Chapter One

Seattle, Washington - December 1991

Jessica Ward squinted through the fog, trying to see the turnoff to Moss Cliff Road. The road had never been well marked and was particularly hard to find, especially since she hadn't visited the area for five years. She had passed the antique shop a half-mile back, and the huge madrona tree that hung over the road. The last landmark would be the pillars of grey stone marking the entrance to Moss Cliff, a prestigious residential area comprised of private estates belonging to the very rich and the very old families of Seattle. But in this fog, the pillars would be hard to see.

After driving a hundred feet, Jessica glimpsed the outlines of the twin columns shrouded in mist. She passed between them and followed a secluded route that wound between stands of droopy cedars and tangles of rhododendrons. Jessica drove carefully, creeping ever upward on the twisting road. Here and there narrow lanes branched off, leading to secluded estates with magnificent views of Puget Sound. But in the darkness and fog she could see no evidence of civilization, not even a single light.

She had almost gained the top of the cliff when her lights revealed an impressive sign bordered in gold. "St. Benedict Winery" was painted in large ornate letters over the image of a hooded monk. An arrow indicated the left fork in the road. "That's new," Jessica mumbled under her breath. She turned to the left and looked back at the new sign, taking her eyes off the road for an instant. When she returned her attention to the road ahead, she saw a figure standing in the lane, blinded by her headlights.

"God!" Jessica cried, slamming on the brakes. The wheels screeched as her car fishtailed on the damp asphalt. She fought the wheel to gain control of the car as it slid off the road into the ditch.

Jessica glanced up, horrified that she might have killed someone. The headlights revealed a dark shape standing at the side of the road. At least the person was still on his feet. She hadn't hit anyone, but the near accident had shaken her considerably. Jessica scrambled out of the sedan.

"Are you all right?" she called, her voice quavering. The figure turned in her direction. Jessica pulled her coat around her thin frame while an eerie sensation crept down her back. What an odd outfit the person wore. In the darkness it looked like some sort of parka with the hood pulled up, but the parka was long and reached to the ground. Or maybe she just couldn't see because of the shadows from the brush on the side of the road.

"Are you okay?" she repeated, stepping forward to see better. Yet she wasn't too anxious to leave the security of her car. There were enough incidents these days involving women alone to make her wary of strangers. In fact, she had read a newspaper headline at the airport that afternoon which told of an escaped murderer who had killed a woman not far from the winery. The man had run away from a work release program the day before and was still at large. What if the figure was the convict in disguise? Jessica froze.

The figure strode across the road, through the lights of her car, flashing brown and black as light hit parka. Jessica gaped after him. Could her eyes be deceiving her? She would swear that the figure was dressed as a monk, just like the monk on the winery sign. Would a murderer dress as a monk?

"Wait!" she cried. "I'm sorry! I didn't see you!" She ran after the figure, but it seemed heedless of her and disappeared into the darkness at the side of the road.

"I'm sorry!" Her voice trailed off. She couldn't see a thing in the fog beyond the clumps of bracken. For a moment she stood in front of her car, listening for the sound of the retreating figure, but the trees and road lay muffled under a silent blanket of mist.

Perplexed, Jessica pushed back the black curls that had fallen over her brow. What should she do? Should she wait for him to come back? Certainly not if he was the convict. The man didn't seem hurt. He was probably long gone. Jessica slid her palm down the back of her head and realized she was still shaking. The best thing she could do was continue to the bungalow and have a cup of tea to calm her nerves.

Jessica walked back across the road. Gravel crunched beneath the heels of her tightly-laced black leather boots and the straps flapped at the ends of her coat sleeves, slapping against her driving gloves. She pulled her coat around her and collapsed into the driver's seat. Then, with trembling hands she belted herself in and eased the car back onto the road.

A few minutes later she made the final turn and gained the top of the cliff. At the higher altitude the fog was less thick, allowing the moon to filter through. Jessica saw some lights in the distance and felt a considerable amount of relief. She shifted into fourth gear and sped toward the lights, knowing her destination was only minutes away.

The lights she could see belonged to the Cavanetti house. The Cavanettis owned and operated St. Benedict Winery and had been neighbors for many years. Jessica could make out the long line of the roof of the house and the humps of its dormers. Just beyond the Cavanetti house was the Ward's summer home, an elegant bungalow designed in the twenties, but quite plain in comparison to the Italianate mansion owned by the Cavanettis.

