Embers (89 page)

Or some little tool? She held the box to her breast and stared absently out her bedroom window, trying to think of what might do.

As usual, she got caught up in the view. From her hilltop perch she could see glimpses of
Newport
Harbor
and of
Narragansett Bay
beyond it. At the moment, a big freighter was picking its way through a flock of tiny, feathery sails as it headed down the bay for other ports of call. The ship was high in the water. Whatever its cargo — cars, electronics, clothing — it had been emptied at the Port of Providence; now the ship was going back, probably to Asia, for more.

Liz tried not to think of the lost jobs the freighter represented and daydreamed instead about the magic of maritime trade. She knew — every Newporter knew — that much of
Newport
's old wealth had come from its deep involvement in trading with eighteenth-century
China
. From teas to trees to silks to willoware, everything pretty once seemed to have come from the
Far East
. Shipowners put the best pieces aside for themselves, and sold the rest, and got richer and richer. No one begrudged them back then, not if it meant they could have pretty blue dishes on their tables and silk dress goods for twenty-five cents a yard.

And red-lacquered boxes like the one Liz held in her hands. That it came from
China
, she had no doubt. Probably it had been offloaded from some square-rigger right here in
Newport
harbor in the days when
Newport
was still a major port of the
United States
. She was cradling a small token of the commerce that had enabled more than one man to build himself an imposing mansion on
Newport
's Gold Coast.

She thought of Jack Eastman and wondered where
his
money had came from. He had a certain Captain Bligh glint in his eye that made her think he could easily take a ship around the Horn. On the other hand, he looked like he'd be just as comfortable in the give-and-take of a trading session dockside. Heck, hadn't he just proved it?

Well, he might have his empire, but she had her red box. And she had no intention of destroying it, only to discover it was empty.

But it
wasn
't empty. It couldn't be. What Liz needed, she decided, was a locksmith; he'd be able to pick the lock in two seconds flat. She dusted herself off, changed, and was on her way out the door when she saw Victoria pulling onto the graveled parking area in front of the rose arbor — the rose arbor that had sealed Liz's decision to buy the house.

Victoria
had Susy in the back seat of her BMW. As always, Liz's heart sang a bright song at the sight of her five-year-old daughter. As always, the thought hurtled through her mind that, if Keith had had his way ....

But he hadn't, and for that, Liz was more grateful than anyone else on earth.

"Hi, honey," she said to the child.
"You
must've had a good time."

Her daughter waved through the open window and unbuckled her seat belt in a very grown-up way, then got out and skipped over into her mother's waiting arms for a hug.

"Aunty Tori let me get a milkshake for dessert!"

"And you were able to drink it all?" asked Liz, glancing at
Victoria
with amazement.

"Well, no," Susy confessed. "Aunty Tori had to help me a little."

Victoria
reassured Liz by holding her thumb and forefinger two inches apart. Two inches of milkshake wasn't so awful; Susy'd have her appetite back by suppertime. "Well, just so you know you can't have a special dessert like that
every
day," Liz said gravely.

"Oh,
Mommy,"
said Susy, as if she were well aware that she didn't have a prayer.

For Liz, one of the the hardest things about sharing Susy with her parents and Victoria on a regular basis was trying to keep Susy's diet honest. It was so tempting to let them ply her with treats, so tempting for Liz herself to bribe Susy whenever she had to farm her out on a sunny weekend or a big holiday, which was inevitably when Liz had to work.

Life would've been so much easier if Keith had chosen to stick around.

Susy was peeking into the shopping bag that sat on the ground next to her mother. "What's this, Mommy? A present for someone?"

Liz smiled at her daughter's subtle fishing expedition and rumpled her dark-brown hair. "It's a box I found in the attic," she said, lifting it out for her daughter and Victoria to see. "It's locked, so I'm going to take it to someone who can open it for me. Do you want to come?"

While Susy considered her options,
Victoria
asked, "For heaven's sake, how did you get into the attic?"

"Jigsaw," said Liz, rolling her eyes at the memory. "I made an ungodly mess; I haven't even swept it up yet. I found a trunk of old letters sealed away, and this was in with them." -

"No kidding?"

