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Remember When (In Death Series) by Nora Roberts, J. D. Robb
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(Mass Market Paperback - Reprint)
- Pub. Date: April 2004
- 512pp
- Sales Rank: 9,533
Reader Rating: (40 ratings)
Detailed Rating: "Originality" See All
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Product Details
- Pub. Date: April 2004
- Publisher: Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated
- Format: Mass Market Paperback, 512pp
- Sales Rank: 9,533
- Series: In Death Series
- ISBN-13: 9780425195475
- ISBN: 0425195473
- Edition Description: Reprint
Synopsis
Laine Tavish is an ordinary woman living an ordinary life in the small town of Angel's Gap, Maryland, as the proprietor of Remember When, an antique treasures and gift shop. At least, that's what everyone in Angel's Gap thinks. They have no idea that she used to be Elaine O'Hara, daughter of the notorious con man Big Jack O'Hara. Or that she grew up moving from place to place, one step ahead of the law...
Laine's past has just caught up with her, though - in a very dramatic way. Her long-lost uncle suddenly turned up in her shop, leaving only a cryptic warning before dying in the street, run down by a car. Soon afterward, her home is ransacked. Now it's up to Laine, and a sexy stranger named Max Gannon, to find out who's chasing her and why.
The answer lies in a hidden fortune - a fortune that will change not only Laine's life but also the lives of future generations. And danger and death will surround that fortune for years to come. Until New York City detective Lieutenant Eve Dallas gets on the case.
Publishers Weekly
A perfect marriage of sensuality and suspense, this sparkling new offering from Roberts (Birthright, etc.) and her alter ego, Robb (Imitation in Death, etc.) takes readers on a two-part journey-first to the quaint burg of Angel's Gap, Md., and then to New York City, 56 years in the future. A multimillion-dollar diamond heist connects the two halves and fuels the first story, which focuses on the romance between sexy PI Max Gannon, who's working for the company that insured the diamonds, and smalltown antiques dealer Laine Tavish, daughter of a notorious thief. Laine has worked hard to overcome her heritage, but when her father's best friend is killed outside her shop, she becomes the target of a ruthless killer who thinks she has her father's share of the take. Because the story skips ahead in time, Max and Laine have little time to explore their affection for each other, but Roberts still manages to make their whirlwind romance both believable and charming. A nerve-shattering encounter between Laine and the villain shows Laine to be as capable and crafty as Lt. Eve Dallas, who's the driving force behind the novel's second half. Set in the year 2059, the continuation finds Eve on the trail of a murderer who's after the diamonds that were never recovered from the decades-old heist. Though the identity of the criminal is apparent midway through, Eve's charismatic personality and colorful crew-including her former thief husband, Roarke, and her partner, Peabody-keep the energy level high. A true master of her craft, Roberts has penned an exceptional tale that burns with all the brilliance and fire of a finely cut diamond. (Sept. 15) Forecast: Putnam is supporting this book with a $3-million marketing campaign, which will give it plenty of muscle to fight for the #1 spot with big September releases from Mitch Albom and John Grisham. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
More Reviews and RecommendationsBiography
One of the most prolific and popular writers in the world, Nora Roberts (who also writes as her edgier alter-ego J. D. Robb) publishes multiple books a year. Not that it’s enough for her fans, who tear through her unconventional romances. With her trademark mix of fantasy, mystery, and romance, Roberts has created her own genre -- and romance fans are grateful for it!
More About the AuthorCustomer Reviews
- Reader Rating:
- Ratings: 40Reviews: 22
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Still Love Dallas Eve!by Anonymous
Reader Rating:
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February 10, 2009: Starts off a little slow but if you've read the In Death series then you know exactly what angle the book is taking. Overall good read!
Creativeby Anonymous
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September 17, 2008: I did like the way the two stories were put together. The first was by Nora Roberts in her usual style but the second story which is connected but in the future is Nora Roberts writing as JD Robb. The first JD Robb story I read and it wasn't bad but I prefer her as Nora Roberts.
