True Love

  “What’s that?” Alix pointed to a rectangle drawn beside the washhouse. Last night she’d been too sleepy to do more than look at the drawing.

  “It says SOAP. I guess Valentina stored her soap there.”

  Alix took the sketch, pointed the front of the house toward the sea, then looked to her right where the washhouse was drawn. There was no distance given, so it could be fifty feet or a hundred yards, as the property was quite large.

  The only thing near the washhouse was a funny little icon of two round circles with a rectangle connecting them with the word SOAP written beside it.

  Alix and Jared looked at each other, having no idea what the symbol meant, but it was west of the house so they walked that way. The centuries had covered the ground with fierce little bushes and it was slow moving through them.

  A short distance from the house, Alix saw a chest-high rock and another near it. There were some boulders on the island, left over from some long-ago glacier, and these two were only about six feet apart.

  “They’ve been flattened here,” Alix said, running her hand across the top of the first rock. Someone had chiseled out a place on the top surface and a matching one was on the other rock. It was subtle, not something a person would notice, but a tabletop could be held in the chiseled places.

  Jared looked at the map. “If this was a table—”

  “Or open shelves to hold the drying soap molds,” Alix said.

  “Right. Then the washhouse was …” He stepped over about three feet. “Here.” Reaching down, he scraped out a stone from the sandy soil. It was a round rock, the kind used in a fireplace, and under it was a very old piece of rusty metal. It looked to be the handle of a big washtub.

  Alix smiled. “Looks like Parthenia did draw a good map.”

  Jared gave a one-sided grin.

  “Petticoat Row rules again!”

  Jared laughed. “Stop bragging and let’s go get some shovels. This has to be dug out by hand.”

  Twig’s men stopped work on the chapel to help find the washhouse. Over the years they’d found many artifacts—coins, ivory, buttons—in the old houses they’d remodeled, but no matter how many things they discovered, each one was of interest.

  It didn’t take much digging to see that a building had once been on the site. There were a few pieces of charred timbers, broken china, more scrap metal. After about an hour, they had the stone of the basement outlined. They could see where the foundation of the big fireplace had been and started digging there.

  The men took turns, filling the bucket, then the wheelbarrow. Alix stayed under a tree with Tyler, trying to keep him occupied so he wouldn’t get in the way. At first she’d tried to keep him clean but soon found out that wasn’t possible. They broke for lunch and started again an hour later. It was slow going, as the old stones needed the dirt to hold them in place. Three times they had to stop to construct forms to fortify the stones. Two trips were made to Island Lumber to buy reinforcing materials.

  It was late afternoon when Jared called to Alix. “I think we have something.”

  She picked up Tyler and went to what was now an impressively large hole. Jared and Dennis, the tile setter, were at the bottom. Some stones had fallen out of the thick walls and the men were standing in rubble. Jared stepped back to expose what they’d uncovered. Just behind him, set deep into the stone, was a rusty iron door. All the men were standing over the hole, looking down, and watching. Dave, the cabinetmaker, passed down a crowbar to Jared. After a look at Alix, he pried the door open.

  She held her breath as he reached inside. Slowly, he pulled out a corroded metal box, the kind used for holding tea.

  He started to open the box, but then held it up to Alix. Bending, she took it, and waited until Jared was out of the hole and beside her. It took several minutes and a putty knife to loosen the lid. Even then Alix had to stick her fingertips under the rim and pull hard before the old box opened. Centuries were holding it together.

  When the top came up, she took a breath, glanced at Jared, then back down at the box. With a creak, the lid moved back on its hinges.

  Inside was a leatherbound book. Considering where it had been for the last two hundred years, it was in good condition. The cover was a little moldy but the pages hadn’t crumbled. But then it had been protected by the stone enclosure and the box.

  Alix reached inside as though she meant to take out the journal, but then she looked at Jared. Their eyes met and they seemed to speak in silence to each other. There were other people who deserved a first look at this book.

