After Caroline Read Online Free PDF

spacious and comfortable. Despite its quaint name, The Inn was a full-service hotel complete with twenty-four-hour room service and cable television, according to the friendly bellman, and if there was anything she required to make her more comfortable, anything at all, she had only to ask.
    As soon as he left, Joanna began settling in. She unpacked and put away all her things, turning on the television to CNN for background noise while she briskly worked. When that was done, she went to the French doors in her bedroom that opened out onto a little balcony, and stepped out to contemplate her ocean view.
    Down on the right was the tile roof that partially shaded the veranda; down and straight ahead were a couple of acres of green lawn, then the rocky cliff tops and, beyond them, the ocean. There was a beach at the base of the cliffs except at high tide, the bellman had told her, but it wasnarrow, the path down to it somewhat difficult, and few guests ventured down there more than once.
    Joanna turned her head to the left, her gaze following the cliff tops south. She froze, hardly breathing, and for a long moment just stood there staring. Then she eased back into her room as if careful movement was required to keep something dreadful from happening. She went into the sitting room and sat down at the little desk where she had placed the notebook.
    She had never kept a journal before, but it had occurred to her that it might be a good idea here. To organize her thoughts. To keep things clear. Drawing a breath, she opened the notebook carefully and smoothed the page. She used the pen thoughtfully provided by The Inn and dated the top of the page. She didn’t really think about what she wanted to say, she just began writing.
    Today I arrived in Cliffside. Here at The Inn my bedroom has a little balcony overlooking the ocean. And from that balcony, just exactly as it was in my dreams, I can see the house
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    Even from a distance, it was an impressive house.
    Joanna sat on a smooth-topped boulder atop the cliffs about halfway between The Inn and the house from her dreams, and stared at it. It was still nearly a mile away by her judgment, and from this angle the trees between it and Cliffside’s main road hid part of the beautiful landscaping she had seen from her bedroom balcony, but it was still beautiful.
    Vaguely Victorian in style just as The Inn was, it had a roof with many peaks, countless windows sparkling in the sunlight, and a wide, ocean-side porch with, no doubt, a spectacular view. From where Joanna sat, the house should have looked bleak; it seemed almost to perch on a rocky promontory, standing in lonely isolation, with frothy ocean waves crashing against the base of the cliffs far below. Yet it didn’t look bleak so much as … dignified.
    Still, Joanna’s feelings about the house were distorted, shaped by the dream that had tormented her for so many weeks. It seemed to her dark and menacing. It made her wary, almost afraid.
    Joanna drew her knees up and wrapped her arms loosely around them, listening to the thunder of high tide battering the cliffs and feeling the cool ocean breeze. The sun was setting over the ocean, making the windows of the distant house glow reddish, and Joanna felt a faint chill that had nothing to do with the falling temperature.
    Caroline’s house. She didn’t know how she knew she was looking at the house where Caroline had lived, but she was positive of that fact. And there, presumably, lived Caroline’s husband and daughter.
    In the three months since her death, they had no doubt begun to cope with her loss, but Joanna knew her own appearance was bound to cause some … distress. Even the bellman and desk clerk at The Inn had been startled by her, and as for Holly Drummond, the attractive brunette had looked as though her knees had nearly buckled in shock.
    Joanna hadn’t thought very much about her impulsive decision to come here during all the busy days of preparation, but as she