Keepsake (61 page)

"I'm Cissy Hanlin, by the way," the pretty blonde said, not daring to let go of Buster's collar. "I live next door."

Jane introduced herself, and Cissy explained that she'd always wanted a dog but her husband didn't like animals but now they were separated and so the first thing she did was get a dog, a big dog, because she felt safer being so all alone and it was
so
lucky that she discovered Buster, who was a cross — ould Jane tell? — between a black Lab and a Saint Bernard or at least that's what the waitresses who brought him to the shelter before they left the island after summer was over said.

She paused, at last, for breath.

Jane said, "Yep. He looks like a black Saint Bernard."

At this point Buster's tail was wagging furiously, landing with quick hard thumps on the back of Jane's thighs. It did not seem possible that an act of friendliness could inflict so much pain. The interlude ended abruptly when a squirrel — dumber or braver than most — scampered across the lawn not far from them. Buster took off in loping pursuit, his tongue lolling out the side of his mouth, his paws ripping out consecutive mounds of earth.

He crashed through a rhododendron, breaking off several branches, and plowed over an azalea before fetching up at the trunk of one of the huge hollies that blocked Jane's front door. His bark, like the Hound of the Baskervilles', came straight from hell. From somewhere high, high in the holly tree, the squirrel twitted him.

"Silly
puppy," Cissy cried. She turned to Jane with a helpless shrug. "I can't seem to get him to
stay
."

And I can't seem to get you to
go, Jane thought, surveying the damage. She smiled weakly, her thoughts turning to stockade fences, and said, "Maybe it's just a phase."

Cissy rolled her eyes and said, "I
wish.
Well, it's nice that you're going to be around for a little while; I get so bored by myself. If you need help with anything, just shout," she added, and began whistling her dog away from the tree.

Eventually Buster came and dragged Cissy off, and Jane was able to unload the car. Her plan was to spend the next week cleaning, seeing to critical repairs, and talking to realtors (once she'd deodorized the place a bit) about listing the house in spring.

But first things first,
she thought, taking down a jelly jar glass, which she wiped clean with her shirt. She took the rum and the glass into the fireplace room and poured a tot for herself.

Then she lifted the glass to the fireplace, the focal point of the room, and said, "Aunt Sylvia — thank you. I don't deserve this, but I thank you. I'll make this place pretty, and someone with children will live here and love it, and you and I will somehow share in their joy."

She tossed off the glass, and the odd-tasting rum shot through her winter-chilled body like a ball of flame. Her aunt had visited
Bermuda
once, and brought back the rum, and that's the only kind she drank for the rest of her life. (Jane used to smuggle a flask into the nursing home, and the two would sneak a tiny ceremonial drink together before she left for the night.)

The thought that there would be no more smuggling hit Jane hard; she poured another ounce, this time for her aunt, and sipped it as she wandered around the room, pausing to stroke a worn chair cover, taking a moment to scan the titles of the books on their shelves. How sad, she thought, that there were no framed photographs of loved ones anywhere in the room, not even of Sylvia's cats. All Jane saw was a charcoal sketch of a young woman in a plain gown, with a coal-skuttle bonnet lying on the floor beside her. A nineteenth-century Quaker, Jane decided, and an unhappy one at that.

She walked up to the framed sketch, which was hanging in a quiet corner of the room. All in all, it wasn't badly done. Perhaps it was her aunt's work. Sylvia Merchant had enjoyed dabbling with charcoal and pastels, although her subjects had generally come from the garden. Jane looked more closely and saw that she was right: In the corner of the drawing were the initials
SM

Jane took the frame from the wall and walked over to a window with it. There was evidence of erasure, as if her aunt had struggled to capture an exact degree of unhappiness in the young woman's face. And what unhappiness! Her brows were tilted upward and toward one another; tears rolled down her face. Her full mouth was partly opened, as if she were imploring someone, while her hands were curled tightly around one another in obvious distress. As for her long dark gown, it hung a little too closely to her body to be historically correct. Like the curls that ringed her brow, the clinging garment gave the woman a voluptuous air that was at odds with the modest intents of Quaker fashion.

Jane shivered, deeply moved by the subject's distress. The drawing had the immediacy and power of a photograph.
Well done, Aunt Sylvia,
she thought, hanging the sketch back up on its hook.
You should have done figures more often.
She wondered who'd posed for her aunt. An island girl? Or had Sylvia merely copied someone else's work? But no; the sketch had too much emotion in it. Jane looked around the room, half expecting to find a companion sketch, this one of the brute who was causing the Quaker woman such pain. But there was nothing else.

She finished her rum and put the bottle away. There was work to be done — and in the next several hours she found out just how much, when the contractors dropped by one by one with their estimates.

The roofer looked things over, frowned, and said, "Five thousand dollars."

The electrician looked things over, laughed, and said, "Five thousand dollars."

The plumber shook his head and said, "Torch it."

By the end of the day Jane was bloodied but unbowed.
Okay, so the house isn't perfect,
she admitted as she boiled some tea water in a pot that looked as if it had a questionable past. But at least now she had heat — in most of the rooms, anyway; and water — even though it was flowing through lead pipes; and as for the roof, well, it wasn't supposed to rain for a day or two.

