Truly, Madly

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “ ‘Jingle Bells’? It’s barely November.”

  “It’s never too early for Christmas.”

  He smiled, and it sent my heart pounding crazily in my chest. For a second there, I thought maybe I’d be taking the same trip to Mass General my father had.

  “I’ll do a search, see what turns up. I’ll have news for you as soon as possible.”

  “I know you’re busy,” I said, recalling what he’d said on the phone about needing to work through the files stacked on his desk.

  Only . . . his desk was perfectly clear, except for a pad of paper, a pen, a phone, and a picture of two adorable little girls—Sam’s daughters, Sean’s nieces.

  Obviously Sean hadn’t wanted to go home and had lied to his—I checked for a wedding band—his girlfriend?

  His look dared me to question him.

  Nope. No way.

  For some reason, I thought it best to keep my distance from Sean. I stood, grasped my file folders. “Thanks for your help.”

  “Don’t thank me yet.”

  “I’ll just,” I motioned toward the door, “see myself out.”

  He nodded.

  I took the stairs slowly. My heart was still acting funny, feeling as though it had skipped beats, in addition to the palpitations I felt earlier.

  Outside, the reporter had finally gone. Darkness had fallen, and the street lamps flooded the area with light. I waited for Raphael, who was probably circling since all the spots along Beacon were taken.

  I pulled out my phone, saw that Dovie had left a message. I dialed into my voice mail.

  “LucyD, have I got the man for you! Met him today at the Hingham market. He’s a meat cutter there. A doll. A genuine doll. You have a date for tomorrow night. Oh, his name is Butch. Butch is a butcher. How’s that for coincidence? He’s perfect for you! Gotta run. Ciao!”

  “No, no, no, no,” I mumbled.

  Raphael honked.

  I opened the door, climbed in, and fairly collapsed against the seat.

  He took one look at me and said, “Do you want me to drive you home?”

  “Thanks, but no. The commuter boat is fine.” I’d use the thirty-five-minute ride to clear my head.

  “Bad day, Uva?” he asked.

  Let’s see. My parents skipped town, leaving me behind to run a company I had no business being in charge of; there was a little boy possibly lost in the woods I could do nothing to find; I saw a vision of a ring on a skeleton of someone who’d probably been murdered; I made a fool out of myself in front of Sean Donahue; and my grandmother had set me up with a meat cutter named Butch.

  Worst of all, I conjured that one clear image I’d seen while I shook Sean’s hand. . . . It had been of the two of us.

  In bed. Naked.

  “Maybe tomorrow will be better.”

  But I had the uneasy feeling it wouldn’t be.

  FOUR

  Raphael dropped me in front of the Long Wharf Marriott. From there it was a short walk to the commuter boat dock, located at Rowes Wharf, between the hotel and the New England Aquarium. The temperature had dropped with the setting sun.

  I promised to call him if I needed anything.

  “Think about what I said, Uva.”

  “About?”

  “Finding someone for me. It’s time.”

  The heartbreaking loneliness in his voice tore at me, weakening any resolve I had to stay out of his love life. Even if I didn’t have any matchmaking abilities, perhaps a few blind dates to test the waters wouldn’t be so bad.

  “All right,” I said, kissing his cheek.

  He smiled. “Go, there’s the boat now.”

  I hurried toward the dock, dodging vendors and lingering tourists, and boarded. Instead of heading inside the warm cabin, I walked along the deck, drawing my trench coat tighter.

  My many thoughts swam, nearly drowning each other out.

  Seagulls circled overhead as the boat turned toward the Hingham Shipyard, crowded with the early-evening rush. The bow cut through the harbor water, leaving behind a mesmerizing wake.

  My thoughts circled around Sean Donahue and what I’d seen when we touched.

  The two of us. In bed. Together. Naked.

  Had it been an actual vision? Or simply wishful thinking?

  True, he was an attractive man. And I’d definitely been attracted.

  But the vision had been so clear. So real.

  I grasped onto the railing, the cold biting into my fingers.

  If it had been a true vision I couldn’t explain it, I didn’t understand it, and I simply couldn’t wrap my head around it. My grip tightened.

  My type of ESP related only to lost objects, and that certainly didn’t pertain to what I’d seen in the images of me with Sean. Not even close.

  Frustrated, I fished my cell phone out of my bag and did the only thing I could think of.

  I called my mother.

  Overhead, a crescent moon peekabooed with fluffy dark clouds. Slivers of moonbeams danced along the water. Usually I found the image peaceful. Today I was in a state that refused to be pacified, despite the beauty stretching out in front of me.

  Mum answered on the third ring. She and Dad were in Miami, waiting for their connection to St. Lucia.

  “Is something wrong, LucyD?”

  The nickname made me smile. My mother and Dovie had been calling me LucyD for as long as I could remember. Short for “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” the Beatle song I was named after.

  “Kind of,” I said. “I had a vision.”

  “Did someone lose something?”

  I flashed to the diamond ring and the skeleton it had been with. I shivered—and not from the cold.

  That problem, however, would have to wait.

  “No,” I said, turning so the wind wouldn’t cause static. “I had a vision of . . . the future.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Fairly.”

