Tempting Fate Read Online Free PDF Page B

moment, then continued in a strong, controlled voice. “Before Joe died, he sent me a letter. I’ve never shown it to you—to anyone. It didn’t say much. I can’t tell you he knew he was going to die, I can’t say there was any sign he was going to do any of the things people said he did.” She paused, the moistness—the tears—filling her eyes. “He enclosed a picture. I should have shown it to you before now, Zeke, but I never have.”
    With a trembling hand she opened the frayed Bible on the marble end table beside the Andrew Jackson sofa and withdrew a color snapshot. She was breathing rapidly, and Zeke was afraid she might faint. He leaned forward, taking the snapshot from her so she wouldn’t have to move.
    It was one he’d never seen before, but he immediately recognized the place, the time, the two women.
    Saratoga Springs, New York.
    Twenty-five years ago.
    Mattie Witt and her daughter-in-law, Lilli Chandler Pembroke.
    Joe had taken their picture. They were in the basket of Mattie’s hot-air balloon, just as it had started to float onto the evening winds. It had been Lilli’s first time up. In her expression, frozen for all time, was that mix of fear and excitement Zeke remembered as she’d watched the huge balloon inflate. She’d wanted to go and didn’t want to go. Joe had offered to serve as their chase team. But Mattie had told him no. She and Lilli would just ride the winds for a while and see what happened, and find their own way home.
    Looking at Lilli’s fearful, exuberant smile, her tawny hair caught in the wind, Zeke saw how young she’d been, and how unsure of herself. For Lilli Chandler Pembroke, going up in a balloon with her eccentric mother-in-law instead of playing the good little heiress at the Chandler lawn party had been a monumental act of rebellion. Mattie Witt stood beside her in the gondola, looking as tiny and independent and heart-stoppingly beautiful as Zeke remembered.
    After her balloon ride, Mattie had told Joe that she couldn’t go back to see her father before he died or the sister she’d left behind decades years earlier.
    An hour later, he and Zeke were on the road back to Tennessee.
    â€œI don’t understand it,” Joe had said as he and Zeke headed home in defeat. “I’d go through hell and back for you, and she won’t even go home to see her only sister and dying daddy. I know he’s not an easy man, but he’s her father. I just don’t get it.”
    That was Joe Cutler. He hadn’t understood why people couldn’t get along. All they had to do was put their minds to it and it’d happen.
    And he did go through hell for Zeke. He just hadn’t come back.
    Zeke saw the gold key hanging from Lilli’s alabaster throat, remembered it. Even for a wealthy Chandler, it had seemed exotic and extravagant. Yet Joe had given it to her.
    He made himself look up from the picture. “It doesn’t have to be the same key.”
    â€œBut it could be,” Naomi said.
    And if it was, the next question would be how it ended up on the Pembroke estate for Lilli’s daughter to find all these years later. If it had anything to do with Lilli’s disappearance. If Joe was involved, had known something—if he’d done something.
    â€œI have to know the truth, Zeke.”
    He remained silent and still, hot liquid pain coursing through him. He had to repress his physical reaction and concentrate on the situation at hand. He had to be the cool, distanced professional. He had to ask himself the tough questions. Not just about his brother, but about Naomi herself. She was a woman he’d known and trusted all his life, but he forced himself to ask if the years of loneliness and abuse had finally driven her over the edge and he was being sucked along with her, just by being back in Cedar Springs, back under Jackson Witt’s roof.
    But there were never