The disparity in houses had not always been in the Cavanetti favor. Michael Cavanetti had purchased the mansion for next to nothing and had lived in the rotting shell of the house for years until he had enough money and time to begin restoring it. Jessica could remember the way her father's relatives had stared out the bungalow window at the run down Cavanetti house, making snide comments about the Italians next door, using terms no one would explain to a young girl of five.

Jessica had always liked the mansion even when it stood in disrepair, it's glory faded by salty winds and incessant winter rain. The unusual architecture had caught her fancy. It looked more like an intricately decorated cake--with its tall windows, curved moldings, and elaborate cornices--than a house. As a child she had made up all sorts of stories about the mansion and the millionaire who had built the house for his Italian wife. Her father had fueled her imagination with his own tales of the mansion. But that had been years ago when Robert Ward was still a vibrant happy man, basking in his success on Broadway and content with his family. Life had changed drastically since then.

Jessica reached over with a gloved hand and turned down the heater. She hadn't noticed until that moment that she was uncomfortably warm from the after effects of her adrenalin rush. As she drove, she listened to the announcer on the radio finish his news broadcast with a station identification and the time.

"It's seven-thirty, Friday the thirteenth."

Friday the thirteenth. That explained everything. The day had not gone well. The airport had been fogged in, she had gotten caught in rush hour traffic, and she had nearly run over someone. She should have turned back at the first sign of trouble. She should have stuck to her guns this time and refused to help her father. She should have called and said, "Sorry, Dad. Not this time. I'm tired of rescuing you. I'm tired of bailing you out of trouble. I'm sick and tired, Dad."

She could never bring herself to say such things to her father. And she didn't know why she still helped him. Was it love, duty or guilt? She couldn't tell anymore. She loved her dad, but she resented him almost as much, which made her feel guilty and selfish for needing a life of her own. More than anything she wanted a stable life, a predictable planned course that she could count on. Life with her father had been anything but stable.

On the radio, Perry Como sang, "There's no place like home for the--" Jessica snapped him off in mid-sentence before his crooning strangled her.

Home. Jessica's grim smile deepened with bitterness. She had never wanted to rush home for the holidays. She had never been able to relate to the greeting card version of Christmas in which families gathered around their crackling fires and perfectly decorated Christmas trees. Her home had never been like that. Was anyone's? She didn't think so. But deep inside she yearned for that image to be true and clung to the hope that somewhere a family could be whole and perfect, if only for one night out of the year.

She didn't know where home was anymore, anyway. Her condominium in Stanford, California certainly wasn't home. She ate and slept in the sparsely decorated apartment, but spent most of her hours at the university where she was assistant professor in the astronomy department. Her father had sold the family home in Seattle five years ago when he could no longer afford to live there. Of course the real reason for the sale of the Ward Estate had never been revealed to the public. Jessica had made certain of that. She had told everyone that Robert Ward had simply decided to make New York his permanent residence, where he would be closer to his work on the stage. He planned to live in Connecticut, in a fashionable country farmhouse, just like all the other playwrights.

The farmhouse story was pure fabrication, although the Connecticut part was true enough. Jessica managed to check her father into an exclusive detox center in New Haven. Robert was dry for a few months. But soon he slipped back into his old habits, drinking away his days and nights while his typewriter gathered dust. Now he lived in the old summer home at Moss Cliff, the only property remaining to the once wealthy Ward family.

Things change, people change. Jessica knew that only too well. She drove past the mansion and eased down the driveway to the bungalow. The house was dark. The porch light wasn't even lit for her arrival. She felt a moment of disappointment but quickly snuffed out the feeling. She was no longer a child. She should have outgrown such childish expectations long ago. With a harder jerk than necessary, she set the brake.

The first thing she noticed when she opened the door was the musty smell of whiskey and cigarettes. She grimaced and fumbled for the lights, illuminating the front room of the bungalow still furnished in the style of the sixties, when Robert Ward's life had ground to an emotional halt. The room was neat and clean but looked uninhabited. A strange metallic noise clicked incessantly down the hall in the family room. Jessica hurried down the hall toward the sound.

In the dim light of the family room, Jessica saw the source of the noise--a movie projector sending it's blind beam through the smoky haze. The take-up reel turned round and round, flapping the end of film against the machine with a thwank, thwank, thwank. Who knows how long it had flung film against metal. Her father lay in his recliner, asleep beside the projector, unaware of the noise or her presence.

