I stood up and shivered. My clothes were still slightly wet from sweating, and the breeze was getting stronger. The paved road I had come up led out behind the vista point and then curved around the hill, coming out again below me a hundred yards down before it continued on to the city. Between the white wall where I stood and the road below was a pathless, rocky terrain. It was with a kind of surprise that I watched my feet step over onto that slope. It was steep and slippery going down, and I picked up some nettle in my hand, but otherwise I got to the road feeling fine, and turned my steps to the city, there to buy some paper and start about this business of making myself a living.
Twenty-three
The bell on the cheap clock rang shrilly, and Kyra turned over and reached for the button to turn it off. She opened her eyes and looked at the dial until it came into focus. Six thirty. She threw back the covers and stepped onto the wooden floor.
She lived in a small apartment on the Calle Sir acusa in Barcelona, very near the center of the city. She’d moved out of Tossa sometime in late February and now, four months later, was starting to feel that she belonged here. She hadn’t made any friends, but Tony would occasionally come by to visit. She wasn’t lonely. There had been a lot of work to do.
The apartment was nothing special, but she liked it. The building was of red brick, and the street was a quiet one, even so close to downtown. She had three rooms up on the third floor, and the afternoon sun lit the place up nicely.
Absently, she went to the sink and filled a pitcher, then crossed to the full-length window facing the street and opened it. There was a small, grilled-iron fence surrounding the tiniest of patios, and she’d bought several pots of plants and set them out there. After she watered them, she straightened up and looked at the surrounding roofs. The sun was up, but it was still early enough that the whole neighborhood was in shade. Over the buildings, a couple of miles away, she could see the amusement park on Montjuich bathed in sunlight. The air was warm and soft, and it would be a hot day.
In half an hour, she had dressed and left the apartment. She’d lost some weight since the winter and hadn’t needed to, but men still stopped and looked after her when she passed. To her own mind, she’d gotten rid of the last of her baby fat, and she was glad of it. She did look older.
She went, as she did every day, to a café on the Avenida del Generalisimo Franco, and sat outside, with her back against the building. The waiter knew her and without her having to ask he brought out a croissant and a cup of
café con leche.
She smiled at him and exchanged some pleasantries about the weather and the summer influx of tourists.
“It will be good for you,” he said, “for the business.”
“I hope so.”
“You’ll see. You will do well. Today’s the first day, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
They spoke in Spanish. She had decided she had better know the language if she was going to live in Spain, and had started studying seriously even before she had left Tossa.
When she finished her breakfast, she paid the man, tipping him more than usual, and walked up to the Paseo del Gracia. This was her favorite time of day. She loved the fresh smell of the streets as she walked to her shop. The flower stalls were opening as she passed them, and she nodded to the old men and women in their black clothes. Occasionally, one of them would give her something to put in her hair. More often, she’d buy several small bouquets and put them around her shop although construction was still going on. They had made her feel settled.
Her style of dressing had changed. There was a muted feel about her now. She wore browns and yellows, and pastels. The cuts were European and businesslike. She’d cut her hair, but not too short. Where before her waving hair might have made you notice her, now it only made her more attractive once you had noticed her.
The sun was full up now, the streets busy. Holding a large bunch of assorted bright flowers in her hand, she turned onto the Rambla de Cataluña and looked up at the sign that hung above her shop.
She took out the key and opened the door, then pulled up the shades and turned the sign over from
Cerrado
to
Abierto.
When the flowers had been put in their vases, she went to her chair near the counter and sat down.
It was a small shop, but it was in a good location and very well done. Books, mostly in English, lined the three walls from floor to ceiling, and there were two tables in the middle of the room, laden with “coffee-table books.” The entire front of the store was glass, and it was always light and pleasant inside. She’d discovered she had a gift for decorating, and the select prints and scattered greenery made the room easy to spend long periods of time in it. The big problem had been stocking the books—the letters, the connections, the credit. But at least she’d had enough from Sean’s will to pay the first year’s lease and get started. She knew her stock was still small, but in the summer she might make enough to keep it going. That was all she wanted to do, really, keep it going for a year or two. And it had a chance. It was close enough to the university to draw customers from there, and the road was certainly well traveled by tourists.
Time would tell, she thought. She pulled down a book and began to read, but her mind drifted. At first, she hadn’t wanted the money. She hadn’t wanted anything but to be left alone. She didn’t understand why he had done it. Everything had been going so well with them, and for the first time. She had tried over and over again to remember if she had done anything to hurt him, but she could think of nothing. If it had been because of her, she did not know why. It couldn’t have been. But gradually the concern over why had receded, and she knew it didn’t matter. He was dead, and she would never know why. She had loved him. In her sorrow, she had hated herself for that, and hated him for having let it happen. She missed him. That was all. She didn’t care if it was anybody’s fault.
She wasn’t in mourning. In a strange way, she had finally come to realize who she was. She no longer had to prove herself to men. She felt whole by herself. She was lonely from time to time, but she could take it now. The shop was important to her, and she had kept busy getting it ready, and she would now keep busy making it go. But she knew that the keeping busy was not a way of hiding. She was interested. Being her own woman fascinated her. She supposed she would meet someone she might love again. But that was how she looked at it—not as a necessity, but as something she more or less expected to happen. She wouldn’t live waiting for it. If it came, she would let it. She was open, but not hungry. There were many other things to do.