Fact File
Name:
Nora Roberts
Also Known As:
J. D. Robb; Sarah Hardesty; Jill March; Eleanor Marie Robertson (birth name)
Current Home:
Keedysville, Maryland
Date of Birth:
1950
Place of Birth:
Silver Spring, Maryland
Awards:
Romance Writers of America Hall of Fame, 1986; Romantic Times Career Achievement Award, 1991; Romance Writers of America Centennial Award, 1997; Romance Writers of America Golden Medallion Award (seven times); Quill Award for Blue Smoke, 2006
Biography
Not only has Nora Roberts written more bestsellers than anyone else in the world (according to Publishers Weekly), she’s also created a hybrid genre of her own: the futuristic detective romance. And that’s on top of mastering every subgenre in the romance pie: the family saga, the historical, the suspense novel. But this most prolific and versatile of authors might never have tapped into her native talent if it hadn't been for one fateful snowstorm.
As her fans well know, in 1979 a blizzard trapped Roberts at home for a week with two bored little kids and a dwindling supply of chocolate. To maintain her sanity, Roberts started scribbling a story -- a romance novel like the Harlequin paperbacks she'd recently begun reading. The resulting manuscript was rejected by Harlequin, but that didn't matter to Roberts. She was hooked on writing. Several rejected manuscripts later, her first book was accepted for publication by Silhouette.
For several years, Roberts wrote category romances for Silhouette -- short books written to the publisher's specifications for length, subject matter and style, and marketed as part of a series of similar books. Roberts has said she never found the form restrictive. "If you write in category, you write knowing there's a framework, there are reader expectations," she explained. "If this doesn't suit you, you shouldn't write it. I don't believe for one moment you can write well what you wouldn't read for pleasure."
Roberts never violated the reader's expectations, but she did show a gift for bringing something fresh to the romance formula. Her first book, Irish Thoroughbred (1981), had as its heroine a strong-willed horse groom, in contrast to the fluttering young nurses and secretaries who populated most romances at the time. But Roberts's books didn't make significant waves until 1985, when she published Playing the Odds, which introduced the MacGregor clan. It was the first bestseller of many.
Roberts soon made a name for herself as a writer of spellbinding multigenerational sagas, creating families like the Scottish MacGregors, the Irish Donovans and the Ukrainian Stanislaskis. She also began working on romantic suspense novels, in which the love story unfolds beneath a looming threat of violence or disaster. She grew so prolific that she outstripped her publishers' ability to print and market Nora Roberts books, so she created an alter ego, J.D. Robb. Under the pseudonym, she began writing romantic detective novels set in the future. By then, millions of readers had discovered what Publishers Weekly called her "immeasurable diversity and talent."
Although the style and substance of her books has grown, Roberts remains loyal to the genre that launched her career. As she says, "The romance novel at its core celebrates that rush of emotions you have when you are falling in love, and it's a lovely thing to relive those feelings through a book."
Good to Know
Roberts still lives in the same Maryland house she occupied when she first started writing -- though her carpenter husband has built on some additions. She and her husband also own Turn the Page Bookstore Café in Boonsboro, Maryland. When Roberts isn't busy writing, she likes to drop by the store, which specializes in Civil War titles as well as autographed copies of her own books.
Roberts sued fellow writer Janet Dailey in 1997, accusing her of plagiarizing numerous passages of her work over a period of years. Dailey paid a settlement and publicly apologized, blaming stress and a psychological disorder for her misconduct.
Feature Interview
Excerpted from the March/April 2002 issue of Book magazine.One afternoon when Nora Roberts was four, her two oldest brothers broke into a violent argument while they were baby-sitting her. "I peeked out of the bedroom, and they're beating the hell out of each other," Roberts says. Then her mother walked in, with a grocery bag in each hand. "One bag goes here, one bag goes there, she steps right in the middle of these two six-foot guys and she goes, boom, bam. Two backhands. And both of them go, 'Maaaaaawwwmm.' I thought right then, There's the power. She's the power."
Elly, as her family still calls her, the youngest of five and the only girl, was a quick study. "She bossed her brothers around," says her mother, Eleanor; today, "her brothers have got her on a throne." Roberts reigns over more than her family, which now includes her husband and two sons. Since her writing debut in 1981, she has helped lead American romance away from its clichés of simpering heroines and heroic rapists toward more complex characters and contemporary, multifaceted plots. Of course, sex -- passionate, tender, delayed, avoided, forced, in castles, in fields, in treetops -- continues to be a central hook. And often, the prose remains purple; Roberts herself has a propensity for phrases like "she rocked them both toward madness." But the genre with which her name is synonymous is one -- the only one -- that always puts women at the center of the universe.
