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“No. I live down the beach. If I need a suit, I can just run home.”
“Go back and play,” Sandra told Brent, and he ran back to the group of kids.
“I’ll walk with you,” he said.
“It’s not necessary.”
“No, but I want to see you in a suit, so I’ll walk with you.”
“You might be nuts,” she said, but she laughed. “When you get to know me better, if you get to know me better, you’ll discover I have the reputation of being nasty when provoked.”
“Ha! I’m sure I would win a nasty contest,” he said. “As I said, I was a criminal defense lawyer for a lot of years.”
“Well, la-di-da,” she said, laughing. “I’d better tell my nanny I’m leaving for a bit.”
“It’s not all that.”
“Don’t downplay your achievements,” she said, winking at him.
He waited for her to confer with her nanny, and when she returned, she nodded down the beach.
“Follow me. And you should see the heads watching us. They probably think I’m taking you to my house to ravage you.”
“Why would they think that? Do you have a history?”
“Why, yes, I do,” she said. “If you’re going to hang around me, I have to be honest with you. If that sort of thing is a problem, garbage from my past, don’t waste your time.”
“It’s no problem for me,” he quickly said. “I much prefer all skeletons exposed from the get-go. It’s much easier to cope that way. But the past can stay in the past. We’re adults, so we’re bound to have a few stories to tell.”
“You’re not kidding.”
As they passed Laura’s cottage, Sandra pointed it out. “You might find this painful, but that’s the beach cottage where the skeleton was found.”
Seeing it didn’t have the effect he’d expected. His late wife had suffered there. “It’s a lot nicer than I imagined.”
“Laura completely renovated it,” Sandra explained. “Anyway, in our plan for transparency, I thought you should know.”
“Thank you. It looks so benign now. I don’t feel anything.”
“I didn’t expect you to feel much,” she said. “It was like a bad dream, I’m sure.”
“Exactly like a bad dream.”
“This is my place,” she said, pointing up ahead.
“Oh, wow. A completely different renovation.”
“Yep, I don’t care for the quaint look.”
“Well, this is definitely not quaint.”
They trudged up the steep path, slate sunk into granite dust over sand, and reached the front door painted a bright red.
“Like the churches in Pennsylvania,” he said. “Red for welcome.”
“Or in this case, red for warning, do not approach.”
“Really?”