An elderly couple from Britain stopped in the doorway and she looked up and smiled at them. They came in. Before they left, a girl from the university stopped in and said she needed a book for a class. Luckily it was in stock. All the morning long, people entered in a steady stream, and Kyra enjoyed herself immensely, talking to them or just watching, smiling. Tony came by and offered to take her to lunch during siesta, and she was happy to go with him.
In the afternoon, two of the workers who’d helped her set up the shelves and do the painting came by with flowers for her. She kissed them each warmly on the cheek, thanking them, and they left, blushing. They were very young and she knew they both had crushes on her.
Customers kept stopping in, and though there was never a rush, neither was the shop ever empty for long. When she pulled the shades down at seven thirty and turned the sign back to
Cerrado,
she felt she’d done a good day’s work.
Back in her apartment, she ate a light dinner and then sat by the window that looked out over the city. She intended to read a little and then see how the ledger looked for the first day. She moved the chair over enough so that she could see the lights outside. A strong smell of rotten flowers came in on the hot breeze. She could see the bright red and green lights of the funicular moving up to the amusement park on Montjuich. She closed her eyes and imagined that she heard the couples laughing on the rides. She leaned back in the chair then, and decided to let herself cry.
It would be the last time she’d cry in a long time, and she knew that she wanted to. And she knew why she wanted to, and that it was all right.
Twenty-four
Berta finished doing the dishes that had piled up from the day before. She had been so excited that she hadn’t remembered to do them. It hadn’t been easy, all this time, to convince Pedro and Ramon that they should come up and live with her. They hadn’t trusted the money—death money they had called it—but she had refused to turn it down. It was from God, she’d argued. She’d done nothing to get it except do her job. She had liked Señor Sean. She would rather that he was still alive than that she had the estate, but once he was dead, it would be stupid not to take the money. But even from a man in hell? they had argued. She had flown into a rage. Who were they to say a man couldn’t repent even as he fell ten feet to his doom? God would always forgive, as he would forgive all of them. She had looked meaningfully at Ramon.
And finally, yesterday while they were up visiting for the day, they had said they would come and stay if she wanted them to. Then at night Ramon had said they would find some way to marry in the Church, as it wouldn’t look right if he lived in the same house with her and they were not married.
She had stayed in bed and let the men leave early. Ramon still had his business and if he wanted to continue in the same place, she would say nothing. It was not her affair, anyway, what he did for a living. If he asked, she would help him open a place closer to Tossa, now that he’d be living here.
Then she had gotten up and knelt by her bed to pray that the Virgin intercede for Señor Sean, since in spite of her railings at the men, she realized that it was likely that he had lost his soul. Then she got dressed and went in to do the dishes.
Now she had her broom and was sweeping the house thoroughly. If Ramon were going to be here, then the house, their house, must be spotless. He would have it no other way, she knew. Not that she had ever been lax in her housekeeping with the señor, but from time to time in the past six months she had let things run down a bit. She hadn’t been used to all the haggling about money, but Pedro and Ramon had helped her, and she was glad, now, that they had settled things with the lawyers and the insurance people, even if it had taken time away from the house.
It was summer, and it seemed that everywhere in the front and back courtyards, flowers were blooming. She went out to the backyard and snipped the blossoms that were ready, and then turned the water on to keep the ground moist. It was another scorching hot day, and she knew that it would remain that way for at least three more months. She laid the hose down in one of the small ditches she had dug, and walked back through the house to the front, her arms filled with the flowers. Over on her left was Sean’s grave, marked by a stone, since a cross would have been sacrilegious. It was out of the way, over by the wall. After the winter rains the ground had been packed down so that there was no way to tell that it had been dug. It’s hard to imagine his body lying there, she thought. She laid the flowers near the stone.
The sun beat like a mallet on her head. She straightened up too fast and got dizzy. For a moment she stood over the grave, but her thoughts were far away. She was thinking that in two weeks the men would be here, and it would be a happy house again.
Then she turned back, thinking of the preparations she’d make for them and, squinting against the glaring whiteness, went inside, humming softly to herself.
Read on for a preview of
John Lescroart’s riveting novel
BETRAYAL
Available now
“Mr.Hardy?”
“Speaking.”
“Mr. Hardy, this is Oscar Thomasino.”
“Your honor, how are you?”
“Fine, thanks. Am I bothering you at an inopportune time?”
“No, but whatever—it’s no bother. What can I do for you?”
“Well, admittedly this is a little unusual, but you and I have known each other for a long time, and I wondered if I could presume slightly upon our professional relationship.”
This was unusual, if not to say unprecedented, but Hardy nevertheless kept his tone neutral. “Certainly, your honor. Anything I can do, if it’s within my power.” A Superior Court judge asking an attorney for a favor was a rare enough opportunity, and Hardy wasn’t going to let it pass him by.
“Well, I’m sure it is,” Thomasino said. “Did you know Charles Bowen—Charlie?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You’d remember him. Flashy dresser, bright red hair, big beard.”
“Doesn’t ring a bell. He a lawyer?”
“Yes—he was, anyway. He disappeared six months ago.”
“Where’d he go?”
“If I knew that, he wouldn’t be disappeared, would he? He’d be someplace.”
“Everybody’s someplace, your honor. It’s one of the two main rules. Everybody loves somebody sometime, and you’ve got to be someplace.”
During the short pause that ensued, Hardy came to realize that he’d overstepped. His tendency to crack wise was going to be the end of him yet. But Thomasino eventually recovered to some extent, even reverting to his own stab at not-quite-cozy informality. “Thanks, Diz,” he said. “I’ll try to keep those in mind. Meanwhile, Charlie Bowen.”