***
Two Mercedes -- a Kompressor convertible and an M-Class SUV -- and a Chrysler PT Cruiser are parked outside the rural Keedysville, Maryland, home Roberts shares with her husband. Inside, several gauzy photographs of nude models hang above the bed in the ground-floor master bedroom, and a rendition of the Casablanca movie poster -- with the couple painted in as Ilsa and Rick -- is prominent above the fireplace. Three ebullient dogs and one gnarled old mutt track in dirt and litter the house with deer bones that they've found outside.
Since moving here twenty-nine years ago, Roberts has divorced her first husband, raised their two sons (Dan, now twenty-nine, lives with his wife down the lane; Jason, twenty-six, is just over an hour away) and remarried. She has also added on a few rooms and an indoor pool; a few years ago, she bought twenty adjoining acres so she could continue to shoo deer out of the garden in her underwear without worrying about neighbors. She and her husband own a tiny bookshop in nearby Boonsboro, but Roberts spends most of her time in an upstairs office where she types, smokes and drinks diet colas eight hours a day, five days a week. It's a routine that's produced an average of seven books a year since 1981, many of them bestsellers.
Roberts knows that her work is commercial fiction and doesn't lose any sleep waiting for National Book Award nominations. The high-art literary tradition isn't what's gotten her to where she is; what has is her "real talent for storytelling," as author Jennifer Crusie (Fast Women; Welcome to Temptation) says, and a commensurate skill with plot and pacing. Readers are pulled into her story lines (which often bounce from one continent to the next) and her well-drawn characters. Fans especially admire Roberts' tough, independent heroines. "When they fit with your own circumstances," says Elizabeth Mayfield, a database administrator from Norwalk, Connecticut, "you think, Gee, there's hope for me." Roberts, however, contends that she's not writing to provide role models for anyone. "I'm gonna tell a good, entertaining story," she says. "I'm not looking to change the world."
Roberts was born Eleanor Marie Robertson, and she grew up in Silver Spring, Maryland, about an hour from where she lives now. Her father worked as a projectionist at the local movie theater and as a stagehand until 1964, when he started a lighting company -- which is where most of the Robertson family still works. Her mother ran the family. "Mom was a very strict disciplinarian," says Roberts' brother Buzz, who is now the president of his dad's company, "but as long as you followed the rules and were polite, you didn't have a problem." He says Nora had it a little easier than her brothers. "Us boys, we knew we were low men on the totem pole. Mom was tickled pink when she had Nora."
"Her daddy worked two jobs all his life, and during the Depression, I took in roomers," says Eleanor Robertson, who at eighty-five still lives in Silver Spring and is now secretary-treasurer of the company her husband started (Bernie Robertson died in 2000). "She knows how hard we worked to give them an education and a nice home." Roberts went to Catholic schools as a child and credits much of her success to the nuns who taught her -- the discipline and guilt in her formative years did her a lot of good.
In her sophomore year of high school, Roberts transferred to public school, where she met Ronald Aufdem-Brinke; she married him at seventeen, in 1968, right after graduation. The young couple moved to Keedysville and had a small house built in the woods. While Aufdem-Brinke worked at his father's sheet-metal business and later the Robertson lighting company, Roberts took care of their two children and the house. "Oh God, I had craft addictions," Roberts says, taking a drag on a cigarette. (She runs through a pack of Winstons at a pace that doesn't quite catch up to chain-smoking but runs several steps beyond casual.) "You name it, I made it. I macraméd two hammocks once. I did ceramics, I sewed the kids' clothes. I even put flies into overalls -- that is sick. I was a sick woman. I baked bread once a week. I canned jellies and made my own spaghetti sauce using my own tomatoes."
