Free Moonlight Becomes You by Mary Higgins Clark Page B

days.” She hesitated, then added, “Even loving you as much as I do, I can’t get away from the fact that you’re married to someone else.”
    â€œYou’ve seen me with Janice. You know our relationship.”
    â€œBut she’s still your wife. It’s better this way, believe me. I’m going to visit my daughter in Vail for a couple of months. Then, when I come back, I’ll find a different job.”
    â€œBarbara, you can’t just walk out like this,” he pleaded, suddenly panicked.
    She smiled sadly. “Not this minute. I wouldn’t do that. I’m giving you a week’s notice.”
    â€œBy that time, Janice and I will be separated, I promise you. Please stay! I can’t let you go.”
    Not after all I’ve done to keep you! he thought desperately.

19
    A FTER M AGGIE PICKED UP G RETA S HIPLEY, THEY MADE A stop at the florist’s to buy flowers. As they were driving to the cemetery, Greta reminisced to Maggie about her friendship with Nuala.
    â€œHer parents rented a cottage here for several years when we both were about sixteen. She was such a pretty girl, and so much fun. She and I were inseparable during that time, and she had many admirers. Why, Tim Moore was always hanging around her. Then her father was transferred to London, and she moved there and went to school there, as well. Later, I heard she was married. Eventually we just lost track of each other, something I always regretted.”
    Maggie steered the car through the quiet streets that led to St. Mary’s cemetery in Newport. “How did you happen to get together again?” she asked.
    â€œIt was just twenty-one years ago. My phone rang one day. Someone asked to speak to the former Greta Carlyle. I knew the voice was familiar but for the moment couldn’t place it. I responded that I was Greta Carlyle Shipley, and Nuala whooped, ‘Good for you, Gret. You landed Carter Shipley!’ ”
    It seemed to Maggie that she was hearing Nuala’s voice coming from everyone’s lips. She heard it when Mrs. Woods talked about the will, when Doctor Lane reminisced about her feeling of being twenty-two, and now in Mrs. Shipley’smemories about the same kind of warm reunion Maggie herself had experienced less than two weeks ago.
    Despite the warmth in the car, Maggie shivered. Thoughts of Nuala always came back to the same question: Was the kitchen door unlocked, allowing an intruder to come in, or did Nuala unlock the door herself to let someone she knew—someone she trusted—enter her home?
    Sanctuary, Maggie thought. Our homes ought to offer us sanctuary. Had Nuala pleaded for her life? How long did she feel the blows that rained on her head? Chief Brower had said that he thought whoever had killed Nuala had been looking for something, and, from the look of things, might not have found it.
    â€œ. . . and so we picked up immediately where we left off, went right back to being best friends,” Greta continued. “Nuala told me she’d been widowed young and then remarried, and that the second marriage had been a terrible mistake, except for you. She was so soured on marriage that she said hell would freeze over before she’d try it again, but by then Tim was a widower, and they started going out. One morning she phoned and said, ‘Gret, want to go ice-skating? Hell just froze over.’ She and Tim were engaged. I don’t think I ever saw her happier.”
    They arrived at the gate of the cemetery. A carved limestone angel with outstretched arms greeted them.
    â€œThe grave is to the left and up the hill,” Mrs. Shipley said, “but of course you know that. You were here yesterday.”
    Yesterday, Maggie thought. Had it really been only yesterday?
    They parked at the top of the hill, and with Maggie’s hand tucked firmly under Greta Shipley’s arm, they walked along the path that led to Nuala’s grave.