Jessica leaned over and turned off the projector. She pulled off the reel and put it in a metal canister labeled "Hell's for the Living", the title of her father's award winning play. He watched it often, hoping for inspiration but finding his only inspiration in whiskey and soda.

She set down the canister and gazed at her father. An empty tumbler was loosely clutched in his outstretched hand. Jessica plucked it from his grasp. She stood for a moment holding the glass as she gazed at his grizzled face. He hadn't shaved for days. He hadn't changed his clothes, either, by the look of the crumpled shirt and wrinkled pants. His once handsome face was gaunt and lined, his once thick brown hair was now a dull grey and hung in lank strands around his skull. His socks had holes, and one big toe protruded like an eye, observing the stranger that had burst into the house.

He should be in bed, but she wasn't strong enough to move him when he was unconscious. There was nothing more she could do for her father but cover him against the chill. Jessica strode to his bedroom down the hall and pulled a blanket off his bed. Then she returned to the family room and draped the blanket over his lean body, making sure she tucked it around his legs and feet. She noticed cigarette burns in the blanket.

She left her father and went down the hall to the kitchen.

She set her purse on the counter while she stood in dismay, gaping at the disarray around her. The kitchen was a jumble of dirty glasses and ashtrays, old juice containers and cracker boxes. A pile of newspapers three feet high leaned against an overflowing wastebasket. Jessica put her hand to her mouth. Disorder always bothered her. This disorder made her physically ill. She fled from the kitchen to unload the car.

She brought in the groceries she had purchased in town, lugged her suitcases to the front bedroom, and left the heavy telescope in the hall. She made sure the car was locked for the night and closed the front door securely behind her. Then she tackled the kitchen.

The refrigerator was practically empty, just as she had anticipated. A lone bottle of ketchup stood sentinel on the top shelf. Jessica opened the freezer. It was frozen solid around a bag of peas. Disgusting. She would defrost it in the morning.

Jessica was still planning her attack on the garbage when the doorbell rang. She stiffened in alarm. Who could be calling at this time of night? And how could she keep someone from smelling the booze and smoke? Frantically she threw open cupboard doors searching for a can of air freshener. She found some in a cupboard near the pantry and sprayed her way to the front door, ditching the can in an empty vase on the side table.

The doorbell rang again. Jessica smoothed back her hair and looked through the peephole. She could see the distorted image of a small squat woman huddling in a black coat with a fur collar. Maria! Jessica snatched back the chain and pulled open the door.

"Maria!" she exclaimed. For a moment she stood beaming in happiness at the old woman. Then Maria held out her arms.

"Jessica! Mia bambina!" The woman's pudgy arms and thick hands surrounded Jessica in a warm embrace. Jessica hugged the woman, closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Not everything had changed after all. Maria di Barbieri still smelled of garlic and flour and yeast. Jessica loved the aroma. It was a smell from her childhood, the smell of Maria's kitchen, a place where Jessica had known happiness.

Maria stepped back and held her hands palms up as if to cradle Jessica's face. "Look at you!" she exclaimed. "You look so beautiful, so grown up."

Jessica smiled and bent down. "I am grown up, Maria. I'm thirty years old."

"Thirty." Maria clapped her clubby hands to the sides of her face. "Thirty. No!"

"Yes."

"And so tall!"

"I've been this tall for a long time, Maria."

Maria shook her head.

"Yes, you've been shrinking, Maria. You look like a little elf." She stepped aside. "Come in."

Maria fumbled with the scarf tied around her head. "Only for a moment." She hobbled into the hall, stopping to take off the scarf. Her hair had gone completely white, in snowy contrast to her olive complexion. Once in the light, Jessica noticed the troubled look in Maria's eyes.

"What's wrong, Maria?"

"Ah," she waved the air, "You would not believe the trouble, you would not believe. I saw you drive past and came over as soon as I could."

"Why? What's the matter?"

"You have not been here for years, bambina. You don't know what it's like at the big house. You don't know what's going on."

"Tell me. Come and sit down."

Maria sniffed and looked around, and Jessica worried that she smelled something other than lavender air freshener. But Maria didn't say anything more and followed her to the front room where she sat on the edge of a chair and refused to take off her coat.

