

“And boys. And men and women. And the poor, the middle-class, the downtrodden. I give the same basic instructions to everyone, regardless of gender, position or wealth. I encourage common sense and reasonable precautions,” he repeated.

Their waitress returned and took their order, a cold pasta salad for Dani, lasagna for Zeke. He tore off a piece of bread and buttered it, then took a bite with a swallow of wine. He wondered if she was deliberately provoking him or if she just had a knack for it.

“An egalitarian bodyguard,” she said.

He decided it was deliberate.

“What kind of precautions?” she asked.

“The usual. Make sure someone always knows your plans, change your routine periodically, don’t draw undue attention to yourself.”

“And people don’t think that’s too restrictive?”

“Some have more trouble with certain suggestions than others. One executive I worked with hated telling anyone his plans, another enjoyed flaunting his notoriety. And there are always those who are married to their routines. It’s a balancing act. I don’t encourage recklessness or paranoia.”

“I see.” She took a piece of bread but skipped the butter. “What do you advise when something bad does happen?”

Her voice had softened, lost its bantering edge, and Zeke yearned to reach across the table and take her hand, but he held back. Kept his distance. It wasn’t just necessary, it was the right thing to do. Or so he told himself.

“Again, common sense,” he said, focusing on her question, his answer. “If attacked, it’s important to remain calm and to be assertive-to find a balance between seeming too weak or too superior to an attacker, or to becoming dehumanized. I suggest my clients give up money and valuables on demand, without question. In general, it’s best not to resist unless in immediate mortal danger-but that’s in general. Every situation is particular, needs its own reading.”

“What if you do choose to fight?”

“Do so with the sole purpose of getting away. Don’t worry about apprehending or defeating an attacker. Your safety should be your only concern. If you do use violence, use it only as a last resort, with authority, and never halfheartedly.” His voice, he realized, was quiet, intense, controlled. It was the voice that often convinced people he meant business. Dani, however, didn’t look convinced or intimidated, only slightly dubious, as if he just might be pulling her leg. “Again, the purpose of any violence is to debilitate your attacker long enough to make your escape.”

“And you give your clients tips on appropriate types of violence?”

“I do.”

Their dinners arrived, Zeke’s lasagna hot and delicately flavored, a nice counter to his concession-stand fare. Before Dani could ask him how to poke a guy’s eyeballs out with her car keys, he said, “I saw the book on my brother on your kitchen counter.”

Her face paled just a little. “Kate told me about it.”

He nodded.

“I haven’t read it yet. Should I not bother?”

“If you’re asking me if I believe what Quint Skinner wrote about my brother, all I can tell you is that his accuracy has never been challenged.”

She stabbed a twist of red pasta with her fork. “Accuracy and truth aren’t always the same thing. Anyway, I only got the book out because I wanted to know more about you.” She quickly added, “About what your appearance in Saratoga has to do with me.”

“Dani-”

“I’m sorry about your brother.”

“He’s been gone a long time.”

“Does that matter?”

He shook his head, hearing Joe’s laugh. “No, it doesn’t.”

“A lot of people think I should be over my mother’s disappearance by now,” Dani went on softly, “but you never get over something like that. You carry on, and you live your life, enjoy it, but that loss stays with you. Maybe it would be wrong if it didn’t.”

In the candlelight he saw the faint lines at the corners of her eyes and the places where her lipstick had worn off, and the slowly fading bruise on her wrist. He reached across the table and touched his thumb to her lower lip. She didn’t look at him.

“You’re not what I expected to find in Saratoga,” he said.

Her eyes reached his, and he saw her swallow, but she didn’t speak. And he knew what he had to do. Reaching into his back pocket, he withdrew the photograph of Mattie Witt and Lilli Chandler Pembroke in their red-and-white balloon twenty-five years ago.

He handed it to Dani. “My brother sent this to your grandmother’s younger sister in Tennessee before he died. It’s why I’m here.”

Dani stared at her mother’s beautiful smile and the gold gate key hanging from her neck. “Zeke…”

He rose, his meal barely touched. “I’m sorry. Take your time. Get your head around this. Talk to your family.” He gave her a hint of a smile. “You know where to find me.”

“Room 304,” she said quietly.

But she was pale and sat frozen in her seat, and Zeke threw down some money on the table and headed out, overhearing people chatting about wine, fresh pasta and horses.

Dani found her father lying on the double bed in the second upstairs bedroom, smoking a cigarette on the soft, worn quilt. He looked wide awake. “It’s unsafe to smoke in bed, you know,” Dani told him.

“No chance of me falling asleep, I assure you.” He sat up, ashes falling down his front, and tossed the half-smoked cigarette in a nearly empty glass of water. “I’ve stunk up the place, haven’t I? If it’s any consolation, I don’t smoke nearly as much as I used to. It’s-Dani…what’s wrong?”

