That Night on Thistle Lane (3 page)

Ava turned, intrigued. “Do you have the dresses?”

Phoebe nodded. “I have the dresses.”

“Oh, wow. Excellent. Ruby?”

“Grace’s icy-blue chiffon gown? Audrey’s little black dress?” Ruby laughed. “That’s fantastic.”

“I even have pearls and a cigarette holder,” Phoebe said.

“Where did you get them?” Ava asked.

“I’m thinking of including them in our vintage fashion show,” Phoebe said evasively. Her sisters followed her into the kitchen, where she put the wine in the refrigerator, a relic that, somehow, still worked.

Ava leaned against the counter, a cheap wood that Phoebe had painted creamy white, her first renovation when she’d moved in. “So, Phoebe,” Ava said, crossing her arms on her chest. “Have you decided what you’re wearing?”

Phoebe got out wineglasses and set them on the cracked Formica counter, sidestepping her sister’s question. The twins were in graduate school—Ava in New York, Ruby in Boston—but they were spending the summer in Knights Bridge, living at home to save money. They had student loans that would take years if not decades to pay off, and big dreams that might never pay off, but Phoebe hoped everything would work out for them, believed in them. She knew they felt the same way about her but suspected they had their doubts about her choices. Not her library work. Her solitary life—or what to her sisters seemed like a solitary life. Meaning she didn’t have a man.

She’d had one, once. She’d been on the road to marriage and a happy ending of her own, but it hadn’t worked out that way.

Everyone in town knew her story—Phoebe O’Dunn, jilted at twenty, within forty-eight hours of finding her father dead from a tree-trimming accident. She’d shielded her mother and sisters from the depth of her pain, but the shock had taken its toll. Broken hearts healed but that didn’t mean life was ever the same. Phoebe had deliberately shut the door on romance, at least for herself.

But it was fine, all fine, because she was fine. She loved her work, her family, her friends, her town. She couldn’t be more content than she was right now.

Ava looked out the window over the sink at the backyard flower garden, dominated now, in mid-August, by hollyhocks that ranged from soft white through three shades of pink to deep maroon. “You’re not going to the ball, are you, Phoebe?”

Phoebe changed her mind and decided to pour the wine now. She grabbed the pinot grigio out of the refrigerator and set it on the counter. “No, I’m not going,” she said matter-of-factly as she rummaged in the utensil drawer for a corkscrew. “Do you both want wine?”

Ruby plopped her tote bag onto a chair at the table. “Phoebe, you know you’d have a great time. You never go anywhere—”

“I have so much to do here. I’m taking vacation days before the end of the summer. I’ll go someplace then.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know. Someplace.” Phoebe held up a glass. “Wine?”

“Sure,” Ruby said with a sigh. “Just don’t think I’ve given up.”

“Me, either,” Ava said. “You should go to this ball tomorrow, Phoebe. Maybe you’ll change your mind when you see the masks Ruby and I made. Anyway, wine for me, too. I’ll get our goodies out of the car.”

“Hang on, I’ll help.” Ruby withdrew a square of golden-colored soap from her tote bag and tossed it to Phoebe. “Check it out while we’re setting up. It’s a new soap Mom, Olivia and Maggie are trying out. Mom wants your opinion.”

Olivia and Maggie were experimenting with making their own artisan goat’s milk soaps to sell at The Farm at Carriage Hill. If it worked, Elly O’Dunn’s goats could go from being an expensive and impractical hobby to earning their own keep. Phoebe was happy to do what she could to help and knew Ava and Ruby were, too, although Ava in particular wasn’t crazy about their mother’s goats—especially when she had to clean up after them. They all appreciated the mildness and purity of the soaps.

Phoebe took in the gentle lavender scent of the bar Ruby had tossed her. “It really is lovely, isn’t it?”

“Olivia’s already designed the labels,” Ruby said. “Dreams do come true, Phoebe. Olivia’s are.”

“I know. I want yours to come true, too.”

Ava stopped in the hall doorway. “What about your dreams?”

“My dream,” Phoebe said lightly, abandoning the soap for her wine, “is to see Maggie and Olivia all set for their charity ball. Go grab your stuff. I’ll get the dresses.”