  With a smile, she nodded at him, and Jared closed the lid and took the box from her.

  “I think we should save this for your … relative, Caleb.” She was teasing because she had yet to find out who the mysterious Caleb was. “He’s the one who told me how to find the journal, so I think he should see it first.”

  “Hey, Jared,” Dave said, “isn’t Caleb the ghost in your house?” He was grinning. “Didn’t he cause a lot of people to drown and that’s why your family’s never used the name again?”

  Jared gave Dave a look to shut up but that didn’t quell him in the least. All the men were looking at them, waiting for Jared’s answer.

  He looked back at Alix, whose face had drained of color. She knew! “It’s time we got Tyler home,” he said. “Ready to go?”

  All Alix could do was nod.

  Tyler, who’d missed his nap, seemed to know his day’s adventure was about to be over, and he started running around like he’d drunk two cups of espresso. Jimmy headed him off, Eric blocked him, and Joel, who had twins, picked up the boy and handed him to Jared. Tyler acted like he was being imprisoned and wrestled against Jared, but he held the child tightly as he took Alix’s hand and led her to the truck.

  He opened the door, then nudged her inside. As soon as she was seated, Jared reached across her to strap Tyler into his car seat, then closed the door and walked to the other side. By the time he got into the driver’s seat, the boy had twisted around to face Alix and was sound asleep. She was staring straight ahead, holding on to the boy’s hand as though he were a life preserver and they were alone at sea.

  Jared glanced at her but Alix didn’t look away from the windshield. He started the engine.

  “Did I …? Is he …?” Alix’s voice was barely a whisper.

  Jared thought about going into a long-winded explanation, something that would calm her down. But he knew that in the end the answer would be the same. “Yes.”

  Alix took a deep breath, trying to grasp all of it. When Tyler moved in his sleep, she leaned over to put her cheek against his sun-warmed hair. “You told me about him, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “But I thought you meant a … a …”

  “Foggy light at the top of the stairs?” he said.

  Colorful visions ran through Alix’s mind. Dancing, laughing. What she saw, heard, even smelled. “I think maybe I really did see a scene from Parthenia’s wedding. Oh!” She looked at him. “Parthenia looks just like Jilly Taggert. I was upside down when I met her and I didn’t realize it then. And my father looks like her husband, John Kendricks, which probably means that—” Her voice was rising.

  Jared reached across the seat to take her hand and squeeze it. “It’s okay. Everything will be all right. I’m sorry you got pulled into this. Usually, only we Kingsleys can see him, and then only a few of us can. No off-islander has ever …” He trailed off.

  “Just me,” she said. “An outsider. What is that term I heard? Something about arriving on a beach?”

  “A washashore.”

  “That’s me. I just floated into everything.”

  Jared was still holding her hand as he pulled into the driveway. He shut off the truck, then turned to look at her. He knew he should start at the beginning and tell her about his grandfather from the shipwreck forward. But he didn’t. She didn’t need anything heavy right now. He looked from her to Tyler. “You two look good together.
Still think you want kids of your own?”

  “What does that have to do with—?”

  Bending across the long seat, Jared kissed her sweetly on the mouth. “Did Granddad scare you?”

  “No. Not at the time. We danced and flirted outrageously. I didn’t mean to, but he was, well, rather persuasive.”

  “I’m jealous and my rival is a two-hundred-year-old ghost. How do I compete with that?”

  “He’s not really a rival!” Alix said. “I like you better than—” She stopped because Jared’s eyes were dancing with merriment. He was teasing her! Alix gave him a look of disgust. “You’re a lot like him, you know that?”

  “So I’ve been told.” His face got serious. “Alix, what I know is that right now you have a choice. You can go the horror movie way and be scared out of your mind. You can even leave Nantucket forever if you want to. Or you can take my haunted house with its meddling old ghost in stride and I’ll help you deal with it. I can answer any questions you have, tell you any stories you want to hear. Whatever information I know, I’ll share with you.”