Sometime during the next decade (she calls the period her "Earth Mother" years), Roberts started to read Harlequin novels -- the short books were easy for her to finish while the kids were napping. During a blizzard in 1979, trapped inside with little more than her three- and six-year-old sons and a game of Candy Land, Roberts sat down with a pencil and wrote a manuscript of her own, a romance that she's since described as "very bad." In the next year and a half, while her kids were napping or at T-ball practice, she wrote at least six manuscripts in longhand. She submitted some of them to Harlequin, which at the time was using mainly British writers. Roberts didn't hear back, but her enthusiasm wasn't subdued. "I became a writing junkie," she says. Although she was rejected several times, she continued to write -- but started filing her manuscripts in a back drawer rather than submitting them.
Roberts then heard that a new romance publisher, Silhouette, was looking specifically for American writers, so she sent in her work. In 1980 she got a call from Nancy Jackson, a Silhouette editor, saying she had plucked one of Roberts' manuscripts -- Irish Thoroughbred, a slender love story about an Irish stable hand and her boss -- out of the slush pile. Jackson told Roberts she wanted to publish it. Eleanor Aufdem-Brinke changed her name to Nora Roberts because she says she assumed all romance authors used a nom de plume. The book "didn't make waves when it first came out," says Isabel Swift, her current editor, but it sold well in reprint. Roberts was hooked on the process, though, and published five more books the following year, eight the following and ten the year after that.
Roberts hit it big in 1985 when she wrote the first of her MacGregor family series, Playing the Odds. The book, which focuses on a matchmaking Scottish patriarch and his brood, became an immediate bestseller. Romance readers began associating the name Nora Roberts with multigenerational sagas: In addition to the MacGregors, she has written about the Donovans, a modern family of Irish magicians; the Calhouns, a family of pigheaded sisters in Maine; and the Stanislaskis, tempestuous Ukrainian immigrants.
***
From the beginning, Roberts' heroines were not content to wear aprons or take dictation. In Irish Thoroughbred, though Roberts' heroine was young (early twenties) and virginal (well, she was a virgin), she was a horse groomer with an independent streak. Roberts wasn't alone in giving her female characters more authority in the workforce; other American romance authors -- like Jayne Ann Krentz, Sandra Brown and Elizabeth Lowell -- were doing the same. "I think one of the great things the American writer has brought to the romance novel," Krentz says, "is a modern interpretation of women's roles and women's values." Author Janet Evanovich adds, "The genre reflects the increased power and opportunity afforded today's women. We see more variety in the genre in terms of heroine age and occupation. And today's heroine is stronger, more self-reliant. Of course, Nora was always ahead of the pack. Her heroines were always strong."
Rebecca Sullivan, a heroine in Roberts' latest romantic suspense, Three Fates, is a quintessential Nora Roberts lead: She runs the family business (giving boat tours off the western coast of Ireland) and engineers the search for the family's lost treasure. Rebecca's a smart, capable lady with a sense of humor. In the course of the story, she falls in love with a computer expert who eventually marries her -- the book ends in Ireland with the assumption that the husband will help her with the business. "I'm not interested in telling stories about weak women," Roberts says. "Or if they're weak, I want to show how they grow and how they become strong. I'm not writing about Cinderella sitting waiting for her prince to come and take her away. She'll get out of it herself. The prince is a bonus, a completion, another element -- but it's not the answer to all of her problems."
***
Perched on a stool next to her kitchen counter, Roberts doesn't look like a purveyor of dreams. She could be any of a million women, taking a break from a million jobs, looking toward the end of a million days. Right now, her husband is outside, working in the yard before heading to town. Later on, he'll pick up groceries, and Nora will cook dinner; favorites are pasta with red sauce or Cajun chicken. Around 7:30, the two will retire for the evening, probably settling down for a while in front of the television -- it's Thursday, so they'll probably tune in for some of Friends or ER. And that's a typical end to a typical day for the world's most popular romance author. "I always wonder if they asked Agatha Christie if she was homicidal," Roberts says with a laugh. "I don't have a romantic lifestyle."
Still, she says, it's romance books she turns to when she wants to escape reality, so maybe the queen of the realm is, finally, one of its true citizens as well. Roberts, after all, spends her days holed up in her office, writing, researching and investigating the backgrounds for her books. She loves it, she says, but it's work. And when she's done, she's done. "When I read for pleasure," she says, "give me a story."
