Fear to Tread by Lucy Blue Read Free Book Online Page A

identify, but too precise to be American.
    “Hi Caleb.” She could still see him clearly by the moonlight. “This is Jake—my husband, Jake. His grave…he died a little more than a week ago.”
    “I’m sorry.” He seemed to mean it; his eyes turned sad. “He must have been young.”
    “Yeah, he was.” She looked down at the postcard in her hand. “Excuse me.” She knelt down on the grave and lit it, letting it burn as they watched. He didn’t seem surprised at all; he just stood there beside her as it burned. “He had cancer.” She didn’t stop to wonder why she was telling him any of this, why it should seem so natural that this stranger should be with her. She felt immediately at ease with him much as she had with Sylvia. Kindness seemed to radiate out from him, an inner light that glowed in his eyes and on his skin in the snowy blue moonlight. “It started in his lungs and went to his liver.”
    “I’m so sorry, Laura.”
    “Thanks.” Tears welled in her eyes, but she smiled, looking up at him. “You’re really sweet.”
    “Not really,” he said, smiling back. “Or not always.” He offered her his hand and helped her up.
    “So why are you here?” she asked. “Do you have family buried here, too?”
    He paused before he answered, seeming to choose his words carefully. “I do see family here,” he said. “And friends. I visit sometimes.”
    “I’ve been coming every night.” Usually handsome men made her nervous. Jake had joked that if he’d had a decent haircut and a shave when they’d met, she never would have talked to him at all. “I’ve been writing him letters.” Her eyes met his, and she stopped. What was she doing, telling these things to a perfect stranger? Sylvia was her neighbor at least; she knew where she lived. This Caleb could be anyone. “It’s probably silly.”
    “Of course it isn’t.” He sounded absolutely sincere, not like he was just being nice or keeping her distracted while he decided how to steal her purse. “If my body were here, if I had left someone behind…” He looked away from her to Jake’s grave. “I would like it if she wrote me letters.”
    “Thanks.” He sounded sure that Jake had gone on somewhere else, that he would read what she had written. “You’re not going to offer me a ride in your van, are you?
    He laughed. “No, I promise.” His smile was infectious; she couldn’t stop herself from smiling back “I’m on foot, actually. Can I walk you home?”
    For a moment, she almost said yes. That morning with Detective Black, she had felt a dozen different instinctual alarms go off every time he got near her. With Caleb, she felt calm. But weren’t serial killers sometimes supposed to have a knack for making women feel all warm and fuzzy? “No, thank you,” she said. “It’s not far.”
    “All right.” He didn’t seem disappointed, and he didn’t press. But he walked beside her to the gate, and when they reached the sidewalk, he took her hand again. “Be careful, Laura.” He leaned down and kissed her lightly on the forehead. “Good night.”
    “You too.” She should have been completely freaked out, but she wasn’t. She felt comforted and cared for, much as she had the night before when Jake had come to her as a ghost or a dream or whatever it was—she still wasn’t ready to examine it yet; she was just grateful it had happened. “Good night.”

Chapter Eight—Jake’s Paintings
     
    When Laura got home, she turned off the ringer on the phone and changed into painting clothes, yoga pants and one of Jake’s old tee-shirts with her hair pulled back.
    In the studio, she cracked open a window in spite of the bitter cold. A draft knifed in and around her, giving her goosebumps, and she thought about getting a sweater, but she didn’t want to wait. All of a sudden, she needed to get this done.
    She dragged a pair of sawhorses out from under some clean towels she had never gotten around to folding and walked one of