A Charmed Place by Antoinette Stockenberg Page B

newsletter."
    "Who reads Trixie's newsletter? What's he doing in your house?"
    She said grimly, " He came to borrow a cup of sugar, Michael." In a lower, grimmer voice she said, "Is it really any of your business?"
    "Yes, it's my business! I don't want that bastard near my family."
    "Michael, this is not the time!"
    But Michael didn't agree. "Jesus, Maddie! I don't care if he's there selling Girl Scout cookies. The guy brought an unbelievable amount of pain down on your father, on all of you. How can you—? Let me talk to him. Put him on the phone."
    "No, I won't do that. Good-bye, Michael."
    "Wait, wait—where's he staying?" Michael got in.
    "In the lighthouse," she answered grudgingly.
    "The lighthouse! That's ballsy."
    "If you say so. I really have to get off the phone. Tracey should've called by now."
    "You have call waiting, Maddie. What's the problem?"
    "Michael, please. Good-bye." She hung up, aware that once again she'd let Michael go too far, too long. All for Tracey's sake.
    She was about to explain to Dan that she was expecting a call when the call she was expecting came mercifully through. Maddie took it while a bemused Dan Hawke, arms folded across his chest, leaned back on the Formica counter and waited patiently for her to finish.
    She hung up and turned to him, grateful for the chance to cut and run. "I'm sorry. I have to pick my daughter up from the Bowl-a-rama," she said.
    He broke into a grin. "The Bowl-a-rama! Is that joint still there?"
    "It's candlepin now," Maddie said. She wanted to wipe the grin off his face; it was bowling her over.
    "I remember knocking off from work with a couple of the guys and playing a few lanes while we had a beer or two. It was fairly seedy then. Have they added ferns and made it all gentrified? Like Annie's?"
    "I'd forgotten," she said, hurled back in time again. "Annie's used to be Anthony's Pizza back then. They had a great onion pizza; they—"
    She brought herself up short. The one thing she did not want to do was to stroll down memory lane with him. It wasn't enough to peek behind the velvet curtains when you did that. You had to turn the rocks over, too. And she didn't want to look at dark things scurrying. Not now. Not ever. She had no more room for any more horror.
    "I'm sorry," she said, looking away from him. She turned the cowardly act into a scan of the kitchen for her handbag. "I really have to go."
    She found the bag next to the microwave. Scooping it up in a swoop onto her shoulder, she said as gaily as she could, "I guess you're right; it is a bit of a madhouse around here. My brother's arriving tonight with his family and I've got shopping to do. Please don't think I'm rude—"
    "Not rude," he said, stepping between her and the door. "Afraid."
    "Don't be asinine," she said flatly. Her cheeks burned from the dead-on accusation.
    "You can't expect this to be the end of it, Maddie," he said in that urgently persuasive voice of his. Once it had rallied a band of idealists into doing wildly destructive things; she couldn't forget that.
    "This is the end of it, Dan."
    "I didn't come here just to pay my respects," he said, spitting out the word. "I came here to—"
    "To what?" she cried. "To thrash it out, once and for all? Because you decided the time is right? You want me to drop everything—drop my life—and listen to what you in your accumulated wisdom have to say?" She let out a harsh and bitter laugh. "I don't think so."
    It shocked her, the depth of her anger. She tried to brush past him through the wide door, but he grabbed her arm to hold her back. The act infuriated her; she yanked herself from his grip and jumped away, like a cat, and then lashed out at him.
    "You want my forgiveness? Fine! All is forgiven. My father's dead now; the chapter's closed. There. Feel better? Were you haunted by the memory of what you did to him? Did you need my forgiveness to make your glorious life complete?"
    Her voice dropped to a menacing whisper as she said, "Oh, yes,