“I don’t think you are all right,” Stephen said. “Hey! I have an idea. Why don’t I let your dad and mine take the kids camping and I come up there? I could be there tonight—”
“No!” Amy said, then drew in her breath. The last thing she wanted was for him to see her face as it was, but there was something else. She was enjoying her time alone and…“I mean, no. I have to play this out. I have to do what I’m supposed to do.”
“Supposed to do?” Stephen asked. “Amy, what’s going on up there?”
“Nothing. It’s nothing. It’s just…I don’t know, it’s interesting. Look, you better go with the boys. They’d never forgive me if I ruined their trip.”
“Sure,” Stephen said slowly. “But Amy, if you need anything, I’m here. You know that, don’t you? And you know that I love you, don’t you?”
“Yes, of course,” Amy said quickly, then hung up. She realized that she’d not told him she loved him and she almost called him back, but she didn’t. It was better to let them leave on their trip that they so looked forward to. A trip without her.
Amy got dressed quickly, spent fifteen minutes doing all she could to cover the bruises on her face, and left the summerhouse before the others did. She had an idea and she wanted to research it. What she wanted to do was see if she could find out anything about an Englishman named Hawthorne. Of course, the sensible thing would have been to stay in the house and search on the Internet, but there was something that seemed to be pulling her to the little bookstore.
When she opened the door to the shop, a bell rang and she smiled. The place looked like something out of an old movie, just as she hoped it would, with books piled everywhere. There were shelves full of them, and chairs and tables were covered. She could see that underneath the books the furniture was antique. She smiled as she thought that from the look of the place the furniture had been new when it was put in the store.
“May I help you?”
She turned to see an old man with white hair and a straight carriage that made her think he’d spent his life in the military. “I’m looking for something about the history of England in…I guess it would be the eighteenth century, the time of Williamsburg. Personal history. I’m not interested in the kings and queens.”
“I think we have what you need,” the man said as he started walking toward the back of the store.
He led her into a room that had been set up like a study in someone’s house. There was a deep-set window with a cushioned seat beneath it, half a dozen old pillows on the seat. A big comfy chair sat in a corner with a brass reading light above it. A coffee table in the middle was covered with books and even a pair of reading glasses.
“Here we are,” he said. “I think that if you look in this section, you’ll find what you need.” The bell on the front door sounded. “Ah, if you’ll excuse me, I will see to them. Take your time,” he said. “Take all the time you need.”
“Yes, thank you,” she said, as he left the room to go into the main part of the store.
Amy liked the smell of old books and she liked the look of the shelves bowing under the weight of what had to be thousands of volumes. She went to the far wall and began to read titles. That case seemed to be about medieval history. But what she’d seen in her dream was later than that.
Turning, she looked out the window. There was a field full of wildflowers behind the store and the sunlight on them was beautiful.
As she looked back at the room setting, she thought how much she loved it. Stephen had often told her that she’d read so many historical romances that she should start writing them. “Maybe I should,” she whispered as she looked at the book titles.
She spent an hour happily rummaging, pulling one book after another out and looking at it, then sliding it back into place. Even though the store was in a tiny town in Maine, the owner certainly did have a good collection of titles on English history. They went from the Norman conquest to the Mitford sisters.
As Amy looked at the books, she thought she’d like to take the entire selection—and the room—home with her. She’d like to just pick the whole thing up and move it back to her own house.
I’d have my own summerhouse, she thought. Last year Stephen had said something like that, that they could build a little house in the back for her. “Why would I want that?” she’d asked.
“Just to get away from us,” he’d said.
“I don’t want to get away from you. You three are my whole life.”
Stephen had frowned at that and she didn’t know why. But today she thought maybe she did understand it. Did she hover too much? Did she boss them around too much? Was she too possessive? Stephen’s father rarely visited them because he said Amy had too many damned rules for his taste. He wanted to have a good time and he didn’t want to be told what to do.
For the first time in days she thought of the baby she’d lost. Had her sadness been about the baby or because her plans hadn’t been realized?
Frowning, she put the book she was holding back onto the shelf. There were tall volumes at the top, but she couldn’t reach them. She looked about and saw a little stool in a corner, picked it up, moved it in front of the case and climbed on it. She still had to stretch to see the top shelf.
They seemed to be genealogy books. How to find your ancestors, that sort of thing. She wasn’t interested in them and was about to step down when a name caught her eye. A small book with a spine no more than a half-inch wide had a single name on it. All she could see was “awthor” but it was enough to pique her interest. She reached for it, stretching as far as she could. She had just touched it when she lost her balance and fell.
When she hit the floor, she put her arms over her head, expecting the entire case to come tumbling down on her, but it didn’t. Instead, the book she’d been trying to reach neatly fell into her lap.
“Good shot,” she said aloud as she picked up the book and opened it. It had been published in 1838 and its title was The Tragedy of the Hawthorne Family As Told by Someone Who Knows.
For a moment Amy just sat there staring at the title page, then she got up and went to the window seat and began to read. The sun came in bright and clear and she read, fascinated.
