Sweet Revenge

dragged her down to the ruined couch.

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by Nora Roberts
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    Grace heard the low, droning buzz and blamed it on the wine. She didn’t groan or grumble about the hangover. She’d been taught that every sin, venial or mortal, required penance. It was one of the few aspects of her early Catholic training she carried with her into adulthood.
    The sun was up and strong enough to filter through the gauzy curtains at the windows. In defense, she buried her face in the pillow. She managed to block out the light, but not the buzzing. She was awake, and hating it.
    Thinking of aspirin and coffee, she pushed herself up in bed. It was then she realized the buzzing wasn’t inside her head, but outside the house. She rummaged through one of her bags and came up with a ratty terry-cloth robe. In her closet at home was a silk one, a gift from a former lover. Grace had fond memories of the lover, but preferred the terry-cloth robe. Still groggy, she stumbled to the window and pushed the curtain aside.
    It was a beautiful day, cool and smelling just faintly of spring and turned earth. There was a sagging chain-link fence separating her sisters yard from the yard next door. Tangled and pitiful against it was a forsythia bush. It was struggling to bloom, and Grace thought its tiny yellowflowers looked brave and daring. It hadn’t occurred to her until then how tired she was of hothouse flowers and perfect petals. On a huge yawn, she looked beyond it.
    She saw him then, in the backyard of the house next door. Long narrow boards were braced on sawhorses. With the kind of easy competence she admired, he measured and marked and cut through. Intrigued, Grace shoved the window up to get a better look. The morning air was chill, but she leaned into it, pleased that it cleared her head. Like the forsythia, he was something to see.
    Paul Bunyan, she thought, and grinned. The man had to be six-four if he was an inch and built along the lines of a fullback. Even with the distance she could see the power of his muscles moving under his jacket. He had a mane of red hair and a full beard—not a trimmed little affectation, but the real thing. She could just see his mouth move in its cushion in time to the country music that jingled out of a portable radio.
    When the buzzing stopped, she was smiling down at him, her elbows resting on the sill. “Hi,” she called. Her smile widened as he turned and looked up. She’d noticed that his body had braced as he’d turned, not so much in surprise, she thought, but in readiness. “I like your house.”
    Ed relaxed as he saw the woman in the window. He’d put in over sixty hours that week, and had killed a man. The sight of a pretty woman smiling at him from a second-story window did a lot to soothe his worn nerves. “Thanks.”
    “You fixing it up?”
    “Bit by bit.” He shaded his eyes against the sun and studied her. She wasn’t his neighbor. Though he and Kathleen Breezewood hadn’t exchanged more than a dozen words, he knew her by sight. But there was something familiar in the grinning face and tousled hair. “You visiting?”
    “Yes, Kathy’s my sister. I guess she’s gone already. She teaches.”
    “Oh.” He’d learned more about his neighbor in twoseconds than he had in two months. Her nickname was Kathy, she had a sister, and she was a teacher. Ed hefted another board onto the horses. “Staying long?”
    “I’m not sure.” She leaned out a bit farther so the breeze ruffled her hair. It was a small indulgence the pace and convenience of New York had denied her. “Did you plant the azaleas out front?”
    “Yeah. Last week.”
    “They’re terrific. I think I’ll put some in for Kath.” She smiled again. “See you.” She pulled her head inside and was gone.
    For a minute longer Ed stared at the empty window. She’d left it open, he noted, and the temperature had yet to climb to sixty. He took out his carpenter’s pencil to mark the wood. He knew that face. It was both a matter of business and personality that he never forgot one. It would come to him.
    Inside, Grace pulled on a pair of sweats. Her hair was still damp from the shower, but she wasn’t in the mood to fuss with blow dryers and styling brushes. There was coffee to be drunk, a paper to be read, and a murder to be solved. By her calculations, she could put