Good Deed Bad Deed, Marcia Morgan [summer beach reads TXT] 📗

vestiges of the setting sun glowed gray lavender from behind the softly rolling silhouette of the Cotswolds.

Ben broke the silence. “The driveway is just ahead, beyond that long row of trees arched over the road.”

Ana sat up straighter in her seat and became more alert to the surroundings. She rolled down the window and stuck her arm out into the cool air. It began to blow her hair, first across her face, and then as she brushed it away with her hand, it billowed out around her head. Ben was once again taken back to his fantasy of the laughing beauty riding beside him.

“I hope I remember the code,” he said. “I’ve only been here once since they added the gate security. The gate’s always been there, but it used to be secured with only a padlock. I can’t tell you how many keys my sister and I lost.”

“Maybe they added an intercom. Then it won’t matter.”

He slowed and turned the car left, coming to a stop in front of tall double gates. On either side limestone walls stood tall, covered in well-trimmed greenery now robbed of color by the moonless night. Stopping beside the lighted key code box, Ben lowered the window and punched in some numbers. His memory served him well. The gates opened slowly and he proceeded, looking back to see if they closed behind him. The gravel driveway was tree-lined and rather long, ending in a circular drive. Ana rolled her window down halfway, hoping to hear the yap of a fox or the song of a nightingale piercing the darkness. She could hear water and could just make out the colorless shapes of a hedged circular enclosure and what she imagined was a fountain. Ben pulled the Jaguar in close to the front walk and shut off the engine.

CHAPTER SIX

Valerie Amesworth McKinnon had spent the better part of the afternoon with her therapist. The aftermath of those sessions had always seemed to cause more conflict than resolution, and as a result she would feel at loose ends for the rest of the day. But on this particular day, it was more than that. She felt herself the victim of a personal attack and now wondered why she should even continue. Nothing had changed as a result of being in therapy. But she appeased her parents by assuring them that the process was helpful, and after all, they were footing the bill. So far she had refused to see that her willful nature stifled her progress. Valerie had seen each visit as a skirmish, and rather than change her own behavior she saw each verbal exchange with the therapist as a chance to gain what she thought was an upper hand. She had maintained the delusion that the doctor would eventually take her side.

She stopped for coffee at a corner kiosk, a quick espresso downed in two gulps. The final quarter hour of her appointment had left her slightly disoriented, so in order to clear her head she decided to walk part of the way back to her place of business, Boutique Le Bijou. Yet within a few blocks she became tired and hailed a taxi. Before reaching the boutique, she told the cabbie to pull over. She paid, quickly got out, and crossed the sidewalk to an open gate leading into the neighborhood park.

In this corner of London, spring had done its work, handing off its magic wand to summer. Color washed the flowerbeds and trees that had been laid-bare by winter’s cold. A warm wind blew the trees, once again lush with green, their abundant leaves rustling in tandem with each playful gust. She meandered along the path, pausing to observe a bed of luxuriant yellow roses, and then stopped at a green iron bench directly across. Valerie settled there in the shade, her face to the sky, listening to the occasional birdsong and the buzz of an insect around her head. Soon her thoughts began to run deep.

Once again, as she had done countless times before, she returned to the beginning, to that first moment she believed her life was set plainly before her. When she had met Ben in a London pub on her spring break, she was a senior at Vassar, and he was in his first year of grad school. After they met, he pursued Valerie daily, feeding her fragile ego with his youthful eloquence. She was the girl with the flaxen hair— the color of her eyes lay somewhere between green and violet, like the sky or sea on a sunny day—she had the body of a goddess. Though she could see now how over the top his words had been, such poetic expression from a young man her age had been unknown to her. She had never before been romanced.

The two had become mutually besotted, and within weeks she was enchanted with the idea of being married to who she believed would be a famous author. She recognized that she was a rich girl, consistently indulged and used to getting her way. It suited her. An inbred talent for manipulation had always accomplished this result. In her girlish imagination of their life and Ben’s success, she would be another version, a better version, of Hemingway’s Martha Gelhorn.

Valerie came to resent her parents. She had replayed their part in the downturn of her life many times. When she announced that with only one semester lying between her and a degree she would not be returning to school, they had all but washed their hands of the daughter who had always been their princess. She remembered the day she told them all about Ben and his aspirations. Even more unacceptable to them was her intention to marry a graduate school student who aspired to be a writer. Her father’s constant rant still rung in her ears: A world of poverty, my girl. That’s what you’re signing on for. Her mother would whine about the fact that she