If today's romance is escapism, millions of its readers would argue that it is also girl-power between pastel covers: adventures that belong to characters who are at their strongest -- and sexiest -- because they are women. So Roberts essentially shrugs off the contempt reserved for romance novels as sexist and ignorant. Still, she recognizes that the genre carries a lot of baggage -- even she finds herself sneaking reads when she's out in public. A lot of the embarrassment, she says, has to do with the way the books look. "It's mostly hard for me when she's falling out of her dress, and he has his mouth on her tit," Roberts says, describing what she calls "nursing mother" covers. She taps her lighter against the counter and rolls her eyes. "To sit on an airplane and read that?"
From Barnes & Noble
The Barnes & Noble Review
Nora Robert writes terrific contemporary romantic suspense, and her alter ego, J. D. Robb, crafts futuristic mysteries that are powerful and compelling. Now this double-barreled bestseller combines her worlds in one captivating story of crime, punishment, love, and glittering stolen gems. The action starts in 2003, when antique dealer Laine Tavish's past catches up to her. She hasn't seen her con-man father in years and has been out of the loop so long she doesn't even recognize his old friend, Willy, when he comes to her shop -- until it's too late. Willy dies without telling her where he's hidden his share of a multimillion-dollar diamond heist. It's hard for Laine to trust anyone, especially after her home and shop are invaded and her life is threatened. But growing up with a con man has some advantages: She's a great judge of character, and she knows how to lie when the stakes are high. Now, for the sake of justice, Laine pulls off her greatest con, recovers most of the loot -- and finds the love of a lifetime, to boot. Unfortunately, that happy ending leaves unfinished business -- business that turns deadly in 2059, when someone goes after Laine's granddaughter, Samantha Gannon, looking for a missing share of the stolen diamonds. Samantha grew up on her grandparents' romantic story -- the P.I. and the unwitting recipient of stolen property who turned the tables on a vicious criminal. She recently made that story into a bestselling book, only to discover that someone is willing to kill to write a new ending. Now neither Samantha nor New York City homicide detective Eve Dallas will settle for less than justice. So Eve sets her wealthy ex-thief husband, Roarke, to tracking the missing gems and taps her newly fledged detective partner, Peabody, to help her close this case of cold-blooded murder for the sake of stolen ice. Sue Stone
From the Publisher
Laine Tavish is an ordinary woman living an ordinary life in the small town of Angel's Gap, Maryland, as the proprietor of Remember When, an antique treasures and gift shop. At least, that's what everyone in Angel's Gap thinks. They have no idea that she used to be Elaine O'Hara, daughter of the notorious con man Big Jack O'Hara. Or that she grew up moving from place to place, one step ahead of the law...
Laine's past has just caught up with her, though - in a very dramatic way. Her long-lost uncle suddenly turned up in her shop, leaving only a cryptic warning before dying in the street, run down by a car. Soon afterward, her home is ransacked. Now it's up to Laine, and a sexy stranger named Max Gannon, to find out who's chasing her and why.
The answer lies in a hidden fortune - a fortune that will change not only Laine's life but also the lives of future generations. And danger and death will surround that fortune for years to come. Until New York City detective Lieutenant Eve Dallas gets on the case.
