Chapters (73)
- Cover
- Dedication
- Prologue
- Part IAnnie
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Part IIHarry
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Part IIIAnnie
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Part IVHarry
- Thirty-Three
- Thirty-Four
- Thirty-Five
- Thirty-Six
- Thirty-Seven
- Thirty-Eight
- Thirty-Nine
- Forty
- Forty-One
- Forty-Two
- Forty-Three
- Forty-Four
- Forty-Five
- Forty-Six
- Forty-Seven
- Forty-Eight
- Part VAnnie
- Forty-Nine
- Fifty
- Fifty-One
- Fifty-Two
- Fifty-Three
- Fifty-Four
- Fifty-Five
- Fifty-Six
- Fifty-Seven
- Fifty-Eight
- Fifty-Nine
- Sixty
- Sixty-One
- Acknowledgments
- About the Author
- Also by Linwood Barclay
- About the Publisher
Getting away from it all, spending the summer in the country, was not the panacea she had hoped it would be. She could have them packed up in an hour. She’d feel bad, given all the work Finnegan had gone to. Annie would say Charlie missed his friend, that living up here had felt too isolating.
She heard the front door open, and Charlie walked out onto the porch.
“Hey, sweetie,” Annie said. “I’ve been thinking, we had so much fun today, going to the airport, picking strawberries, that I thought we’d head out again tomorrow in a totally different direction. See what we might find. Or, and just hear me out here, we could go back to the city. If you feel like we’re running out of stuff to do here, we could to that, too. What do you think?”
Charlie showed no reaction to the proposal. In fact, he had looked annoyed from the moment he’d walked into the room.
“I don’t want you playing with my stuff,” he said. “I like it the way it is.”
“What are you talking about, Charlie?”
“I like the track the way it is. I don’t want you taking it apart and making it into something different. It’s just the way I like it.”
Annie got up. “Show me.”
They went back in, up the stairs, and into the studio. Charlie stopped and pointed.
“That,” he said.
It took Annie a second to realize what had happened. Charlie had, from the beginning, put the track sections together to make a large loop. Two long straight sides, curved at each end, not unlike a horse-racing track.
The track pieces had been reassembled to make a figure eight. Annie stared disbelievingly.
“And you moved all the buildings around, too,” Charlie said. “I’m going to hafta put it back the way it was.”
Twenty-Eight
Finnegan Sproule had been thinking about a surprise visit for several days.
Drive up to see Annie and Charlie and bring some New York with him. Now, lots of foods that were identified with the city wouldn’t travel well. He couldn’t bring a slice from Joe’s Pizza or a dirty water hot dog from a street vendor or a fresh-off-the-grill steak from Smith & Wollensky, not when there was a drive of several hours involved, but he could arrive with a variety of bagels and some babka from Ess-a-Bagel. Maybe some cronuts from that place down on Spring Street, fruit tarts from Le Pain Quotidien. If he brought along a cooler and some ice packs, he could treat them to some cheesecake and some sliced pastrami.
And wine. Definitely wine.