  “How fabulous.”

  Leave it to my mom to be unfazed. The boat slid through the water. Lights from the shore twinkled prettily. “Is it? Do you think it’s really possible? Could I have been hallucinating?”

  Her laugh didn’t cheer me. “To my knowledge, you’ve never once hallucinated. You’re the sanest person I know. Quite a miracle, considering your bloodlines.”

  I wasn’t sure if she was referring to her side of the family or my father’s.

  It was a toss-up, either way.

  She went on. “You know yourself better than I do, Lucy.”

  I wished it were true. When it came to my abilities, the truth was I knew very little. After the electrical surge, I thought my psychic abilities were gone forever. The colorful auras I used to see around people had disappeared in, well, a flash. It wasn’t until a chance encounter with Raphael when he lost his wallet that I realized I could find lost objects. My family’s insistence on secrecy limited any scientific testing. The truth was, I didn’t know of what I was capable.

  I wanted to vent, but there was really no one I could talk to about how I was feeling. Only Mum, Dad, Dovie, and Raphael knew about my gift. And look where talking to my mother had gotten me so far. I was still as lost as I had been when I left the office.

  It was times like these when I wished more people knew what I could do. My friends. Suz. Anyone who could help me sort out my confusing life.

  “But do you think it’s possible?” I realized my teeth were chattering and started for the door leading into the boat’s cabin. “Probable?”

  “Lucy, I’ve come to expect anything is possible.”

  “But what do I do about it?”

  There was a long stretch of silence, and I thought I’d lost the connection. “Mum?”

  “I’m here. I think that only you can answer that question.”

  I was scared she might be right.

  “We’re boarding, Lucy. I don’t know what kind of service I’ll have on the island, so I might not be able to check in for a while.
As soon as I can, I will.”

  I hung up, dissatisfied. With the odd vision. With my parents.

  Stressed, I ducked into the cabin and decided that not thinking about anything to do with visions might be my best option at this point. Which was easier said than done.

  By the time I’d found my car parked in the lot at the Hingham Shipyard and blasted the heater, I decided to try to forget I’d ever had the vision of Sean and me together.

  I’d just pretend it never happened and be done with it. Otherwise, I was going to drive myself crazy with what-ifs and hows.

  Instead of turning left on 3A toward home, I went right. If I was going to pretend that the vision I’d had of me and Sean wasn’t real, then I needed something else to occupy my thoughts.

  That something else was Michael Lafferty and the missing diamond ring.

  A few miles north, I pulled into a Dunkin’ Donuts lot and parked. I fought the urge to run in and get a pumpkin spice latte and a French cruller to go.

  I switched off the radio, tilted my seat back. The heater warmed my hands, my feet, my face.

  Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath, let it out. I allowed myself to relax enough to see the vision of the ring again, trying to slow the images down. I knew from the first time around that the ring wasn’t too far from where I was parked now. I just needed clearer directions from this point.

  Vertigo washed over me, spinning my thoughts. Round and round, I fought the dizziness while trying to sort out street names, landmarks. Left at the intersection, left a side road, through a gated parking lot, up a paved trail, up a stone staircase, through a thick copse of trees . . .

  Finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore and sat up, my head still spinning. My stomach bobbed, and I switched off the heater and powered down my window. Cold blasted in. I took deep breaths.

  The vision hadn’t changed the second time around.

  My cell phone rang, startling me. I glanced at the readout. Dovie again.

  I couldn’t deal with her and her matchmaking right now.

  Starting the car, I followed the route my vision had mapped out. A few minutes later, my headlights slid across two metal gates that had closed off the small, dark parking lot for Great Esker Park.

  I idled, staring ahead to where the trailhead began, but didn’t get out. I couldn’t bring myself to do it. It was too dark. Too cold. Too creepy.

  My cell phone rang again, nearly scaring me out of my seat. The number that came up was unfamiliar. I didn’t answer it, fearing it could be that annoying reporter or worse—Butch, the butcher.

  A second later, my phone beeped. I checked my voice mail. Something primal washed over me when I heard Sean Donahue’s voice.

  So much for forgetting.

  “Lucy, I wanted to let you know I’m still working on your request. I’m going to do a little more checking and will call you back in an hour or so.”

  He didn’t say good-bye.

  A chill seeped into the car. I fussed with the heater, still unable to bring myself to get out of the car and poke around the area.

  One thought kept recurring as I sat there, trying to build courage.

  Was Jennifer dead?

  I stared at the woods rising up along a steep ridgeline. Who else would have access to Michael’s ring? And he did say he hadn’t seen her in years . . . that she’d essentially disappeared.

  And for some reason I couldn’t stop thinking that Michael lived near here somewhere.

  How close?

  Spurred on by this thought, I drove back to the Dunkin’ Donuts, rounded the drive-thru, and ordered that latte. As I paid the tired-looking cashier, I asked for directions to Michael’s house, using the address from his portfolio.

  As I wound my way down side roads, I drove farther and farther away from the park. At least five miles.