She knew she must look awful-pale, drawn, as if she’d been seeing ghosts, which, in a way, she had. She could have stared all night at the picture Zeke had given her. She’d tucked the picture in her handbag and paid for dinner, and she’d debated running after Zeke and asking him to have that talk now. To get him to tell her everything he knew about her mother, the key. About her grandmother.

She wanted, too, his reassuring presence.

A dangerous man on so many levels, she thought.

She’d gone instead to find her father.

“Nothing’s wrong,” she told him. “What were you thinking about just now?”

He shrugged, looking awkward. “Myself, your mother. You.”

“I guess we could have made things easier on ourselves and each other over the years.”

“I guess we could have.” He settled back against the pillows, looking older than Dani remembered. He’d always seemed so vibrant, such a devil-may-care scoundrel. “When your mother and I married, I was so thrilled at having extricated myself from the force of Mattie and Nick’s legend-even that old cretin Ulysses’s-that I never…” He exhaled, shaking his head. “I should have been more sensitive to your mother’s need to rebel, perhaps to become something of a legend herself.”

“What could you have done?”

“Listened.”

“Did she ever try to talk to you?”

He didn’t answer at once. Then slowly he shook his head. “What good would it have done? That summer she disappeared-it was just eight months after her mother had died, and I blamed her unhappiness, her restlessness, on Claire’s death. I wanted to give her time to grieve, give her space. She didn’t talk to me about her troubles, and I didn’t ask.” He stretched out his bony legs; Dani saw that he had a small hole in the toe of his sock. “So she went to Nick.”

“You never guessed he’d put her in Casino?”

“I had no idea. None. He said he did it because she was good, but I think he understood her need to go beyond what her mother had done with her life, to take a risk.”

“Nick thinks everyone has a capacity for risk. Pop, we can’t blame her for her choices or her desires. She had a variety of pressures on her. She did her best.” Dani’s voice cracked, but she pressed on. “So did we.”

John looked at his daughter. “Do you believe that?”

“It’s been a long time coming, but, yes, I believe it.”

“I wish I knew what happened to her.”

“I know, Pop.”

He nodded, patting her hand. “I know you do, kid. I like to think an answer-any answer-would be better than not knowing. But it’s been so long. Eugene hasn’t hired one of his private detectives in years. And we’ve carried on, you and I.” He swung his legs over the edge of the bed. “For a while after the embezzlement and my first experiments with gambling and globe-trotting, I wondered if she might come back. I thought I was becoming more of the kind of man she wanted. A rakehell, a real Pembroke.”

“But she didn’t come back,” Dani said, aware of the twittering of birds in the meadow outside and the sudden chill in the air.

Her father shook his head. “No.”

She squeezed his hand, remembering how they used to walk everywhere together in New York, before Eugene Chandler caught him stealing money from him. There was no getting around it; her father had let her grow up without him. And, if she were somehow, miraculously, still alive, so had her mother.

“Pop,” she said hoarsely, “I need to show you something.”

She handed him the picture Zeke had given her and watched his hand tremble as hers had a short time ago.

“You knew about the key, didn’t you?” she asked.

“Dani…”

“It’s the same one I found on the rocks-it matches the key to the pavilion at the springs. I think whoever robbed me was after those keys.”

Her father’s face had paled, grayed, aged; she felt guilty. “Dani, don’t do this to yourself.”

“And this morning Zeke’s room at the inn was tossed-searched, I think, for this photograph. It’s why he’s here. Pop, his brother had this picture. How? And how did the key end up on the rocks?” She was talking rapidly now, firing off questions, not stopping even to breathe. “How did Mother get it? Who took the picture? How did Joe Cutler get his hands on it?”

He caught her by the wrists and held up her arms so that she had to breathe, and she felt like a little kid in the middle of a tantrum. She tried not to cry. She tried so hard, but still felt the tears hot on her cheeks.

“It’s okay, kid.”

She fell against her father’s chest, bonier than she remembered, smelling of smoke and stale sweat, and he stroked her hair, telling her to shush.

It was too much.

She pulled herself away. “I’m going to find out.”

A pained expression crossed his face. “I know.”

“Mattie recognized the key?”

He nodded.

“Did she say-”

“I didn’t talk to her.”

“But Nick did,” Dani said, knowing how the three of them-no, she thought, the four of them-operated. Mattie and Nick, their only son, their only granddaughter.

“He didn’t tell me anything. Or, I should say, he didn’t tell me everything he knows.”

She straightened. “I’ll call Mattie first, then Nick.”

“It won’t do any good,” her father said, “unless they feel like talking.”

“I don’t care-”

“Get some rest, Dani. Call them in the morning.”

