Freefall
divorced each other five times before their BMW roadster had gone over that seaside cliff in Monaco. Afterward, witnesses at a Monte Carlo cafe had reported that they were shouting at each other as they drove away.
    As tragic as their death had been, Sabrina had often thought her jet-setting mother would have at least enjoyed the idea of dying in the exact same place where Princess Grace had lost her life.
    A single yellow light gleamed a warm welcome from an upstairs window.
    Lucie's former housekeeper, who'd been with her since Lucie came to the house as a bride, had moved to Savannah to live with her daughter, but when Sabrina had called Lincoln Davis, who had taken over the day-to-day operation of the farm from his father, to let him know she was arriving early, he'd told her he would leave the lights on.
    She hadn't realized he meant that literally.
    The old carriage house had been turned into a garage in the nineteen thirties; the doors opened with a rusty, unused squeak. Sabrina parked her rental car next to her grandmother's battleship-sized, purple-finned Cadillac.
    She would have to sell the car. Which, unless all those Elvis-conspiracy folks were right and the King turned out to be not only alive but hiding out on Swann Island, probably wasn't going to be all that easy.
    One good thing about having her life blown up from beneath her was that she was traveling light. Even after she bought a few basic pieces of clothing and some cosmetics, everything she owned fit into two overnight cases.
    Although she suspected the bouquet of perky purple heliotrope in a white teapot in the center of the kitchen table was another of Line's welcome-home gestures, the familiar summer flowers made it seem as if Lucie would come walking into the room at any minute.
    Not that her grandmother had ever merely walked anywhere. She always swept through life, like those cruise ships that were always steaming out of Somersett Harbor on their way to grand adventures.
    Sabrina's eyes filled.
    "Dammit, Gram. This wasn't the way things were supposed to happen."
    Sabrina would be the first to admit that she was a control freak. Lucie, who had tried to loosen her up during her visits to the island, said that it was an understandable reaction to growing up with a father whose picture would no doubt be in the dictionary next to "Peter Pan" and a mother too wrapped up in her art gallery to even notice that she'd given birth to a daughter.
    With Sabrina's parents traveling the world, Lucie had been the only real family she had ever known. And now, proving yet again that control was merely an illusion, her grandmother, like her parents, was gone.
    Swiping at hot tears, Sabrina managed to put the yogurt and milk in the refrigerator before the jet lag that had been chasing her since she'd boarded her flight in Milan finally caught up, crashing down like a four-hundred-year-old oak.
    She left the bag of coffee on a counter cluttered with a collection of antique teapots and dragged herself—and her overnight case—up the curving staircase and down the hall.
    She paused in front of her grandmother's room—which was where the welcoming light had been coming from. It looked just the same—as if a crate of grapes had exploded in a overcluttered antique shop.
    Everything, from the walls sprigged with lilacs to the fluffy violet satin comforter, matching drapes, and array of crystal perfume bottles in various shades of purple from palest lavender to plum, was just as she'd last seen it. The scent of lavender potpourri caused another flood of emotions as a mental picture of sitting out on the veranda with Lucie, stuffing dried purple flowers into pillows, flashed through Sabrina's mind.
    She realized that along with selling the Caddy that the locals had always called Miss Lucie's Grapemobile, she was also going to have to do something with the rest of her grandmother's belongings.
    However, like Scarlett, Lucie's all-time favorite heroine, Sabrina decided she

Similar Books

Promises in Death

J. D. Robb

STOLEN

Jordan Silver

Potsdam Station

David Downing

The Dark Root

Archer Mayor

Never a Hero to Me

Tracy Black

Web of Deceit

Peggy Slocum