*

Three hours, two and a half bottles of wine, a pot of vegetable curry and much laughter later, Phoebe was again alone in her kitchen. Olivia and Maggie had precise instructions, beautiful handmade masks and everything else they needed to transform themselves into their own versions of Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly.

The dresses had worked out even better than Phoebe had imagined.

The dresses.

Ava had recognized them first. “Phoebe, these aren’t like the dresses Audrey and Grace wore in Breakfast at Tiffany’s and To Catch a Thief. They are the dresses.”

“Close copies,” Phoebe had said, then again deflected questions about where she’d gotten them.

She turned out the light in the kitchen and walked down a short hall to a small back room. For most of the past eighteen months, she’d used it to store paint supplies, tools and junk she’d collected from the rest of the house but wasn’t sure what to do with. Then, on a rainy night earlier that summer, she’d cleaned everything out, wiped down the walls, mopped the floor and considered the possibilities. A guestroom? A study? A spa bathroom?

In another life, it would have made a great baby’s room.

She felt the same pang of regret she’d felt that night, but it was ridiculous. If her father hadn’t died and her steady college boyfriend hadn’t given her an impossible ultimatum, she wouldn’t have ended up on Thistle Lane at all, with or without babies.

Florida.

She’d have ended up in Florida.

She tore off the dry-cleaning plastic to a third dress she’d had cleaned along with the Grace Kelly and Audrey Hepburn dresses. It hung on a hook in the back room.

She stepped back, marveling at the creativity and the workmanship of the gown. It was Edwardian, one of the period pieces in the hidden room. Its creator had chosen a warm, rich brown silk satin, decorated it with sparkling beads, lace and embroidery, all in a matching brown. It had an empire waist, a deep square neckline and loose, belled lacy sleeves.

And there was a matching hat.

It was as romantic and beautiful a dress as any Phoebe had ever seen.

A gown for a princess.

She tried to shake off the thought. She’d had too much wine. Just two glasses, but she felt…well, a little reckless.

And why not?

After all, what could be more perfect for a masquerade ball than a gorgeous, mysterious dress from a secret attic room?

Two

“I could pass for a swashbuckler right now,” Noah Kendrick said as he stretched out on an expanse of granite near the base of Mount Washington, the tallest peak in the White Mountains of northern New England. “If I don’t shave or shower before tonight, I’ll be all set.”

Dylan McCaffrey shrugged off his pack and sat on another boulder. Noah saw no sign that four days of hiking had had any effect on his friend beyond sweat, stubble and a certain grubbiness. Two of Dylan’s hockey player friends had joined them but had split off that morning for several more days of tramping in the mountains. It was Dylan’s and Noah’s first time hiking in the White Mountains. They were in good shape, but Mount Washington was a hell of a climb, their last summit before heading back to civilization.

And a charity ball.

Great, Noah thought without enthusiasm.

He doubted that anyone at NAK, Inc., had needed to reach him in the past three nights and four days. He was the founder of the high-tech entertainment company that bore his initials—NAK, for Noah Andrew Kendrick. The convergence of technology and entertainment had fascinated him for as long as he could remember, and he’d managed to turn it into a profitable business. NAK was just four years old but had gone public last fall, a grueling process that had consumed him and his senior managers.

He’d stepped down as CEO in June. His idea.

One of his smarter moves had been to get Dylan, fresh out of the NHL and looking for something new to do, to help with NAK. He’d eased back from day-to-day involvement now, too.

NAK would have gone bust within months without Dylan’s help. Dylan knew how to read people. He knew how to fight in a way Noah didn’t.

They were both keenly aware that a central challenge for a newly public company was to figure out what to do with the founder. Sometimes the best thing for the company was for the founder to stay on as CEO, or at least remain deeply involved in the stewardship of his or her creation.

Sometimes the best thing was for the founder to find something else to do.

Like spend a few days hiking on the other side of the continent.

Noah decided to focus on that problem another time. “I promise I won’t step foot in that ballroom until I’ve had a shower,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to scare the ladies.”

Dylan grunted. “More like turn everyone off their hors d’oeuvres.”

