Patterns in the Sand by Sally Goldenbaum Page A

awful mess. He probably didn’t have much.”
     
     
“Actually, he had plenty,” Ben said.
     
     
Willow’s expression didn’t change. She leveled a look at Ben and said, “Oh?”
     
     
“And he left it all to you, Willow. Every last penny.”
     
     
Willow’s mouth fell open but no words came out. The only sound was the coffee cup that slipped from her fingers and shattered across the hardwood kitchen floor. Nell, standing near the island, was the closest to Willow. She reached out instinctively and, in one swift movement, was able to cushion her fall as Willow’s body slid down the side of the island and onto the floor in a silent, graceful faint.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter 12

 
N ell’s first thought was to call the Endicott family physician, Doc Hamilton.
     
     
But in the next minute, Ben scooped Willow’s limp body from the floor without a puff of exertion and settled her on the couch in his den. Almost immediately her eyelids began to flutter, then pulled open to look blankly into the four faces staring down at her.
     
     
And then her eyes closed again, by design this time, Nell could see. She was blocking them all out briefly—a temptation Nell could completely understand.
     
     
“Willow, honey, I’m leaving a glass of water on the table,” she whispered. “And we’re in the next room if you need us.”
     
     
A slight nod indicated consciousness, and the group moved into the kitchen.
     
     
Minutes later Chief Jerry Thompson showed up in a police car, but without the circling lights that brought neighbors onto their porches.
     
     
“He did it as a favor to us,” Ben told Nell a short while later.
     
     
Izzy had left before the chief arrived, sprinting the few short blocks to her own home to shower and dress for work, and Birdie had climbed onto her bike and headed to the retirement home where she taught tap dancing on Thursdays. In the den, Chief Jerry Thompson sat with Willow behind closed doors.
     
     
“A favor, Ben?” Nell frowned. After fainting the way she had, Willow needed some orange juice, a spinach omelet, and some toast with jam, not the chief of police.
     
     
“He could have sent Tommy Porter or some other rookie to ask her to come to the station to talk. But he didn’t.”
     
     
“But why does he need to talk to her at all? Being in someone’s will is not a murderous offense.”
     
     
But Nell wasn’t asking a real question, and after more than a quarter century of being married, Ben knew that, too, and held his silence. She was protesting a situation she found awful, whether valid or not—that was all.
     
     
Willow was clearly surprised to be Aidan’s heir. Nell was surprised—they all were. In fact, it made no sense, and Nell would have preferred being the one to talk with Willow first about why a stranger would leave her all his earthly belongings, not the chief of the Sea Harbor police, as nice a man as Jerry Thompson was.
     
     
Ben said he’d handle the situation in the den and show the chief out when he was finished, and Nell gratefully escaped upstairs to finally take her morning shower. The clean spray refreshed her body and her spirit, and after rubbing her hair briskly, she felt far more ready to face the day. She glanced in the bedroom mirror and pushed her shoulder-length hair into some sort of order. Gray flecks melted into the warm honey brown waves like cinnamon and powdered sugar. Every once in a while Nell considered asking Mary Jane at the salon to put some college brown—as her friends called it—into her hair. But she never quite went though with it, deciding she was more comfortable letting come what might. Ben liked it—and they matched better, he said, his own flecked sideburns warmed with white highlights. But most likely it was avoiding the fuss of having to do one more maintenance task as she aged. And Nell liked keeping those at a minimum.
     
     
She pulled on a slim pair of tan cropped pants and a cornflower blue cotton sweater that Izzy had