Susy was tugging at her mother's hand. "Mommy? I think maybe I don't want to go. I think. . . maybe I should have some quiet time," she said with a tentative look in her big brown eyes.

Stomachache, dammit.
Liz threw
Victoria
a scolding glance, then said to her daughter, "Okay, sweetie. I'll take the box to the locksmith some other time."

"Liz, just go; I'll stay with Susy," said
Victoria
amiably. She held out her hand to the little girl and said, "You can have quiet time while I tell you another adventure of the Princess and the Magic Petunia."

Susy was all for that, which left Liz with mixed feelings. Her daughter's early years were precious ones, and on Liz's deathbed she was going to want every lost moment of them. She felt guilty for wanting to open the box ... but she wanted desperately to open the box.

"Okay, then, sunshine. I'll be right back."

****

Jimmy's Lock and Key was located in a peeling colonial house, one of the many historic buildings, most of them updated, that lined both sides of downtown
Thames Street
. The concept of gentrification, however, had not yet occurred to Jimmy; his ancient, tattered shop was a jumble of new brass hardware, carousels of key blanks, and boxes of mysterious metal innards. Liz laid the red-lacquered box on the painted plywood counter and said, "Can you get it open without damaging it?"

Jimmy, a bulldozer of a man who could probably pry open a locked safe with one arm tied behind his back, picked up the box in his thick, stubby hands and said, "Shouldn't be too hard. Where'd you get it — flea market, or antique shop?"

"Neither. It was in the sealed-in attic of the house I've just bought, along with a bunch of old letters. Isn't that weird? If this box were bigger, I'd be afraid of finding someone's bones in it," Liz said with a self-conscious laugh.

"Or ashes," said Jimmy, shaking it back and forth the way Liz had.

Ashes! She hadn't thought of ashes. "Can you pick the lock?" she asked with more dread than before.

Jimmy shrugged and reached under the counter. "Won't need to, maybe." He brought out an El Producto cigar box and flipped open the cardboard top. "Let's see what we got in here," he said, pushing an assortment of tiny keys around in the box. "Sometimes we get lucky."

His eye lit on a little brass key that must've looked promising. He picked it up and tried inserting it. No luck. He tried another. Ditto. Liz's hopes began to sag. Then he pulled out a third key, a tiny key turned dark with age, and tried that one.

"Well, well," he said, obviously pleased as the key turned smoothly in the lock. "Nothin's frozen."

What Jimmy did next showed he had an instinct either for chivalry or for caution, Liz never did figure out which:  he turned the box around to face her so that she could open it herself.

Liz bit her lower lip and laid both her hands gently on the lid. She'd half convinced herself that there was an important letter wedged inside, or a map, a treasure map left behind by Captain Kidd. But she did not want ashes.

Slowly, expectantly, she raised the lid. Almost at once her ears seemed to ring, as though somewhere in the far, far distance, someone were playing an instrument. A chime, perhaps: a single-noted chime whose echo began to fill the room with its extraordinary tone.

Antoinette Stockenberg

"
Complex … fast-moving …humorous … tender"

--
Publishers Weekly
 

SAFE
HARBOR
.
 
That's what
Martha's Vineyard
has always been for Holly Anderson, folk artist, dreamer and eternal optimist.
 
If she could just afford to buy the house and barn she's renting, fall in love, marry the guy and then have children as sweet as her nieces, life would be pretty much perfect.
Poor Holly.
 
She has so much to learn.

Chapter 1

H
olly Anderson's birthday surprise turned out to be a two-by-four over the head.

She had been expecting, oh, a cake and candles in her studio; maybe a singing telegram; possibly to be dragged out to dinner at one of the island's fancier restaurants. She had not expected to spend the last half of the first day of her thirty-first year at the bottom, emotionally speaking, of a ditch.

Her summer birthday had begun routinely enough, with Holly devoting the morning to cleaning and sanding the wide drawerfronts of a sweet old pine dresser that she'd snatched up at a yard sale on the Vineyard just two days earlier. Then came the
fun part, sketching a whimsical
farmstead across the faces of the three drawers. After erasing a cow and two geese and adding more chickens, Holly was ready to mix her paints and make folk art magic.