"I don't have much time," she explained. "That Mrs. Cavanetti will be home any minute."

Jessica nodded, remembering how for the longest time, she had assumed Maria was Mrs. Cavanetti. Every day she saw Maria go to the Cavanetti mailbox and then walk back to the house. She never saw any other woman at the mansion. Neither she nor her father ever talked with the Cavanettis. The Cavanettis spoke only Italian and kept strictly to themselves. Jessica's Aunt Edna had forbidden her to have anything to do with the Cavanettis, saying they were the ruination of the neighborhood, that they pulled the heads off their chickens and let their goats eat grass on their front lawn. Their front lawn. Unthinkable!

When Jessica saw the Cavanetti boy carrying lumber into the house one day, and wondered out loud what his name was and how old did Aunt Edna think he was, her aunt shut the drapes and told her to quit spying on the neighbors. She didn't care who the boy was, and neither should Jessica.

Not until Jessica's mother went away did Jessica find out that Maria was the housekeeper and cook at the Cavanetti place. Aunt Edna rarely visited after Jessica's mom left, and Robert was too distraught to pay any attention to the activities of his six-year-old daughter. So one afternoon when Jessica was hungry and lonely, she wandered past the Cavanetti mailbox just as Maria strolled down the walk to get the mail. Jessica stared, wondering what kind of person could pull the head off a chicken.

Maria stared back. But her eyes were full of kindness and humor. She asked Jessica how everything was. Was her father feeding her enough? She looked a little skinny. Sometimes fathers were too busy for lunch. Jessica nodded, her stomach growling. Her father had forgotten about her. In fact, he hadn't even got out of bed that day. And there was very little food in the house. When Maria asked her if she liked cookies, she nodded eagerly. At that moment she would have liked cooked turnips.

That day had been her first visit to Maria's kitchen, a sparkling white room full of good smells and laughter and plenty of home-cooked food. Jessica wolfed down a huge lunch of ravioli and grapes and finished it off with a handful of oatmeal cookies still warm from the oven. Then she had spilled out her troubles to Maria, how she missed her mother, how she didn't know what to do. And Maria had surrounded her with flour-dusted arms, and comforted her with soothing Italian phrases that Jessica somehow understood in her heart.

"Ah, that Mrs. Cavanetti! She will be so mad. I never should have meddled." Maria's wails snapped Jessica out of her memories. "Capperi!"

"How did you meddle?"

"I called Niccolo. I got on the phone and said, 'Nick, you come back. I don't care what your papa said to you, you come back. Your papa's lying sick in the hospital. Time for you to come back.'"

"Mr. Cavanetti is in the hospital?"

Maria nodded. "Stroke. Another one."

"He's had more than one?"

Maria rolled her eyes. "Ah, Jessica. Mr. Cavanetti is very sick. Very sick! He hasn't talked for five years. He just lays there sick. He can't move his leg or his arm on his left side."

"I didn't know!"

"Who does? That Mrs. Cavanetti just hides him away in his bedroom. Like he doesn't exist! When he went to the hospital again, I said to myself, 'That's it, Maria di Barbieri. You're gonna call Nick.' Nick was a good boy. He was always a good boy. I don't care what that Mrs. Cavanetti says about him. I know Niccolo would help his papa if he knew how that Mrs. Cavanetti was treating him."

"So you called him?"

"Yes. And he came as soon as he could. Ah, he's such a beautiful man, Jessica, I never would have dreamed—"

Jessica's heart thudded painfully. "So he's here?"

"No, not now. He went to the hospital. But he left his bags in the house. I told Niccolo, 'Nick, don't leave your things!' But he said he could handle his step mama. But I'm afraid she'll be mad about it. She'll be mad at me too, for calling him. I can't take her anger anymore, Jessica. It's bad for my heart, you know."

"Why don't you bring his luggage over here, Maria? If Isabella won't let him stay at the house, he can come by and get his bags from me."

"I was hoping you would help, Jessica." Maria stood up. "You're such a good girl. And not married? Let me see that hand!"

Jessica held out her left hand. "Don't get any ideas, Maria."

"A good girl like you should be married!" She waved the air as she hobbled toward the door.

"Shall we take the car?" Jessica plucked her keys off the side table.

"Yes, we'll need it. That Niccolo. Six bags. Six big bags!" She tied the scarf under her plump chin. "I should have so much clothes."