“Pop, the other day when I was robbed, I called Mattie, and she acted strange. She must have remembered the key, but she didn’t tell me. And Joe Cutler and Zeke…” Dani ran a hand through her hair, trying to keep the threads of her scattering thoughts together. “They’re both from Mattie’s hometown.”

“Cedar Springs,” John said.

Dani stared at him. “You knew?”

“They came north that summer.” He wasn’t looking at her. “They stopped at my office in New York to find out where Mattie was, and I told them. But I thought Saratoga was too far for them to bother to go, and she never mentioned them to me-for years I assumed they didn’t connect.”

“You never asked her?”

He shook his head, tapping out another cigarette from a crumpled pack. “Mattie doesn’t like to be reminded of Cedar Springs. And Lilli was gone by then. I just didn’t think about it.”

Dani picked up the photograph from the bed where her father had dropped it. “So Joe Cutler could have taken this himself. He could have-”

But she stopped, unwilling-terrified-of speculating further.

She knew why Zeke was in Saratoga now, today.

He was there to find out if his brother had had anything to do with her mother’s disappearance.

“Take a hot bath,” her father said. “Let all this settle a bit before you get too far ahead of yourself.”

“Pop, if you find out anything,” she said, “if you know anything-”

“I’ll tell you.”

“You promise?”

He tucked his cigarette in his mouth and struck a match, lighting it, polluting the air. Exhaling smoke, he said, “I promise.”

She wondered-and expected he did, too-if that promise was as empty as all the others he’d made to her over the years. Or maybe it didn’t even matter anymore. Maybe it was just enough that he wanted to keep his promises.

Smoke or no smoke, she kissed him good-night.

“This Cutler character-you’re all right with him?”

She smiled. “You bet.”

By the time she settled into her hot tub, scented water swirling around her, Dani realized she had no intention of kicking Zeke out of the inn. It wasn’t a question of surrendering, although he clearly wasn’t going to leave unless he wanted to leave. He’d vacate his room, perhaps, but he wouldn’t necessarily vacate the premises. Dani preferred knowing where he was.

She opened Quint Skinner’s book to page one and began to read.

Zeke sat on the porch swing of the small Cape Cod house Quint had rented in a middle-class neighborhood about two miles from the center of Saratoga Springs. It was painted sunny yellow and had an herb wreath on the front door and a painted wooden goose tacked up under the porch light. Charming. It was dark out, and the swing creaked. Zeke had been there almost an hour, trying not to think about Dani, thinking about her anyway. She was a woman who could make a man dream again.

He heard a car door shut.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

“I like the herb wreath,” Zeke said. “The goose is a nice touch, too.”

The Pulitzer Prize-winning ex-soldier climbed the steps and didn’t put his gun away until he’d made sure Zeke saw it. It was a Smith & Wesson.38 that fit nicely into the shoulder holster under Skinner’s silk jacket.

Zeke gave the swing another little push with his feet. “You have that thing when you robbed Dani Pembroke?”

“Go home, Zeke.”

“It amazes me how a man of your limited mental capacity could win a Pulitzer Prize. Of course, that’s the only thing you’ve ever done, isn’t it? Tell me, were you tempted to blow Dani away when she came after you with her red high heel?”

Quint leaned against the railing and bent one knee, deliberately casual. There was enough light from the street and nearby houses that Zeke could make out his squinted eyes and blunt, shrapnel-scarred face, and he felt a wave of strong, mixed emotions-anger, envy, compassion. Quint had been with Joe when he died. He’d seen men die because of Joe. He’d served with Joe, had admired him. And he’d watched him transform from a kid from a small southern town who knew right from wrong into, in the end, a man who had betrayed his comrades and himself. In a way, it wasn’t Quint Skinner who’d made Joe Cutler, but Joe Cutler who’d made Quint Skinner. The passion and pain of Quint’s writing seemed incongruous with the big, red-faced man before Zeke now, a man who’d push a hundred-ten-pound woman across her own bedroom. But that was part of the power and the appeal of Joe Cutler: One Soldier’s Rise and Fall. It captured the emotions of men too many thought weren’t supposed to have any emotions at all.

“What do you want?” Skinner asked.

Windows were opened up and down the street for the summer’s night, and Zeke could hear televisions, dogs barking, the cry of a baby. “You stole the two gate keys, didn’t you?”

Quint crossed his arms on his massive chest. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“And you tossed my room this morning. Find anything interesting?”

But he knew Quint wouldn’t answer, so he got up from the swing, stretching. He needed sleep. With Pembroke security no doubt on the alert and John Pembroke staying at the little purple cottage, Zeke figured he could skip keeping watch on Dani tonight.

He stood close enough to Quint to see the bulge of his shoulder holster even in the dark. “Did Joe show you the picture of Lilli and Mattie in the hot-air balloon before he died?” His voice was just over a whisper.