Noah grinned, leaning back on one arm as he surveyed the view of the mixed hardwood forest they were about to enter, a relief after the rugged, open terrain above the tree line. At over 6000 feet, Mount Washington was the highest peak in the east and one of the deadliest mountains in the world, in part because of its proximity to a large and mobile population, in part because of its changeable and often extreme weather conditions. Noah liked it because unlike the other mountains in what was known as the Presidential Range—a series of high peaks named after U.S. presidents—Mount Washington had a weather observatory and a full café with hot dogs at the top.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had hot dogs, but he’d helped himself to two on his brief stay on the summit.

“It’s a beautiful spot, Dylan,” Noah said, meaning it, “but the same mosquito that bit me yesterday at the Lake in the Clouds has found me again. I think it followed me up and down this mountain.”

“It’s not the same mosquito, Noah.”

“I hate mosquitoes.”

“At least it’s only one. It could be a hundred.”

“Maybe my lack of showering discouraged reinforcements.”

Dylan grinned at him. “You and mosquitoes. Imagine if you didn’t have bug repellant.”

“No, thanks.”

“You never hiked up Mount Washington while you were at MIT?”

Noah shook his head. “Never even considered it.”

“Too busy doing math problems,” Dylan said, amused.

Math problems. Noah sighed. He had explained countless times in his long friendship with Dylan—practically since first grade—that “math problems” was too simplistic. It didn’t explain how his mind worked.

“I’m not good at math,” Dylan added.

“You don’t like math. There’s a difference. And your idea of ‘math’ is arithmetic. Adding fractions.”

“I can add fractions. It’s multiplying them that does me in.”

Noah glanced at Dylan but couldn’t tell if he was serious.

“We shouldn’t sit too long,” Dylan said. “We don’t have much farther to go, but we want to make it down the mountain in time to get to Boston and turn into swashbucklers.”

For a split second, Noah imagined himself lying back on the boulder and taking a nap. They’d encountered high winds, fog and temperatures in the low fifties on the last thousand feet or so to the summit. He appreciated the clear, quiet weather and relative warmth lower on the mountain. It was even sunny. By the time they reached the trailhead at Pinkham Notch, it would be in the seventies. He’d peeled off his jacket on the descent and continued in his special moisture-wicking Patagonia T-shirt and hiking pants. Dylan, who was built like a bull, was in Carhartt. Noah was fair and lean, more one for sessions in the gym or dojo than treks in the wilderness. Dylan had decided a few days in the White Mountains would be good for Noah.

Same with the masquerade ball tonight.

Good for him.

Noah had gone along. Why not? It wasn’t as if he had a whole lot else to do. Not like even just a couple of months ago. A year, two years, ten years ago, he’d navigated a hectic schedule that would have flattened most people he knew. So had Dylan.

“You couldn’t sign me up for a simple black-tie ball,” Noah said, sitting up straight on the New England granite. “No. No way. My best friend since first grade has to sign me up for a masquerade. I have to wear a costume.”

“More or less. It’s not like Halloween.” Dylan was clearly unmoved by Noah’s complaints. “All in the name of fun and a good cause.”

“Right.” Noah drank some water from his water bottle, relieved that he didn’t see any mosquitoes. “I’ve agreed to dress up in whatever swashbuckler outfit you’ve managed to find for me, but I’m skipping the long-haired wig and funny beard.”

“Just not the sword,” Dylan said.

Noah grinned. “Never the sword.”

“A reenactment musketeer rapier is waiting for you in Boston. No one needs to know it’s you behind the black mask. I understand you don’t want your photo turning up on some gossip website asking if the most eligible bachelor in San Diego has lost his mind.”

“Dylan, why do I have the feeling you aren’t taking my concerns seriously?”

“Because I’m not. You’d have even more women flocking to you if they could see you in your swordfighting duds.”

Swordfighting duds. Noah shook his head. Expecting Dylan to appreciate proper fencing terminology was a waste of time. No doubt he felt the same when it came to Noah and the nuances of hockey.

“The costume has a cape, too,” Dylan added.

“There’s no hope for you, my friend.”

Dylan shrugged as he drank some of his own water.

“You used to be the most eligible bachelor in San Diego,” Noah said.

“Best-looking. You were always more eligible. You just have a habit of choosing the wrong women.”

Noah tucked his water bottle into the side mesh pocket on his pack and got to his feet, lifting the pack onto one shoulder. “What wrong women?”

“Hollywood babes for starters,” Dylan said, standing with his pack.