“There you are!” Zoë said, frowning at Amy.
She looked up, blinking. Zoë had on a raincoat and water was dripping off her shoulders.
“I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”
“I’ve been here for—” She looked at her watch. It was nearly three P.M. “My goodness, I’ve been here for hours. I just finished the most interesting book. I think I found the man I dreamed about.”
“You have a dreamboat, remember? I get the imaginary one. Have you had lunch?”
“No,” Amy said, uncurling herself off the window seat. “It was so nice here, with the sun shining in, that I lost track of time.”
“Sun? Are you out of your mind? It’s been raining for hours. If it keeps on like this the ocean level will rise.”
Amy glanced out the window and, sure enough, it was raining. Besides that, she saw that there was an ugly old stone warehouse just a few feet out the window, not the field of wildflowers that she’d seen every time she’d glanced up.
“Are you okay?” Zoë asked impatiently.
“Sure,” Amy said, but still blinking in bewilderment. Between what she’d read and the oddity of the rain and no rain, she was feeling a bit dazed.
“Faith wants us to meet her for tea at some shop about a half mile from here. We’ll have to walk through mud to get there. You look funny.”
“I know,” Amy said. “I’m sure the makeup’s worn off.”
“No, you can hardly see that. It’s just…” She trailed off, then shrugged. “I’ve been around Jeanne too long and I’m reading too much into everything. Do you want to go or not?”
“Oh yes, I want to go.” She opened the little book to the front end papers to see if there was a price on it. Of course she’d have to buy it no matter what it cost. It
was five dollars.
“What’s that?”
Amy saw that Zoë was looking at something on the floor. “I think it fell out of the book.” She picked it up and looked at it. It was a business card.
Futures, Inc.
“Have you ever wanted to rewrite your past?”
Madame Zoya can help
333 Everlasting Street
“If that’s a business card, take it. It’ll be our first one for Jeanne.”
Amy slipped the card back into the book and held on to it as tightly as she held her children’s hands when they crossed the street.
At the front of the store, Amy paused to pay the old gentleman while Zoë waited outside under an umbrella.
“Did you find what you needed?” he asked politely.
“Yes, I did,” she said. “And I especially enjoyed the sunshine and the field of wildflowers.”
The man took a moment to reply, as though he were trying to decide what to say. Act as though he had no idea what she was talking about? Or acknowledge what she’d said?
When he looked up at Amy, his eyes were twinkling. “We do so like to please our customers.”
“You have pleased me very much,” she said as she took the receipt from him. She paused at the door. “If you should come across a book that has some designs for summerhouses in it, I’d like to buy it. I want something old-fashioned, Victorian maybe.”
“With or without plumbing?”
“With, certainly,” she said.
“I’ll see what I can find and send it over to Mrs. Hightower’s house.”
Amy gave him a radiant smile. “Thank you.”
The old man smiled back as she left the store.
“What was that all about?” Zoë asked. “I thought you were going to ask him out on a date.”
“No, I was just asking him about another book I want.”
“We’ll have to share the umbrella,” Zoë said as she started to walk, but Amy held out her hand.
“I think the rain’s stopped.”
“Great!” she said as she closed her umbrella. “It was raining so hard that I couldn’t find this place. I hadn’t seen it before and you gave me directions about the pizza place, but I still couldn’t find it. I found the pizza parlor, but no bookstore, not even an alleyway. And the idiot girl in the shop on the corner said she didn’t know of a bookstore except the one down the street. When I finally found the place, I wanted to drag her here to see it. What a day!”
“Sorry,” Amy said, but she felt no guilt. She knew magic when she saw it, and she knew she’d just experienced it. But Amy had an idea that Zoë wasn’t one to believe in magic. In fact, she didn’t think that Zoë believed in much of anything.
“Did you find out anything last night?” Amy asked.
“Yeah,” Zoë said, then lowered her voice. “I had to pay to subscribe to an online newspaper, but I found out that—” She looked around as though Faith might be behind them. “You can’t tell Faith about what I found out because I think it would upset her a lot.”
“What did you find out?” Amy asked.
“Six months ago two teenagers in Faith’s hometown found a skeleton at the bottom of a cliff. It’s been identified as Tyler Parks.”
“He died?” Amy asked as she stopped walking. “That poor, poor man. I wonder—”
“No,” Zoë said. “You’re not understanding. He didn’t die, he was murdered.”
“Murdered? But—”
“The article said that the skeleton was years old, at least fifteen.”
“Fifteen? But that means that he died not long after Faith saw him.”
“Not died,” Zoë said louder. “Murdered. There was a hole in his skull, like someone hit him on the head with something heavy, like a rock, maybe.”
Amy took a moment to think about all this. “Are you sure Faith doesn’t know about this?”
“Yes. I called Jeanne but she was no help. She had never heard of Tyler Parks.”
Amy looked at Zoë in disbelief. “Faith didn’t tell her therapist about this man who meant so much to her?”