  With the engine no longer running, Tyler began to wake up. Jared took him out of the seat and got out of the truck. But he stood there, holding the child, looking at her, waiting for her decision.

  Alix opened her mouth to ask questions, but there were too many of them. Where to start? Finally, she said, “Do you want children?”

  Jared gave her a smile of such complete and total happiness—and joyous relief—that Alix’s bones seemed to start melting.

  “Yeah,” he said. “At least three of them.” His eyes were boring into hers. “But Granddad says I’m so late getting started that no woman will have me.”

  The last part of that sentence was so absurd she didn’t consider it. “This is that grandfather?”

  “Same one you spent the day dancing with,” Jared said. “Why don’t you go make us some drinks while I take Tyler home? And break out the good rum that Dilys hides in the back of the cabinet over the fridge.” He turned away, but then looked back. “Alix, you’re not a washashore. I don’t understand it, but I’ve never met anyone who belonged to Nantucket more than you do. You see the Kingsley ghost, guzzle rum like a whaler, and you move about my old house like you were born there.”

  His words were making her calm down and she gave a small smile. “I belong here even if I’m not actually a Kingsley?”

  “Oh, well,” he said. “The last name’s easy enough to change in a woman. See you in a few minutes.”

  Alix sat back in the truck. What did that mean? Change a woman’s name? She knew but she couldn’t possibly be right.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Alix sat at the breakfast table watching Jared at the stove. Last night she’d been too tired and too overwhelmed to think clearly. He’d grilled fish and made a salad while she took a shower. When they’d returned from the construction site there’d been a stack of clean clothes and a bag of toiletries for Alix on the bed. A note said:

  I hope these are all right. Ken helped me choose them. Jilly

  Even the evidence of her father with someone hadn’t interested her. As soon as Alix had eaten, she went to bed. Between the exhaustion from Tyler, the excitement of finding the journal, and the shock of hearing that she’d been dancing with a ghost, she slept heavily.

  When she awoke, Jared was already up and dressed and in the kitchen making breakfast. The wonderful aroma of coffee filled the house. In the middle of the table, on a folded dish towel, was the box with the unopened journal inside. But what Alix had found out about Caleb had overridden her interest in the book. Jared kissed her good morning, held her for a long time, and said they could stay there all day if she wanted to. He again said that he’d answer every question she could come up with.

  “Can Dilys? See him, I mean?” Alix asked, but then she put her fingertips to her temples. “No, Dilys was asking me about Caleb, so she can’t … But then everyone seems to have been in on this secret so maybe she can.” She looked at Jared as he poured batter from a carton onto a grill. “Can Lexie see him?”

  “I’m certain Dilys can’t, but I don’t know about Lexie. She keeps things to herself. All of the first-born men in each generation have been able to see and speak to him. The men with numbers for nicknames, that is.”

  She thought about that continuity and the longevity of the man she’d danced with. “I assume you know that in most families the numbers at the end of a name are dropped when someone dies.”

  “True,” Jared said as he turned a pancake. “Which means that by off-island standards I’d be back to number one since none of the others are alive. But Granddad needed help distinguishing one from another so we kept the numbers.”

  “I see,” she said, looking at the back of him, trying to take it all in. “Do you think my mother knows about him?”

  “I have no idea, but she and Aunt Addy were awfully chummy, so my guess is yes.”

  Alix nodded. “What happened to the man Valentina married?”

  “He … I don’t think you want to know.”

  “Go ahead and tell me. I can take it.”

  “Obed beat Caleb’s son severely because the boy was talking to someone Obed couldn’t see.”

  “Was he talking to his father? To Caleb?”

  “Yes, he was, and that night Obed died. It’s been passed down in my family that the expression of terror on his face was so horrible that he could only have died of fright.”

  Alix drew in her breath. “So Caleb can do bad things.”