Publishers Weekly
A perfect marriage of sensuality and suspense, this sparkling new offering from Roberts (Birthright, etc.) and her alter ego, Robb (Imitation in Death, etc.) takes readers on a two-part journey-first to the quaint burg of Angel's Gap, Md., and then to New York City, 56 years in the future. A multimillion-dollar diamond heist connects the two halves and fuels the first story, which focuses on the romance between sexy PI Max Gannon, who's working for the company that insured the diamonds, and smalltown antiques dealer Laine Tavish, daughter of a notorious thief. Laine has worked hard to overcome her heritage, but when her father's best friend is killed outside her shop, she becomes the target of a ruthless killer who thinks she has her father's share of the take. Because the story skips ahead in time, Max and Laine have little time to explore their affection for each other, but Roberts still manages to make their whirlwind romance both believable and charming. A nerve-shattering encounter between Laine and the villain shows Laine to be as capable and crafty as Lt. Eve Dallas, who's the driving force behind the novel's second half. Set in the year 2059, the continuation finds Eve on the trail of a murderer who's after the diamonds that were never recovered from the decades-old heist. Though the identity of the criminal is apparent midway through, Eve's charismatic personality and colorful crew-including her former thief husband, Roarke, and her partner, Peabody-keep the energy level high. A true master of her craft, Roberts has penned an exceptional tale that burns with all the brilliance and fire of a finely cut diamond. (Sept. 15) Forecast: Putnam is supporting this book with a $3-million marketing campaign, which will give it plenty of muscle to fight for the #1 spot with big September releases from Mitch Albom and John Grisham. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
Roberts has outdone herself in this mystery duet of original characters in present time, and her futuristic cop heroine Eve Dallas delivering the coup de gr ce. Coupled with narrator Susan Ericksen's impressive flair for accents, the result is captivating and compelling. Laine Tavish thought her past was behind her until a family friend plops her squarely in the path of a multi-million dollar diamond heist. Max Gannon is the insurance investigator who thought he only wanted the diamonds back. Eve Dallas, on the other hand, speaks for the dead; called in as primary on a homicide, she doesn't take long to connect the victims to the 50-year-old robbery. Ericksen's vocal range highlights her talent; every character leaves a unique impression on the story. Max is a real Georgia peach, while Laine is all her own woman. Completely satisfying; it shouldn't be missed.-Jodi L. Israel, MLS, Jamaica Plain, MA Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
Written under her real name and her pseudonym, two books in one from megaselling Roberts/Robb. Book one: Laine Tavish, gorgeous redhead and owner of a small-town antique store, isn't about to tell the cops that she knew the old man who was hit by a car right outside her shop. Just before he took his dying breath, she recognized Willy Young, partner in crime to Big Jack O'Hara, her father. Their biggest heist: millions of dollars in hot diamonds. Her father went to prison, but not Willy, whose last words were "left it for you." What did he leave-and where? Enter Max Gannon, insurance investigator and all-around stud, with thick, wavy, run-your-fingers-through-it hair, tawny eyes that remind Laine of a tiger, and a delicious Georgia drawl. He beds Laine pronto, and they solve the case. But some of the diamonds are still missing. . . . Book two: it's 50 years later, and New York traffic is slower than ever: just try getting a helicab on a rainy day. But Samantha Gannon, author of a bestseller called Hot Rocks based on her grandparents' experiences in the long-ago case, eventually makes it home from the airport to find her house-sitter Andrea dead, throat cut. Another investigation begins, spearheaded by Eve Dallas, a tough-talking but very appealing New York cop married to Roarke, a rich, eccentric genius who just barely manages to stay on the right side of the law. Is the murderer after the rest of the diamonds? And is he or she related to the master thief who betrayed Samantha's great-grandfather? There are more burning questions, and Eve wants answers-but, first, get Central on the telelink and program the Autochef for pastrami on rye. A smoothly written contemporary caper paired with amurder mystery and a little meet-the-Jetsons futurism. No one does Suspense Lite better than Nora. Book-of-the-Month Club/Doubleday Book Club/Literary Guild/Mystery Guild/Rhapsody Book Club main selection
Loading...Product Details
- Pub. Date: April 2004
- Publisher: Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated
- Format: Mass Market Paperback, 512pp
- Sales Rank: 9,533
- Series: In Death Series
- ISBN-13: 9780425195475
- ISBN: 0425195473
- Edition Description: Reprint
Read an Excerpt
1.
A HEROIC BELCH OF THUNDER followed the strange little man into the shop. He glanced around apologetically, as if the rude noise were his responsibility rather than nature's, and fumbled a package under his arm so he could close a black-and-white-striped umbrella.
Both umbrella and man dripped, somewhat mournfully, onto the neat square of mat just inside the door while the cold spring rain battered the streets and sidewalks on the other side. He stood where he was, as if not entirely sure of his welcome.
Laine turned her head and sent him a smile that held only warmth and easy invitation. It was a look her friends would have called her polite shopkeeper's smile.
Well, damnit, she was a polite shopkeeper-and at the moment that label was being sorely tested.
If she'd known the rain would bring customers into the store instead of keeping them away, she wouldn't have given Jenny the day off. Not that she minded business. A woman didn't open a store if she didn't want customers, whatever the weather. And a woman didn't open one in Small Town, U.S.A., unless she understood she'd spend as much time chatting, listening and refereeing debates as she would ringing up sales.
