The Second Time Around by Mary Higgins Clark Read Free Book Online Page B

drive in the morning to Caspien, the Connecticut town where Nicholas Spencer had grown up. We agreed that to put this cover story together while it was still hot news, we were going to have to move fast.
    That fact didn’t keep me from steering the car north rather than south. An overwhelming curiosity made me want to drive to Bedford and see for myself the extent of the fire that had almost taken Lynn’s life.

S EVEN

    N ed knew that Dr. Ryan had looked at him kind of funny when he ran into him in the hospital. That was why he was afraid to go back. But he had to go back. He had to go into the room where Lynn Spencer was a patient.
    If he did that, maybe he wouldn’t keep seeing Annie’s face the way it had looked when the car was on fire and she couldn’t get out. He needed to see that same look on Lynn Spencer’s face.
    The interview with her sister or stepsister, whatever she was, had been broadcast on the six o’clock and then the eleven o’clock news the day before yesterday. “Lynn is in great pain,” she had said, her voice oh so sad. “Be sorry for her” was what she meant. It’s not her fault that your wife is dead. She and her husband just wanted to cheat you. That’s all they meant to do.
    Annie. When he did get to sleep, he always dreamt ofher. Sometimes they were good dreams. They were in Greenwood Lake and it was fifteen years ago. They never went there while his mother was alive. Mama didn’t like anyone to visit her. But when she died, the house became his, and Annie had been thrilled. “I never had a home of my own. I’m going to fix it up so nice. Wait and see, Ned.”
    And she had fixed it up nice. It was small, only four rooms, but over the years she had saved enough money to buy new cabinets for the kitchen and to hire a handyman to put them in. The next year she saved enough to have a new toilet and sink installed in the bathroom. She had made him soak off all the old wallpaper, and together they painted the place inside and out. They’d bought windows from that guy who advertised on CBS all the time about how cheap his windows were. And Annie had her garden, her beautiful garden.
    He kept thinking about them working together, painting. He dreamed of Annie hanging the curtains and standing back and saying how pretty they looked.
    He kept thinking about the weekends. They drove there every weekend from May until the end of October. They had only a couple of electric heaters to keep the place warm, and they cost too much to use in the winter. She had planned that when she was able to retire from the hospital, they’d put in central heat so that they could live there all year round.
    He’d sold the house to their new neighbor last October. The neighbor wanted more property. He hadn’t paid that much for it, because under the new town code it wasn’t considered a building lot, but Ned hadn’tcared. He knew that whatever he was able to put into Gen-stone would bring him a fortune. Nicholas Spencer had promised that when he talked to Ned about the vaccine. When Ned was working for the landscaper at the Bedford property, he had met Spencer.
    He hadn’t told Annie he was selling the house. He didn’t want her to talk him out of it. Then one nice Saturday in February, when he was working, she’d decided to take a ride to Greenwood Lake, and the house was gone. She’d come home and pounded his chest with her fists, and even though he’d driven her to Bedford to see the kind of mansion he was going to buy for her, it hadn’t helped calm her anger.
    Ned was sorry that Nicholas Spencer was dead. I wish I could have killed him myself, he thought. If I hadn’t listened to him, Annie would still be here with me.
    Then last night when he couldn’t sleep, he had a vision of Annie. She was telling him to go to the hospital and see Dr. Greene. “You need medicine, Ned,” she was saying.