After Dark by Beverly Barton

uneasiness every time Kent’s sister had lavished attention on him. Mary Martha had an almost unhealthy attachment to Will, but whenever she had mentioned that fact to Kent, he had dismissed it as foolishness.
    â€œYou aren’t jealous of Mary Martha are you, sweetheart? Kent had said. “She’s just being a devoted aunt. No need for you to concern yourself.”
    â€œI don’t know if she asked for him by name. Will didn’t say. Just told me that his aunt was calling for him.” Lillie Mae nodded to the door. “Did Johnny Mack leave?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œWill he be back?”
    â€œYes. Tomorrow. He invited himself to lunch.”
    â€œSounds like Johnny Mack.” The corners of Lillie Mae’s mouth lifted slightly, with just a hint of a smile. “Why don’t you go in the den? I’ll make us some herbal tea, and we can have that talk.”
    Lane nodded. “Tea sounds good about now.”
    As Lane made her way to the den, she wondered if she should go over to the Graham house next door and check on Will. No, she shouldn’t. Her son considered himself a capable young man. At fourteen, he often resented Lane’s smothering motherly attention. It had been difficult enough before Kent’s murder to allow Will breathing space, but now—dear God, now!—she couldn’t bear for her son to be out of her sight for more than a few minutes. What if his memory returned when she wasn’t with him? What if he remembered that he had killed Kent?
    Easing down into the tan leather chair near the windows overlooking the west side of the house, Lane sighed. Mentally and emotionally weary, tired from carrying heavy burdens in her heart, she lifted her feet to rest them on the huge leather ottoman.
    Her gaze scanned the room, which she had left unchanged since her parents’ deaths. This den had been her father’s sanctuary, a place to escape from his busy work schedule as the owner of Noble’s Crossing’s only daily newspaper—the Herald —begun by William Alexander Noble in 1839 and co-owned today by Lane and Edith Graham Ware.
    Shortly after her marriage to Kent, her father’s newspaper had been on the brink of being gobbled up by a New York conglomerate, but Edith had come to the rescue, saving the paper from Yankee invasion. Now Lane depended on the revenue from the paper to support herself and Will and to keep up the Noble estate. No matter what happened, she would never touch the trust fund her father and Edith had jointly set up for Will.
    Lately Lane found herself gravitating toward this room, this small, cozy haven nestled away from the activity of the rest of the house. Dark paneled walls and wide crown molding in rich wood tones recalled the elegance of a bygone era, as did the heavily carved desk and the antique Persian rug. A portrait painted by renowned Atlanta artist Gower Mayfield hung over the fireplace—a portrait of a young, beautiful Celeste Noble and her only child, Lane, at the age of five.
    She missed her parents terribly and probably always would. Although she and her mother had seldom seen eye-to-eye on anything, she had adored Celeste, the royal social butterfly of Noble’s Crossing. No one could give a party the way Mrs. William Noble had. Her lavish soirees had been the talk of Alabama in the late sixties and early seventies. Perhaps if her mother hadn’t spent so extravagantly, her father might not have found himself between the proverbial rock and hard place when the family’s ownership of the Herald had become endangered.
    She had not only loved her father, but she had admired him greatly. Bill Noble had been a gentle man who had possessed a strong moral character and a charitable soul. He had known almost everyone in town by name and treated rich and poor with the same respect. He had been the one who had first hired Johnny Mack Cahill to do yard work on Magnolia Avenue.
    When Celeste