But now it was one in the morning; it was time to drag herself back to the Jared Coffin House. She sipped her Earl Grey tea tiredly, eyeing the Empire sofa in the room. Tomorrow she would definitely sleep here. She simply couldn't afford not to. She went around turning off the lights, aware that she hadn't even allowed herself the diversion of going through the boxes and closets. Today it was all Lysol and Tilex; maybe tomorrow she could relax and poke around a bit.

And tomorrow she would pick up a book on interpreting tarot cards before she packed away the deliberate arrangement that had been left sitting on the game table.
That,
she was determined to do.

She was just switching off the red ginger-jar lamp in the fireplace room when she heard the unmuffied roar of the dark green pickup turn in from the road again and race past her house. Buster, next door, heard it too and began woofing maniacally. The pickup had passed in and out at least half a dozen times in the course of the day, setting off the beast each time, and now it was one in the morning and they were both still hard at it.

What's going on?
she wondered, disturbed by the implications.
Short hops, in and out
....
The only other time she'd noticed a travel pattern like that was when she was in college: the guy in the house across the street used to zip in and out all day and night, and eventually he was arrested for dealing drugs.

Terrific.
She was beginning to think just like her mother. Surely there must be some everyday explanation. The man was probably ... probably ....

But she couldn't come up with an everyday explanation.

Buy
Beloved

Antoinette Stockenberg

"
A deft blend of mystery and romance … sure to win more kudos"

--
Publishers Weekly

To Meg Hazard, it seemed like a good idea at the time: squeezing her extended family into the back rooms of their rambling Victorian home and converting the rest of the house into a Bed and Breakfast in the coastal town of
Bar Harbor
,
Maine
.
 
Paying guests are most welcome, but the arrival of a
Chicago
cop on medical leave turns out to be both good news
and bad news for Meg and the Inn Between.

Chapter 1

Meg Hazard, shivering in the predawn chill, pulled the blanket up around her shoulders and said, "Money isn't everything, Allie."

Her sister laughed derisively. "Oh,
come
on." She threw her head back in a way that profiled her long neck and thick black hair to perfection. "The only ones who say that are those who have it and those who don't. And
I
say, both sides are lying through their teeth." She pulled her knees up closer to her chest.
"
God,
it's cold up here. Was it this cold when we were kids?"

"Of course. We're on top of a mountain. In
Maine
. In June. You know the saying: In Maine there are two seasons
—"

"—
winter and August. Mmm. I do know. Which is another reason I'll take a job anywhere but here. You can't make any real money in
Maine
, and meanwhile you freeze your buns off trying."

Meg smiled and held one end of her blanket open. "Park your buns under the blanket with me, then. I
told
you to bring something warm."

She glanced around at the dozens of tourists sharing the rocky summit with them. Some were murmuring; some were silent. All were waiting. "The sun will be up in precisely
—
four minutes," Meg said, peering at her watch.

The two sisters huddled together under the pale
pink sky, their breaths mingling, their minds in tune.

"Tell me
why
,
exactly, I let you talk me into this again?" Allie asked.

Meg laughed softly and said, "I was just thinking about that. You were five and I was seventeen when I brought you up here the first time. You were so excited, you forgot your Thermos of hot chocolate. I had to drive us back for it
—"

"—
and Dad woke up and said we were crazy and if Mom were alive she'd give us what for
—"

"—
and then, when we finally got up here, you were mad because we weren't the only ones on Cadillac Mountain, so how could we possibly be the first ones in the whole U.S. to see the sun that day?"

"You told me we would be, Meg. I distinctly remember."

"So you stood up and told all the other tourists to please close their eyes because
you
wanted to be first."

Allegra Atwells looked away with the same roguish smile that had melted every single male heart that had ever come within fifty feet of it.

And then she threw off her blanket, stood up, and shouted at the top of her lungs: "Would everyone please close their eyes so that I can
finally
be the first one to see the sun rise in the
United States
? I'm from
Bar Harbor
, folks. I
live
here."

Virtually every tourist there turned in surprise to gape at her. Meg groaned and buried her face in her hands, and when she looked up again, a thin sliver of bright gold had popped up into the now blood-red sky, casting the first of its rays across Frenchman's Bay below.

Allie Atwells had probably got her wish.

"Twenty-five, and still the same," Meg said, leaning back on the palms of her hands and looking up at her sister with a kind of rueful admiration.

Allie stood defiantly on the rocky outcrop with her hands on her hips. The rising wind whipped her long black hair across her face and pressed the white shirt she wore against her shapely breasts. Her face
—
even in the early morning sun, even without makeup, even after an all-nighter spent deep in gossip
—
was cover-girl gorgeous, the kind that modeling agencies would kill to represent.

"Of course I'm still the same! How can I be anything else?" Allie said, throwing her arms up melodramatically. "I've been stuck in this god- forsaken corner of the country all my life. I haven't
been
anywhere,
done
anything,
met
anyone
...
Thanks to your nagging, I've done nothing but work and study, work and study, work and study."

Meg laughed. "And now here you are, six years, four apartments, two majors, and eleven part-time
—"

"Twelve," Allie said with a wry look. "You forget -- I worked for a week at the front desk of the Budgetel before you talked me into coming home for the summer."