  “I don’t think that’s correct. Granddad said it was guilt that killed Obed. The man woke up, saw Caleb standing there, and was so afraid of what might happen that he died instantly. There wasn’t even time for Granddad to ask him what happened to Valentina.”

  Alix looked down at the table. “Has he danced with many people?”

  Jared gave a little laugh. “As far as I know, that’s the only time my grandfather has danced with anyone.”

  Alix heard the love in Jared’s voice at the word “grandfather.” She wondered what it was like to grow up with a ghost for a relative. But right now she wasn’t ready to nonchalantly discuss such things. She glanced at the metal box. “What are we going to do with Valentina’s journal? We can’t very well hand it over to a ghost. Well, maybe we could. But …” She looked at him for help.

  “I think there’s only one thing we can do with it,” Jared said, his face absolutely serious.

  At first she didn’t know what he meant, then she saw the sparkle in his eyes. Her face was just as serious as his. “We must use it to protect the floors.”

  Jared grinned. “My thoughts exactly. Do you think that if we give Victoria this journal, we could prevent her from tearing up Kingsley House looking for Aunt Addy’s diaries?”

  “I don’t know. Sometimes Mom is easy to persuade and sometimes she’s impossible. She might insist on writing Aunt Addy’s story first.”

  “There goes the wallpaper,” Jared muttered as he put a stack of pancakes in front of Alix.

  “These look good. I was beginning to think you only knew how to fry fish.”

  “And you’d be right. I found this carton in the fridge and told myself I could do it. How much harder could pancakes be than a skyscraper?”

  Alix gave her first smile of the day—a small one—as she took a bite. “These are quite good.”

  “Thank you,” he said, putting another plate on the table and sitting down. He motioned with his fork to the box. “What are we going to do with this thing?”

  “Give it to Mom on the condition that she swear a blood oath not to dismantle anything in the house looking for Aunt Addy’s journals?” Alix’s head came up. “Maybe Caleb knows where—”

  “Don’t even say it. Of course he knows where they are. I’ve asked him a thousand times. Maybe you could ask him—” He broke off as Alix’s face seemed to lose color. “Too soon?”

  “Oh, yes,” she said. “Much too soon. Too bad Mom ca
n’t see him. I’m sure he’d tell her.”

  “Probably. He likes pretty women.”

  “It’s more than that. Mom is a ringer for Valentina.”

  Jared paused with the fork on the way to his mouth. “What?”

  “I told you all of this,” Alix said. “Or as much as I could before you changed the subject. I saw Parthenia’s wedding. She looks like Jilly and the man she married looks like my dad. It’s interesting that he was named John Kendricks and now he’s a Kenneth. He—”

  Reaching across the table, Jared put his hand over hers. “What about Valentina and Victoria?” His eyes were intense.

  “My mother was Valentina. I saw her at the wedding and Caleb told me how they met. It was quite funny. He—” When Jared abruptly stood up, she could see that he wasn’t listening. “What’s wrong?”

  He turned away so Alix couldn’t see that he was shaking in fear. He could clearly hear what he’d said to his grandfather just before Alix arrived. He even remembered his tone of sarcasm mixed with anger.

  “You’re waiting for the return—or the reincarnation, whatever—of the woman you love, your precious Valentina. And you’ve always been faithful to her. I’ve heard it all before. Heard it all my life. You’ll know her when you see her, then you two will go off into the sunset together. Which means that either she dies or you come back to life.”

  “Jared, are you okay?”

  He took a breath and turned back to her. Above all else, he didn’t want Alix to figure out what he was thinking. He tried to look cheerful. “I hate to do this but I have to go back to the house for an hour or so. For work. Want to go with me?”

  “Not yet,” she said.

  “I can’t leave you alone. I’ll call Lexie and—”

  “No!” Alix said. “I’m not an invalid and I’m not going to imagine that I’m seeing ghosts everywhere.” She paused. “There aren’t any in this house, are there? And can Caleb …?”

  “There are no ghosts here and he can’t leave Kingsley House.”