Arcadia Falls by Carol Goodman Read Free Book Online Page A

He was just beginning to receive acclaim for his new work when Lily died—killed when she fell into a ravine during a snowstorm. According to the local gossip picked up by the press she’d been on her way to meet Nash and run away with him. Two weeks later her body was found buried in the snow. A year later Nash killed himself, many believed over grief at the death of his muse.
    When I see the lights of the cottage at the end of the path I imagine Lily Eberhardt setting off from there in the middle of the blizzard. I’ve always wondered why she would have risked the storm. Had she been that desperate to get away? Had she been afraid Nash would leave without her?
    I’m thinking so hard about Lily Eberhardt that when a white-clad figure flits between the trees ahead of me I stop dead in my tracks, sure I’ve conjured her ghost. The apparition—if that’s what it is—stops, too, then glides off the path into the woods and disappears. I hurry to the end of the path and scan the trees but all I see is a slim white birch tree tilting among the surrounding pines. Is that what I saw? It must be, I think as I leave the woods. If it was a person why would they hide from me? I can’t quite banish the feeling, though, that I’ve summoned Lily’s ghost.
    When I walk into the cottage I go straight to the fireplace and look at the cracked tiles. Vera had the cottage built for Lily. Fleur-de-Lis is a reference to the flower Lily was named for. The two women made each other tokens of the other’s name—tiles decorated with lilies and beech trees, cabinets engraved with those symbols, tapestries and rugs woven with interlocking tree and flower patterns. Examining the tiles above the fireplace again it’s clear that only the ones decorated with lilies have been cracked. Did Vera do this when she learned that her protégée—and, some believed, lover—had announced that she was leaving? If so, it might have been that final act of violence that drove Lily out into the storm.
    I shiver thinking of poor Lily wandering lost in the middle of a snowstorm and dying by herself in the cold. When I can’t stop shivering I realize why I’m so cold. I left all the windows open and the afternoon, waning toward evening, has become chilly. I’d forgotten that even summer evenings this far north can be cold. Dymphna’s stew will be a welcome comfort.
    I call Sally’s name while unpacking the food in the kitchen. She doesn’t respond, but then that could be because she’s plugged into her iPod, asleep, or just ignoring me. Pausing to listen, I hear the faint sound of music coming from upstairs—something by the Decemberists, I think. So she’s not plugged in, but listening to music on her laptop.Hopefully while unpacking. I head toward the stairs but stop myself. The therapist we saw in Great Neck said that repeatedly calling for Sally when she didn’t answer me just enabled her helplessness. “Just put dinner on the table and let it get cold if she doesn’t come down for it,” she had told me. I’ve watched a lot of food congeal—and Sally grow thinner—over the last year. Still, I might as well unpack the boxes marked “kitchen” and get dinner ready before calling again.
    Although I sold off all the good china on eBay and left the high-end appliances with the house, I’ve kept most of the everyday china and cookware. It didn’t have good resale value, I figured. Who would want someone else’s used pots and pans with the ghosts of past meals clinging to them? What stranger would want to braise pork chops on the tarnished copper-bottomed saucepan with the burn on its rim from when Jude stole up behind me while I was sautéing shallots and kissed me so long I let them burn? I can still smell the charred onion when I lift the pan from its nest of packing paper—a smell as intimate as the memory of sex. It would be like selling our marriage sheets. And how could I sell the blue-glazed Le Creuset casserole, a housewarming