“I guess not. I tried to get Jeanne to tell me some things about Faith, but she’d only tell facts. After her husband died, Faith moved away from that little town where she grew up, and she’s been living in New York for the last year and going to Jeanne three times a week. It wasn’t easy to get info out of Jeanne, but she told me that if Faith hadn’t agreed to therapy, her mother-in-law was going to press charges and keep her in jail for as long as her money could buy. It seems that Faith didn’t just punch the woman a couple of times; she went berserk and attacked her with everything she had, including a few plates. The old woman was in the hospital for two weeks.”
“Our quiet little Faith?” Amy said, looking down the street to where they were to meet her.
“It seems that Faith has a great deal more anger inside her than she lets on.”
“She has reason to be angry,” Amy said, “but I haven’t seen it. Faith seems so down-to-earth, so sane. I can’t imagine her attacking anyone.” She started walking, but Zoë caught her arm.
“There’s something else.”
“What?” Amy asked.
“Jeanne didn’t say anything directly, but she kept asking me what kind of mood Faith was in. Happy? Despondent? In despair? That sort of thing.”
“Okay, so now you’re giving me the creeps. We don’t have to bolt our bedroom doors, do we?”
“No. I think that Jeanne was hinting that Faith tends to take her unhappiness out on herself.”
“You mean suicide?”
“That would be my guess,” Zoë said, then when she saw Amy’s face, she said, “So help me, if you let Faith know we know this, I’ll…I’ll tear up that drawing of your husband.”
“If you do, I’ll have this one.” Amy took the book she’d bought out of the little bag and flipped it open to a photo of an oil painting. The caption under it read Lord Tristan James Hawthorne, Sixth Earl of Eastlon, 1763–1797.
Zoë’s mouth dropped open at the sight of the portrait. The man was an exact likeness of the one she’d drawn. She looked at Amy in astonishment. “Where did you find this?”
“In the bookstore. He’s the man in your drawing and the man in my dream.”
“What…?” Zoë began. “How…?”
“Come on, let’s go meet Faith. Let’s get her to talk so we don’t have to tell her that you were snooping into her life.”
Zoë ignored Amy’s jibe. “If Faith ever visits her hometown again, or looks on the Internet, she’s going to find out.”
“Gee, that reminds me of someone else I met recently. If you ever went back to your hometown or searched on the Internet, I bet you would find out a lot about what happened to you.”
“I don’t think I like you very much,” Zoë said, glaring at Amy.
“That’s funny, because the more time I spend with you, the more I like you.” She smiled at Zoë’s frown. “I’m starving, so let’s go get something to eat, then we’ll go to the grocery and get something for tonight. With the way you pack away the wine, we’ll need four bottles.”
“I want to borrow that book,” Zoë said.
“Hold your breath,” Amy said, laughing as she walked ahead toward the place where they were to have tea.
Nine
“So what did you two do today?” Faith asked as she ate a buttered scone.
Zoë and Amy could only stare at the difference in her. Faith’s hair was now shoulder length and it had been dyed to a deep auburn. She had on makeup and her green eyes glistened. She’d also bought a new outfit of dark brown trousers and a cream-colored shirt. She’d topped it with an expensive-looking red leather jacket.
“Where did you get those clothes?” Amy asked in awe. “I haven’t seen anything that didn’t have a duck embroidered on it.”
“The hairdresser told me about the place. It’s really a woman who sells out of her house. She said she hates tourists so she sells only to
people who have been recommended to her.”
“Your hair looks great,” Amy said.
“She did do a good job, didn’t she?” Faith said as she touched her hair.
“Okay, enough of that,” Zoë said. “I think Amy’s going to sell her firstborn kid to go to that dress shop. Amy, show Faith what you found.”
“Okay.” It took Amy a few moments to collect herself enough to remember what she’d done all day. She took the book from the bag and opened it. “I went to the nicest little bookshop, with the nicest little man running it. I told him I was interested in an English family named Hawthorne and—”
“How did you know they were English?” Zoë asked.
“Didn’t I tell you that everyone in my dream spoke with an English accent?”
“No,” Faith said, “but tell us what you found.”
She handed the open book to Faith.
“But this is Zoë’s man,” Faith said. “He looks just like the man you drew. And he—” She broke off. “Of course. Now I see it. I knew there was something about him that I recognized.”
“What?” Amy asked.
“The real Hawthorne,” she said. “Nathaniel Hawthorne. This man looks a lot like the man who wrote The House of Seven Gables. It’s not him, of course, but there is a strong resemblance. It was said that Hawthorne was so beautiful that people stopped in the street to look at him. It made him a recluse, which is good for us since while he was hiding away, he wrote. With the names the same, they have to be related. I’ll bet some Ph.D. students have written papers about the families.”
She handed the book back to Amy. “Do you think you read about the man somewhere and incorporated him into your dream?”
“You sound just like Jeanne,” Zoë said. “I think Amy was his wife in a past life, and they were so in love that he now haunts her in her dreams.”