Read Online Sanctuary by Nora Roberts - Free Book Online Page B

September.”
    â€œRachel Sanders.” Jo tried to conjure up a mental image. “Was she the one with the lisp or the one with the giggle?”
    â€œThe giggle—sharp enough to make the ears bleed.” Satisfied that Jo was eating, Brian stretched an arm over the back of the glider and relaxed. “Old Mrs. Fitzsimmons passed on more than a year back.”
    â€œOld Mrs. Fitzsimmons,” Jo murmured. “She used to shuck oysters on her porch, with that lazy hound of hers sleeping at her feet beside the rocker.”
    â€œThe hound passed, too, right after. Guess he didn’t see much point in living without her.”
    â€œShe let me take pictures of her,” Jo remembered. “When I was a kid, just learning. I still have them. A couple weren’t bad. Mr. David helped me develop them. I must have been such a pest, but she just sat there in her rocker and let me practice on her.”
    Sitting back, Jo fell into the rhythm of the glider, as slow and monotonous as the rhythm of the island. “I hope it was quick and painless.”
    â€œShe died in her sleep at the ripe old age of ninety-six. Can’t do much better than that.”
    â€œNo.” Jo closed her eyes, the food forgotten. “What was done with her cottage?”
    â€œPassed down. The Pendletons bought most of the Fitzsimmons land back in 1923, but she owned her house and the little spit of land it sits on. Went to her granddaughter.” Brian lifted the thermos again, drank deeply this time. “A doctor. She’s set up a practice here on the island.”
    â€œWe have a doctor on Desire?” Jo opened her eyes, lifted her brows. “Well, well. How civilized. Are people actually going to her?”
    â€œSeems they are, little by little, anyway. She’s dug her toes in.”
    â€œShe must be the first new permanent resident here in what, ten years?”
    â€œThereabouts.”
    â€œI can’t imagine why ...” Jo trailed off as it struck her. “It’s not Kirby, is it? Kirby Fitzsimmons? She spent summers here a couple of years running when we were kids.”
    â€œI guess she liked it well enough to come back.”
    â€œI’ll be damned. Kirby Fitzsimmons, and a doctor, of all things.” Pleasure bloomed, a surprising sensation she nearly didn’t recognize. “We used to pal around together some. I remember the summer Mr. David came to take photographs of the island and brought his family.”
    It cheered her to think of it, the young friend with the quick northern voice, the adventures they’d shared or imagined together. “You would run off with his boys and wouldn’t give me the time of day,” Jo continued. “When I wasn’t pestering Mr. David to let me take pictures with his camera, I’d go off with Kirby and look for trouble. Christ, that was twenty years ago if it was a day. It was the summer that . . .”
    Brian nodded, then finished the thought. “The summer that Mama left.”
    â€œIt’s all out of focus,” Jo murmured, and the pleasure died out of her voice. “Hot sun, long days, steamy nights so full of sound. All the faces.” She slipped her fingers under her glasses to rub at her eyes. “Getting up at sunrise so I could follow Mr. David around. Bolting down cold ham sandwiches and cooling off in the river. Mama dug out that old camera for me—that ancient box Brownie—and I would run over to the Fitzsimmons cottage and take pictures until Mrs. Fitzsimmons told Kirby and me to scoot. There were hours and hours, so many hours, until the sun went down and Mama called us home for supper.”
    She closed her eyes tight. “So much, so many images, yet I can’t bring any one of them really clear. Then she was gone. One morning I woke up ready to do all the things a long summer day called for, and she was just gone. And there was nothing to do at