Free Quiet as the Grave by Kathleen O`Brien

do have an irritating tendency to think you’re God’s gift. But kill somebody? No way. Kill your own child’s mother? Not in a bazillion, trillion years.”
    â€œDamn.” His half smile turned into a grin. “Why couldn’t you have been the D.A.?”
    She shrugged, but she felt herself smiling, too. “Couldn’t have handled law school. Problems with authority, you know.”
    â€œYeah,” he said. “I know.”
    Man, this was getting weird. A minute ago she’d wanted to punch him out, and now she had this stupid impulse to go over and hug him. She felt a disgustingly maternal urge—perhaps the first in her whole life—to help him hang on to that smile.
    But she forced herself to stay where she was. “Well,” she began. “That’s all I had to say, so I guess I should—”
    â€œSuzie.”
    She frowned, just on principle. “What?”
    â€œThanks for coming by to warn me. It was very—very sweet.”
    â€œWow.” She found herself smiling again, and she made a few adjustments to make sure it was a sarcastic smile. Behind her, she heard footsteps approaching. Gavin must be coming back. “You’ve used a lot of words to describe me through the years, but I don’t think you ever used that one.”
    Mike was still looking at her in that soft way that made her feel like squirming.
    â€œNo, I didn’t,” he said. “Just one of my many mistakes.”
    Â 
    S OMETIMES M IKE BELIEVED that if he hadn’t let Justine talk him into leaving Firefly Glen, everything would have been fine.
    There was magic here. The Sunday after Suzie’s visit and her disturbing news, he went home for Spencer Fairmont’s sixteenth birthday party. And as he watched his son playing touch football on the front lawn of Summer House, he felt his whole body relaxing.
    Though there were about two dozen Glenner children out there, Mike couldn’t take his eyes off Gavin. Look at that smile. He hadn’t smiled like that since his mother’s body had been discovered, almost a month ago.
    Magic wasn’t an exaggeration.
    And it wasn’t just the magic of “home.” Mike knew that, when faced with your first mortgage payment, your first endless, numbing workweek, or your first real personal crisis, it was easy to get all misty about the innocence of youth.
    But Firefly Glen was more than that, and he’d always sensed it, even as a child. Firefly Glen was special. Nestled in a small Adirondack valley, the town was ringed by wooded mountains and spangled with flowers, waterfalls, rivers and birds. It was peopled by gentle eccentrics who argued constantly, and yet stuck together with a loyalty that seemed to belong to another century…or a fairy tale.
    Many of those quirky townsfolk were Mike’s own kin. He was a fourth-generation Glenner, and his parents and grandparents still lived here. His cousin, Natalie Granville Quinn, had once owned Summer House, though the crazy old villa was now open to the public as a historic site—and rented out for parties, like this one.
    â€œCan you believe how grown-up he is?”
    Mike looked up and saw Natalie standing over him with a cup of punch in each hand. He wasn’t sure which kid she meant. Birthday boy Spencer had come to Firefly Glen as a scared little boy of six. And of course Gavin had left here, ten years ago, as an infant. Three of Natalie’s own four boys were out there, too—the fourth was still in diapers, too young to romp about with the big kids.
    Mike took the punch. Natalie gathered her full yellow skirt under her knees and sat down on the step beside him. “Aren’t you glad someone else is mowing this monstrosity now?”
    He glanced around at the smooth carpet of grass, which was glowing with gold highlights as the afternoon sun began to drop in the west. “You bet I am. Aren’t you glad someone else is in