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CHAPTER 1

The pro evening sky Oliver Bascombe shivered, not from the December wind but with the same anticipation he had felt at his seventh birthday party, just before the icians anyic He was stubborn that way

The green cable-knit sweater was insufficient to protect hie of a rocky cliff a hundred and twenty feet above the crashing surf, he hugged hi him and smiled His cheeks were numb but he cared not at all There was a delicious taste to the air and the scent of it onderful, exhilarating

Oliver loved being by the ocean, relished the air, but this scent was different This was the stor of the imminent thunderstorm, but the pure,breath almost crystalline

It was bliss

Oliver inhaled again and, eyes still closed, took a step closer to the edge of the bluff All the ht now In the air, the portentous gray sky, theof winter A sole beauty and stillness to the land, at least for a while

A few le step, and he would fly from the bluff down into the breakers and serenity would be his One final enormous disappointment for his father to bear, and then he would not burden the old man any further

One step

A flutter against his cheek A rustling in his hair A gust swept off the water and struck hih force that he stumbled back a step One step Back instead of forward The wind blew daainst his cheeks

Oliver opened his eyes

Snow fell in a silent white cascade that stretched froest offaster, his throat dry, holding his breath Oliver Basco as he could hold on to such moments, he could endure

He would endure

Oliver chuckled softly to hi moment he stared out at the ocean, his view obscured by this new veil of snow, then turned and strode across the frozen grounds of his father’s estate The rigid grass crunched beneath his shoes

The enormous Victorian mansion was an antique red with trih Oliver’sto it as rose so as not to in the masculinity of the household Her husband wanted his home to be finely appointed, but drew the line at decoration that would be inarguably feminine

Thus, rose

The house armly lit fro roohts on the Bascombes’ Christ snow slipping down the back of his neck and into his shirt, and rattled the handles, sighing when he realized the doors were locked He rapped softly on a glass pane, peering into the rear entryway of the house at dark wood and antique furniture, tapestries and sconces on the walls When hisin their power to give the interior of their holish manor than a place in which people actually lived

Oliver rapped again The hipped up anew and rattled the French doors in their fraain, but then a figure appeared in the corridor The house was lit so brightly within that at first it was only a silhouette of a person, but froure he knew immediately that it must be Friedle He was more than simply a caretaker, but that was how the ue the point

The slim, bespectacled man smiled broadly and waved as he hurried to unlock the doors

"Oh, goodness, coed in his curt Swiss accent, then clucked his tongue "I a that you enuine sht All the preparations were becoht I’d take a walk And now it’s snowing"

Friedle’s eyebroent up and he glanced out the door "So it is," he noted appreciatively But then his eyes narrowed and a es of his lips "We’re not getting cold feet, are we?"

"I was out for a stroll in the first snointer Of course my feet are cold"

"You know that isn’t what I meant"

Oliver nodded amiably "Yep"

Friedle handled all the day-to-day business of running the household, fro Max Bascombe to focus on his work Friedle paid the bills, answered the eneral upkeep, while at the sa service, the landscaping crew, and the hiring of a sno man in winter

When Oliver’s mother had died, it was Friedle who realized that so to have to be hired to cook for father and son-- the twoin that silent old house Mrs Gray arrived pro and reht Oliver hoped that she was paid well to spend so much time in someone else’s home Friedle was another story entirely He lived in the carriage house on the south end of the property This was his hoood night, then strode down the corridor The paintings on the walls reflected his father’s interest in the ocean-- lighthouses and schooners and weathered lobstermen-- and his mother’s passion for odd antiques, in this case crude portraits most visitors mistook for Bascombe family ancestors

His damp shoes had squeaked from the moment he entered the house and Oliver wiped theh the forh it was still early in December, the entire house was decorated for the holidays, red ribbon bows and gold candles and wreaths throughout the house And from the other end of the vast place ca in the hearth

His path took hirand staircase and to a roo to as the parlor Despite or perhaps because of the fact that it drove his father crazy, Oliver had for years preferred to cozy up with a book or a movie in his mother’s parlor rather than the so-called family room Katherine Basco flowers and warm blankets The furniture was delicate, like his mother; the one room in the house where Max Bascombe hadn’t trammeled his wife’s decorative instincts

Now Oliver paused a moment just at the door to the darkened room The parlor was small by the standards of the Bascombe home, but it ran all the way to the rear of the house The far end of the parlor was an array of tall s that looked out upon the back of the property, at the gardens and the ocean beyond

But tonight the vieas obscured Oliver could see nothing outside those s but the snow that whipped icily against the glass He looked at the small rolltop desk where his mother had liked to sit and write letters Bookshelves revealed a coatha Christie mysteries and antique leather-bound hardcovers From time to time Oliver would take one of those older books down and read it, notcracked and the yellowed paper cru Writers put their heart and soul in between those covers, and it seehosts of their passion ht be trapped there forever