Shadowfires

alert
and cautious, though she refused to say exactly what it was that he
should be alert to and cautious of. Her dread was almost palpable,
yet she declined to share her worry and thus relieve her mind; she
jealously guarded her secret as she had done all evening.
    He suppressed his impatience with her-not because he had the
forbearance of a saint but simply because he had no choice but to let
her proceed with her revelations at her own pace.
    At the door of the house, she fumbled with her keys, trying to
find the lock and keyhole in the gloom. When she had walked out a
year ago, she'd kept her house key because she'd thought she would
need to return later to collect some of her belongings, a task that
had become unnecessary when Eric had everything packed and sent to
her along with, she said, an infuriatingly smug note expressing his
certainty that she would soon realize how foolish she had been and
seek reconciliation.
    The cold, hard scrape of key metal on lock metal gave rise to an
unfortunate image in Ben's mind: a pair of murderously sharp and gleaming knives being stropped against each other.
    He noticed a burglar-alarm box with indicator lights by the door,
but the system was evidently not engaged because none of the bulbs on
the panel was lit.
    While Rachael continued to poke at the lock with the key, Ben
said, “Maybe he had the locks changed after you moved out.”
    “I doubt it. He was so confident that I'd move back in with him sooner or later. Eric was a very confident man.”
    She found the keyhole. The key worked. She opened the door,
nervously reached inside, snapped on the lights in the foyer, and
went into the house with the pistol held out in front of her.
    Ben followed, feeling as if the male and female roles had been
wrongly reversed, feeling as if he ought to have the gun, feeling a
bit foolish when you came right down to it.
    The house was perfectly still.
    “I think we're alone,” Rachael said.
    “Who did you expect to find?” he asked.
    She did not answer.
    Although she had just expressed the opinion that they were alone,
she advanced with her pistol ready.
    They went slowly from room to room, turning on every light, and
each new revelation of the interior made the house more imposing. The
rooms were large, high-ceilinged, white-walled, airy, with Mexican-
tile floors and lots of big windows; some had massive fireplaces of
either stone or ceramic tile; a few boasted oak cabinets of superb
craftsmanship. A party for two hundred guests would not have strained
the capacity of the living room and adjacent library.
    The furniture was as starkly modern and functional as the rather
forbidding architecture. The upholstered white sofas and chairs were
utterly free of ornamentation. Coffee tables, end tables, and all the
occasional tables were also quite plain, finished in mirror-bright
high-gloss enamel, some black and some white.
    The only color and drama were provided by an eclectic group of
paintings, antiques, and objets d'art. The bland decor was intended to serve as an unobtrusive backdrop against which to display those items of surpassing quality and value, each of which was artfully illuminated by indirect lighting or tightly focused overhead minispots. Over one fireplace was a tile panel of birds by William de Morgan, which had been done (Rachael said) for Czar Nicholas I. Here, a blazing Jackson Pollock canvas. There, a Roman torso carved from marble, dating to the first century B.C. The ancient was intermixed with the new in wildly unconventional but striking arrangements. Here, a nineteenth-century Kirman panel recording the lives of the greatest shahs of Persia. Here, a bold Mark Rothko canvas featuring only broad bands of color. There, a pair of Lalique crystal-deer consoles, each holding an exquisite Ming vase. The effect was both breathtaking and jarring-and altogether more like a museum than a real home.
    Although he had known Rachael was married to a wealthy man, and
although he had known that she had become a very wealthy widow as of
this morning, Ben had given no thought to what her wealth might mean
to their relationship. Now her new status impinged upon him like an
elbow in his side, making him uncomfortable. Rich. Rachael was
very damn rich. For the first time, that thought had meaning for
him.
    He realized he'd need to sit down and think about it at length, and he would need to talk with her forthrightly about the influence of so much