And that was fine, Laine thought, that was good. But if Jenny had been at work instead of spending the day painting her toenails and watching soaps, Jenny would've been the one stuck with the Twins.
Darla Price Davis and Carla Price Gohen had their hair tinted the same ashy shade of blond. They wore identical slick blue raincoats and carried matching hobo bags. They finished each other's sentences and communicated in a kind of code that included a lot of twitching eyebrows, pursed lips,lifted shoulders and head bobs.
What might've been cute in eight-year-olds was just plain weird in forty-eight-year-old women.
Still, Laine reminded herself, they never came into Remember When without dropping a bundle. It might take them hours to drop it, but eventually the sales would ring. There was little that lifted Laine's heart as high as the ring of the cash register.
Today they were on the hunt for an engagement present for their niece, and the driving rain and booming thunder hadn't stopped them. Nor had it deterred the drenched young couple who-they'd said-had detoured into Angel's Gap on a whim on their way to D.C.
Or the wet little man with the striped umbrella who looked, to Laine's eye, a bit frantic and lost.
So she added a little more warmth to her smile. "I'll be with you in just a few minutes," she called out, and turned her attention back to the Twins.
"Why don't you look around a little more," Laine suggested. "Think it over. As soon as I-"
Darla's hand clamped on her wrist, and Laine knew she wasn't going to escape.
"We need to decide. Carrie's just about your age, sweetie. What would you want for your engagement gift?"
Laine didn't need to transcribe the code to understand it was a not-so-subtle dig. She was, after all, twenty-eight, and not married. Not engaged. Not, at the moment, even dating particularly. This, according to the Price twins, was a crime against nature.
"You know," Carla piped up, "Carrie met her Paul at Kawanian's spaghetti supper last fall. You really should socialize more, Laine."
"I really should," she agreed with a winning smile. If I want to hook up with a balding, divorced CPA with a sinus condition. "I know Carrie's going to love whatever you choose. But maybe an engagement gift from her aunts should be something more personal than the candlesticks. They're lovely, but the dresser set's so feminine." She picked up the silver-backed brush from the set they were considering. "I imagine another bride used this on her wedding night."
"More personal," Darla began. "More-"
"Girlie. Yes! We could get the candlesticks for-"
"A wedding gift. But maybe we should look at the jewelry before we buy the dresser set. Something with pearls? Something-"
"Old she could wear on her wedding day. Put the candlesticks and the dresser set aside, honey. We'll take a look at the jewelry before we decide anything."
The conversation bounced like a tennis ball served and volleyed out of two identical coral-slicked mouths. Laine congratulated herself on her skill and focus as she was able to keep up with who said what.
"Good idea." Laine lifted the gorgeous old Dresden candlesticks. No one could say the Twins didn't have taste, or were shy of heating up their plastic.
She started to carry them to the counter when the little man crossed her path.
She was eye to eye with him, and his were a pale, washed-out blue reddened by lack of sleep or alcohol or allergies. Laine decided on lost sleep as they were also dogged by heavy bags of fatigue. His hair was a grizzled mop gone mad with the rain. He wore a pricey Burberry topcoat and carried a three-dollar umbrella. She assumed he'd shaved hurriedly that morning as he'd missed a patch of stubbly gray along his jaw.
"Laine."
He said her name with a kind of urgency and intimacy that had her smile turning to polite confusion.
"Yes? I'm sorry, do I know you?"
"You don't remember me." His body seemed to droop. "It's been a long time, but I thought..."
"Miss!" the woman on her way to D.C. called out. "Do you ship?"
"Yes, we do." She could hear the Twins going through one of their shorthand debates over earrings and brooches, and sensed an impulse buy from the D.C. couple. And the little man stared at her with a hopeful intimacy that had her skin chilling.
"I'm sorry, I'm a little swamped this morning." She sidestepped to the counter to set down the candlesticks. Intimacy, she reminded herself, was part of the rhythm of small towns. The man had probably been in before, and she just couldn't place him. "Is there something specific I can help you with, or would you like to browse awhile?"
"I need your help. There isn't much time." He drew out a card, pressed it into her hand. "Call me at that number, as soon as you can."
