Hale's Point Read Online Free Page A

wondered whether it
was the nudity or the scars that had unnerved her.
    He kicked off his wet, heavy jeans and added them to the heap
on the floor. In the car, Harley had told him that the sensible thing was for
him to come back to the house, catch a few hours’ sleep, and book a flight when
it was convenient. Exhausted, drenched, and in pain, he had thanked her for her
trouble and agreed to do the sensible thing.
    He wrapped the towel around his hips, bent to retrieve his
cane, and followed Harley to the maid’s room, next to the kitchen. The maid
wouldn’t be back until September, so he had decided to sleep there, instead of
in his old room, in order to avoid the stairs. He didn’t think his leg could
take any more abuse than it had already suffered tonight.
    She was bending over the narrow bed, making crisp hospital
corners in the white cotton sheets.
    He said, “I want to be able to bounce a dime off that sheet,
Private.”
    Her face stained pink when she saw that all he had on was the
towel. She was uptight. Then her gaze
dropped to his disfigured left leg, and she quickly returned her attention to
the bed.
    “I’m going to take a hot shower before I turn in,” he said.
He flipped the light switch in the little bathroom off the maid’s room, then
turned on the water in the claw-footed tub, adjusting the knob to get it
scalding.
    “I’m done here,” she said, turning to face him, her arms
folded across her chest. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and she wore a
white sweater and new jeans with an ironed- in crease ;
she looked like a schoolgirl. Except for her face. The hot color in her cheeks
brought out the green in her hazel eyes. Even her lips seemed to blush a darker
red.
    He was staring at her. He should say something. “Thanks for
everything, Harley.”
    “No problem. Good night.”
    “Good night.”
    ***
    He couldn’t move. He lay on his back in the white sand and
stared at the hot-pink sky and green palms, blue waves slapping the shore.
    Á shadow fell over him. It was her. He saw her lips, those
amazing lips. She knelt down and leaned over him, and he thought she was going
to kiss him, but instead, she said, “Does it hurt?”
    He looked down. It was Alaskan snow he lay on now, and it
burned, it was so cold. The reason he couldn’t move was the jagged pieces of
metal that pierced him all along his left side, pinning him down like an insect
in a case.
    “Does it hurt?” she repeated. He was consumed with hurt. Pain
was all there was and all there ever would be.
    “No.” he said.
    She stood. ‘‘Liar.”
    She was gone. He tried to sit up, to reach for her, and the
metal tore at his flesh.
    “No!” he gasped. He sat up in bed, sweating and shaking. “No,”
he whispered.
    He looked around. The maid’s room. Hale’s Point. Oh, yeah. He
rubbed the back of his neck. “Wow.” He couldn’t even sleep without pain. Even
in his dreams it pursued him.
    There was a digital clock on the night table. It was 8:05
a.m. Outside, the waves still lapped and retreated, but they didn’t sound
right; too loud and too regular, just like they were in the dream.
    His bed stood against the back wall, a window within reach.
He pulled the curtain back and pried apart the slats of the blinds, squinting
against the bright sunlight. He could see all of the brick patio and most of
the pool. The patio was scattered with teak furniture, including a large round
table under an enormous square canvas umbrella. The pool took up a good part of
what had been, in his boyhood, a flat expanse of broadloom lawn. The lawn ended
fifty yards from the house in a low stone wall bordered with roses, lavender
and creeping thyme.
    Beyond it, the rocky shore and Long Island Sound. From a gap
in the stone wall, a hodgepodge of boulders set into the sandy precipice served
as a kind of stairway to the beach. It was the Hales’ beach, which included a
crescent-shaped jetty that sliced into the Sound—the point for which