Part 107 (2/2)
Her eyebrows drew together as she tried to think. ”I neglected that area, I suppose. Just stopped seeing it, and told myself I'd get around to hiring those experts one day. He might have thought there'd be maps, which is foolish. If we'd known X marked the spot, we'd have dug up the dowry ourselves long before this. Or he a.s.sumed there'd be a journal, one of Violeta Landon's perhaps. But the story goes that after her brother killed her lover, she destroyed her journals, their love letters and all of it. If indeed they existed. If they did and survived, I should have heard of them, or come across them at some point.”
”Okay. Do you remember getting any calls, inquiries, having anyone come by asking about brokering some of the mementos, the antiques, anyone asking for access because they were writing a story, a book?”
”Lord, Eli, I can't count the times. The only thing that's tempted me to hire anyone but Abra was the idea of having someone deal with the inquiries.”
”Nothing that really stands out?”
”No, nothing that comes to mind.”
”Let me know if you think of anything.” And she'd had enough, Eli judged, and looked a little pale again. ”What's for lunch?”
”We should go down and find out.”
He helped her up, but when he started to lift her, she brushed him back. ”I don't need to be carried. I manage well enough with the cane.”
”Maybe, but I like playing Rhett Butler.”
”He wasn't carrying his grandmother downstairs to lunch,” she said when Eli scooped her into his arms.
”But he would have.”
Abra retrieved the cane, and as she watched Eli carry Hester downstairs, understood completely why she'd fallen in love.
CHAPTER Twenty-seven
A GOOD DAY, ABRA THOUGHT WHEN THEY SAID GOOD-BYE to Hester. She reached for Eli's hand to say exactly that as they walked to the car. Then spotted Wolfe leaning against his across the street.
”What is he doing?” she demanded. ”Why? Does he think you're going to suddenly walk over there and confess all?”
”He's letting me know he's there.” Eli got behind the wheel, calmly started the engine. ”A little psychological warfare, and surprisingly effective. It got to the point last winter where I rarely left the house because if I went for a d.a.m.n haircut, I couldn't be sure he wouldn't walk in and take the chair next to me.”
”That's hara.s.sment.”
”Technically, and yeah, we could've filed charges, but at that point he'd have gotten a slap. Wouldn't really change anything, and the truth is I was too d.a.m.n tired to bother. It got easier to just stay put.”
”You put yourself under house arrest.”
He hadn't thought of it that way, not at the time. But she wasn't wrong. Just as he'd thought, in some corner of his mind, of his move to Whiskey Beach as a self-imposed exile.
Those days were finished.
”I didn't have anywhere to go,” he told her. ”Friends eased away or just vanished. My law firm let me go.”
”What about that 'innocent until proven guilty' tack?”
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