Quint’s eyes disappeared in the thick, scarred flesh around them. “Joe didn’t show me anything.”

“Here’s what I think,” Zeke said. “I think you’re in Saratoga to find out what happened to Lilli and pin it on my brother so you can revive your career.”

“My career doesn’t need reviving. But you go ahead and think what you want to think.”

“I’ll do that.”

He started off the porch, got halfway down when Quint grabbed his arm and pulled him around. His fingers dug in deep, in a grip that probably would have broken Dani’s arm. Zeke didn’t flinch. He met Quint’s gaze dead-on.

“You think you’re tough,” Quint said in a low voice. “You think you’ve seen action doing the work you do, but you haven’t seen anything. Nothing like what your brother saw.” He hissed his words, saliva spraying from his mouth. “You can’t make up for Joe. You can’t go through what he went through and prove you wouldn’t become what he became.”

He released Zeke and spun around and made the front door in two long steps. The herb wreath wobbled when he slammed the door shut behind him.

Zeke shook his arm where Quint had had it in his iron grip. He walked out to the sidewalk and headed up the street to where he’d parked his car. The air was cool; he could smell freshly cut grass. Some kid had left his bike in the middle of the sidewalk. He climbed into his car and sat a minute behind the wheel, not moving. He’d underestimated Quint. Not physically. He’d have held his own on that score. But he’d let himself forget Quint’s incisiveness.

“You can’t make up for Joe.”

He stuck the key in the ignition, turned it and pulled out into the neighborhood street, trying not to notice that his hands were shaking.

John Pembroke pushed his way through brush and low-hanging branches on the narrow path from the Pembroke Springs bottling plant through the woods to the steep rock outcropping where Dani had found the gold key.

It was almost dawn, and he’d had to get out of that cottage.

The memories.

The questions.

Lilli.

The estate his great-grandfather had built had changed and yet stayed the same. His daughter obviously had a peculiar talent, a knack for embracing the past without letting it dominate the present or determine her future. But John had half hoped-had told Dani himself-that everything would be so different, so changed, that being there would be easy.

Such was not the case.

“Oh, Lilli,” he whispered. “Lilli, Lilli.”

He didn’t know if Dani had been asleep or not. Didn’t stop in her room to tell her where he was going or leave a note. He just went. His sneakers were soaked with dew and mud, and his face was scratched where switches and branches had slapped him. As a boy, he’d known every inch of these woods.

The path ended. He saw clouds rolling in from the west, encircling the moon. His breath came in ragged gasps. He was too damn old for this nonsense. Pounding through the woods at the crack of dawn. What did he think he was doing?

He hung his toes over the edge of a massive boulder and stared twenty, thirty, fifty hundred feet-whatever it was-down to the trees and rocks below.

His throat caught. Lilli…

Compared to Tucson, it was cold out, and damp.

He didn’t know how long he stood there. When he finally turned back, he was shivering and crying and the sky had lightened, a light drizzle falling.

Walking along the path, he could feel the wind of forty years ago in his face as he’d played Zorro in these same woods. He loved to check out Ulysses’s long-abandoned bottling plant. The old goat had sold mineral water throughout the country, then had tried to capitalize on the new soda market by drawing off and selling the carbonic acid that gave the water its natural sparkling quality. But he’d tired of the enterprise, and the plant fell into bankruptcy, which, given his tendency to overdo everything, had probably saved his springs from extinction. Had saved them for Dani.

John could feel his strength and exuberance, and all the optimism of being a kid and having his life ahead of him, believing still that he could make his dreams come true.

He’d been so confident. A true Pembroke.

He stumbled through a muddy spot and then realized he’d veered off the path. Up ahead, he recognized one of the lamps on the bottling-plant grounds. Keeping his eyes on it, he pushed forward through ferns and undergrowth, never minding the path. If he was right, he’d come out near the pavilion in the clearing just beyond the plant. He could easily pick up the main path back to Dani’s cottage from there.

Feeling foolish, he brushed away his tears with the backs of his hands.

He heard a rustling sound behind him. A squirrel? He doubted his daughter would tolerate bears in her woods.

There it was again.

Pressing ahead, he could see the Doric columns of the pavilion. They anchored a Victorian wrought-iron fence, crawling with morning glories and roses that enclosed stone benches and an old marble fountain. Lilli’s gold key, John remembered, had been a copy of the key to its gate. He wished he could have seen both keys before they were stolen.

He pictured his wife’s exuberant smile as she stood next to his nutty mother in the basket of her balloon. He’d call Mattie in a few hours. Talk to his mother as he’d never talked to her before.

The rustling was right behind him now.

He started to turn and felt himself falling, and then felt the slicing pain.