The Woman Next Door by Barbara Delinsky Page B

Didn’t see any ghosts.”
    They had a running joke about those woods, which began behind the Tannenwalds’ and stretched for acres through conservation land. The area wasn’t only lush with hemlock and fir, oak, maple, birch, and every imaginable kind of moss and fern. It was also rich in history, starting with gravestones so old that the markings on them were nearly indecipherable. That led Amanda and Graham to provide their own comical and often irreverent embellishments, for which they told each other that the ghosts of those good folks would be after them one day, hence the joke.
    There had been houses in those woods once, too, and the unknowing hiker could easily tumble into an old stone cellar hole. Worse, a foolhardy one might try to climb the only structure that remained erect, a tower built of the same rough fieldstone that formed low walls through the woods. It stood forty feet high. Each of its four sides tapered from a width of twelve feet at the bottom to five at the top. The stairs that had once filled the inside were gone, leaving a dark receptacle for wind-blown leaves in various stages of decomposition, though neither of those things discouraged climbers. The outside walls, slanting in, were rife with toeholds.
    The tower had as many stories woven around it—dead animals inside, dead people inside—as the gravestones had jokes, though none was based on fact. No one quite knew whether it had been built by Native Americans or by early settlers. Nor could anyone say for sure that it was haunted. All they knew was that those who managed to climb up couldn’t climb down. It happened again and again, and not only to children. Rescue teams had to bring in ladders to help adults down as often as not. Worse, for each climb made, for each rescue made, the stones grew more shaky. A recent minor earthquake had dislodged a few, making what remained more precarious than ever, but there was nothing to be done.
    Whenever the town manager suggested razing the tower, the citizenry inevitably made such an uproar that the issue was tabled. The general sentiment was that if there were ghosts, this was their rightful spot.
    Amanda gave the smallest smile now at Graham’s attempt at humor. “You took your chances walking through there at night.”
    “No more than you took walking into that school. Is it settled?”
    “Quinn’s punishment, yes. His problems, no. He has them, Gray. That wasn’t a happy kid I saw sitting there tonight. I told the parents I’d like to talk with him. I told them I’d even meet with him somewhere away from school. No one would know that we weren’t discussing a peer leadership issue.”
    “They refused?”
    “Totally.”
    “That’s frustrating for you.”
    “Yes.”
    He pulled her even closer with a sure arm around her back, and she felt herself falling in love all over again—in love with the largeness of him, the warmth, the way he smelled, the way he knew what she needed. In that single instant, there was no tension between them. There was nothing of the world to put them at odds.
    “You sound tired,” he said softly.
    “I am.”
    “Sometimes I think it’s me.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “That you don’t want to talk to me.”
    “Why do you say that?”
    “You could have called this afternoon. I was waiting.” His voice remained soft, but the words were pointed. “You’re not the only one with an investment in this, you know.”
    She angled away so that she could look up, bracing her hand onhis ribs now, but his features were dim. “Investment. That’s such an impersonal word.”
    Angling farther way, he met her gaze. “It’s become that. Something impersonal. A project. I never expected it to go on so long. We should have had a baby by now. I don’t understand why we don’t.”
    That quickly, they were back where they had been earlier. Now, though, she was more tired and more defensive. She had struck out with Quinn’s parents. She feared doing the same thing