finally on the market. The nightmare was behind him. Even if he still felt its breath on the back of his neck.
He shoved at his hair, wished he could delude himself so he could just go back to sleep, but he knew if he closed his eyes again, he’d be right back in the little library, right back beside the body of his murdered wife.
And yet he couldn’t think of a single good reason to get out of bed.
He thought he heard music—dim, distant. What the hell was that music?
He’d gotten so used to noises—voices, music, TV mumbling—during the last few months in his parents’ house he hadn’t registered there shouldn’t be music, or anything but the sound of the sea or the wind.
Had he turned on a radio, a television, something, and forgotten? It wouldn’t be the first time since his long downward spiral.
So, a reason to get up, he decided.
As he hadn’t brought in the rest of his bags, he yanked on the jeans he’d worn the day before, grabbed the shirt and shrugged into it as he started out of the bedroom.
It didn’t sound like a radio, he realized as he approached the stairs. Or not just a radio. He recognized Adele easily enough as he moved through the main floor, but clearly heard a second female voice forming a kind of passionate—and loud—duet.
He followed the sound, winding through the house toward the kitchen.
Adele’s singing partner reached into one of the three cloth market bags on the counter, drew out a small bunch of bananas and added them to a bamboo bowl of apples and pears.
He couldn’t quite get his mind around it, any of it.
She sang full out, and well—not with Adele’s magic, but well. And looked like a fairy, of the long and willowy variety.
A mass of long curls the color of walnut tumbled around her shoulders, spilled down the back of a dark blue sweater. Her face was . . . unusual, was all he could think. Long, almond-shaped eyes, the sharp nose and cheekbones, the top-heavy mouth down to the mole at its left corner struck him as just a little otherworldly.
Or maybe it was just his fogged brain and the circumstances.
Rings glinted on her fingers. Dangles swung from her ears. A crescent moon hung around her neck, and a watch with a face as round and white as a baseball rode her left wrist.
Still belting it out, she lifted a quart of milk, a pound of butter from the bag, started to turn toward the refrigerator. And saw him.
She didn’t scream, but did take a stumbling step back, and nearly bobbled the milk.
“Eli?” She set down the milk, laid a beringed hand on her heart. “God! You scared me.” With a throaty, breathless laugh, she shook back all that curling hair. “You aren’t due until this afternoon. I didn’t see your car. But I came in the back,” she continued, gesturing toward the door leading out to the main terrace. “I guess you came in the front. Why wouldn’t you? Did you drive up last night? Less traffic, I guess, but crappy roads with the sleet.
“Anyway, here you are. Would you like some coffee?”
She looked like a long-legged fairy, he thought again, and had a laugh like a sea goddess.
And she’d brought bananas.
He just stared at her. “Who are you?”
“Oh, sorry. I thought Hester told you. I’m Abra. Abra Walsh. Hester asked me to get the house ready for you. I’m just stocking the kitchen. How’s Hester? I haven’t spoken to her for a couple of days—just quick e-mails and texts.”
“Abra Walsh,” he repeated. “You found her.”
“Yes.” She dug a bag of coffee beans out of a sack and began to fill a machine much like one he’d used daily at his law offices. “Horrible day. She didn’t come to yoga class—she never misses. I called, but she didn’t answer, so I came over to check. I have a key. I clean for her.”
While the machine hummed, she put an oversize mug under the spout, then continued putting away the groceries. “I came in the back—habit. I called for her, but . . . Then I started to worry maybe she wasn’t feeling well, so I walked through to go upstairs. And she was lying there. I thought . . . but she had a pulse, and she came around for a minute when I said her name. I called for an ambulance, and I got the throw off the sofa because