“People’re funny.” He straightened, grunting a little with the effort. “Of course, it’s just a theory. Another is that Morgan’s mistress took the money and ran.”

“His mistress?” Maggie repeated blankly.

“Alice Delaney,” Reiker said easily. “She’d been having an affair with Morgan for five or six years. Funny how people’ll talk once you get them started.”

“Delaney?” Maggie said it quietly, hoping she’d heard incorrectly.

“That’s right. As a matter of fact, it’s her son who’s been doing your landscaping. Coincidences,” he repeated. “This business is full of them.”

Somehow she managed to remain composed as they walked back downstairs. She spoke politely when he told her again how much he admired her music. Maybe she even smiled when she closed the door on him. When she was alone, Maggie felt her blood turn to ice, then drain.

Cliff’s mother had been Morgan’s mistress for years; then she’d disappeared, right after his death? Cliff would’ve known. Everyone would’ve known, she thought, and covered her face with both hands. What had she fallen into, and how would she ever get out again?

Maybe he was going crazy, but Cliff was beginning to think of the long, winding drive up the hill as going home.

He’d never have believed he could consider the old Morgan place as home. Not with the way he’d always felt about William Morgan. Nor would he have believed the woman who lived there could make him think that way. It seemed a great deal was happening that he could neither stop nor harness. Yet staying with Maggie had been his own choice, just as leaving again would be—when he was ready. From time to time he found he needed to remind himself that he could and would leave again.

Yet when she laughed, the house was so warm. When she was angry, it was so full of energy. When she sang—when she worked in the music room in the evening, Cliff thought. When the woods were quiet, before the moon had risen, she’d play. She’d sing snatches of words, sentences, phrases, as she composed. Long before she’d finished, he’d find himself in a frenzy of need. He wondered how she worked hour after hour, day after day, with such passion and feeling driving her.

It was the discipline, Cliff decided. He’d never expected her to be so disciplined about her music. The talent he’d admired all along, but in the few days he’d lived with her, he’d learned that she drove herself hard in the hours she worked.