"Mr...." She glanced down at the card, read his name. "Peterson, I don't understand. Are you looking to sell something?"
"No. No." His laugh bounced toward hysterical and had Laine grateful for the customers crowded into the store. "Not anymore. I'll explain everything, but not now." He looked around the shop. "Not here. I shouldn't have come here. Call the number."
He clamped a hand over hers in a way that had Laine fighting an instinct to jerk free. "Promise."
He smelled of rain and soap and...Brut, she realized. And the aftershave had some flicker of memory trying to light in her brain. Then his fingers tightened on hers. "Promise," he repeated in a harsh whisper, and she saw only an odd man in a wet coat.
"Of course."
She watched him go to the door, open the cheap umbrella. And let out a sigh of relief when he scurried out into the rain. Weird was her only thought, but she studied the card for a moment.
His name was printed, Jasper R. Peterson, but the phone number was handwritten beneath and underscored twice, she noted.
Pushing the card into her pocket, she started over to give the traveling couple a friendly nudge, when the sound of screeching brakes on wet pavement and shocked screams had her spinning around. There was a hideous noise, a hollow thud she'd never forget. Just as she'd never forget the sight of the strange little man in his fashionable coat slamming against her display window.
She bolted out the door, into the streaming rain. Footsteps pounded on the pavement, and somewhere close was the crunching sound of metal striking metal, glass shattering.
"Mr. Peterson." Laine gripped his hand, bowed her body over his in a pathetic attempt to shield his bloodied face from the rain. "Don't move. Call an ambulance!" she shouted and yanked off her jacket to cover him as best she could.
"Saw him. Saw him. Shouldn't have come. Laine."
"Help's coming."
"Left it for you. He wanted me to get it to you."
"It's all right." She scooped her dripping hair out of her eyes and took the umbrella someone offered. She angled it over him, leaned down closer as he tugged weakly on her hand.
"Be careful. I'm sorry. Be careful."
"I will. Of course I will. Just try to be quiet now, try to hold on, Mr. Peterson. Help's coming."
"You don't remember." Blood trickled out of his mouth as he smiled. "Little Lainie." He took a shuddering breath, coughed up blood. She heard the sirens as he began to sing in a thin, gasping voice.
"Pack up all my care and woe," he crooned, then wheezed. "Bye, bye, blackbird."
She stared at his battered face as her already chilled skin began to prickle. Memories, so long locked away, opened. "Uncle Willy? Oh my God."
"Used to like that one. Screwed up," he said breathlessly. "Sorry. Thought it'd be safe. Shouldn't've come."
"I don't understand." Tears burned her throat, streamed down her cheeks. He was dying. He was dying because she hadn't known him, and she'd sent him out into the rain. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
"He knows where you are now." His eyes rolled back. "Hide the pooch."
"What?" She leaned closer yet until her lips almost brushed his. "What?" But the hand she had clutched in hers went limp.
Paramedics brushed her aside. She heard their short, pithy dialogue-medical codes she'd grown accustomed to hearing on television, could almost recite herself. But this was real. The blood washing away in the rain was real.
She heard a woman sobbing and saying over and over in a strident voice, "He ran right in front of me. I couldn't stop in time. He just ran in front of the car. Is he all right? Is he all right? Is he all right?"
No, Laine wanted to say. He's not.
"Come inside, honey." Darla put an arm around Laine's shoulders, drew her back. "You're soaked. You can't do anything more out here."
"I should do something." She stared down at the broken umbrella, its cheerful stripes marked with grime now, and drops of blood.
She should have settled him down in front of the fire. Given him a hot drink and let him warm and dry himself in front of the little hearth. Then he'd be alive. Telling her stories and silly jokes.
But she hadn't recognized him, and so he was dying.
She couldn't go in, out of the rain, and leave him alone with strangers. But there was nothing to be done but watch, helplessly, while the paramedics fought and failed to save the man who'd once laughed at her knock-knock jokes and sung silly songs. He died in front of the shop she'd worked so hard to build, and laid at her door all the memories she thought she'd escaped.
--from Remember When by Nora Roberts and J.D. Robb, copyright © 2003 Nora Roberts, published by G. P. Putnam's Sons, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., all rights reserved, reprinted with permission from the publisher.
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