  Turning left onto a dead-end road, I coasted, looking for the right house. Michael’s was the corner house on a street of only ten homes. Dark woods loomed at the end of the street, the dismal light from an ancient street lamp not nearly enough to illuminate the whole area.

  I slowed in front of the small gambrel-style home, sparsely—but neatly—landscaped. No picket fence in sight.

  I’d answered my question—he lived nowhere near the park.

  I relaxed a little and finally admitted what I’d been afraid to even think. That Michael might be responsible for the skeleton being in the woods.

  It was time to go. The last thing I wanted was to get caught out here, snooping.

  As I rolled forward to make a three-point turn, like an apparition a figure came walking out of the woods at the end of the street. He was tall and had a dog prancing at his heels.

  My headlights outlined his face. It was Michael.

  Shit.

  There was nowhere for me to go. I was caught. Slowly, I rolled down the window.

  “Ms. Valentine?” he asked, squinting in the light of the street lamp. “What are you doing here?”

  What was I doing here? “Um, I, ah, like to see where my clients live. Get a better idea of who they are. And please call me Lucy.”

  He nodded appreciatively. “Very thorough of you.”

  Thorough. Right. I could work with that.

  “Lucy, this is Little Rabbit Foo Foo. I call her Foo for short,” he added, rubbing the golden retriever’s head.

  “You didn’t like her attitude?” I asked, watching the way the dog looked up at him with adoring eyes.

  “You’ve read the book,” Michael said, his voice deep and oddly soothing.

  “I once worked in a day care.”

  He laughed. “She was a handful as a puppy. And this is my place.” He gestured to the house. “It’s not much, but it’s home.” His breath puffed out in small white clouds. “Do you want a tour?”

  “Actually, I should be getting home. Like I said, I just wanted to see it. A drive-by if you will.”

  The clouds shifted, spreading moonlight across the street. At the end of the road, I could clearly see the opening, a path, and a brown sign that was too far away for me to read.

  A sense of foreboding washed over me.

  “This is a nice area.” I pointed in the direction of the path. “What’s over there?”

  “Oh, that?” Michael said. “It’s part of Great Esker Park. The path goes for miles.”

  The hair on my neck stood on end.

  Michael rubbed Foo’s head. “We go for lots of walks there, don’t we, Foo?” His gaze held mine, chilling me to the bone as he added, “I know it like the back of my hand.”

  FIVE

  I took 3A south toward home in Cohasset.

  Wealth flowed in this small coastal town on the South Shore of Massachusetts. Old money, mostly, as this was once where Boston’s elite summered. Over time, though, newcomers trickled in, building bigger and more beautiful year-round estates. As I turned off the main road, heading toward the ocean, I drove slowly though twisting roads, canopied with the spindly branches of dormant trees. Leaves scattered along the street, and my headlights cut through the creeping darkness.

  My grandmother’s estate was on Atlantic Avenue, one of this area’s most scenic roads. From here the mansions and estates overlooking the ocean often had the street packed with sightseers on the weekends, driving slowly, gaping, dreaming.

  I carefully rolled into the mailbox pull-off and gathered my bills from one of the two boxes. Gravel spit as I navigated between two stacked stone columns flanking the private driveway sloping upward toward home. “AERIE” had been embossed in a flowing white script on a brick red wooden sign attached to one of the columns. The estate had originally been named “White Cap,” but once Dovie had divorced Grandpa Henry, the name had been immediately changed.

  Tall evergreens lined the driveway near street level, giving way to maples and beech trees and finally expansive lawns and gardens already bedded down for the winter. Straight ahead, the gravel road circled in front of Dovie’s house, a sprawling New England colonial?
??a slate-roofed, shingled masterpiece that overshadowed the charming cottage I lived in. The drive took a jog to the right, turning into a crushed-shell lane, and I followed it a quarter mile downhill to my home, which had once been an artist’s studio for the original owner of the main house, built over a hundred years ago.

  Both places sat high atop a bluff, overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. We had no beach access—unless one wanted to plunge fifty feet into the rocky ocean below. It was a stunning view.

  Come the height of winter, I’d park my car in Dovie’s three-car garage, but until the snow fell in earnest I liked to be close to my front door.

  Grendel twined around my legs as soon as I walked into the house. Immediately I was glad I’d forgone the donut. The scent of something exotic and wonderful filled the air with the promise of a delicious dinner. That could only mean one thing.

  Dovie was here.

  Sure enough, she stood in the kitchen, her back to me. She hummed while she stirred something in a pan on the stovetop.

  I set my things down on the sofa, made my way across the tiny living room.

  Grendel, a three-legged Maine Coon cat given to me by Marisol, my best friend since we were five, tapped at my jeans until I picked him up. I stroked his long orange-cream and white fur until he purred happily.

  Having Dovie drop in at a moment’s notice was the downfall of living on her property.

  It was the only negative.

  I loved everything about my one-bedroom house. The tiny size, the open floor plan, the enormous windows, the view of the Atlantic, the seclusion and the serenity. Dovie had given me free rein to decorate as I wished, and I chose an English country style that complemented the architecture of the estate. Overstuffed furniture, deep colors, cushy rugs over the original plank floors. I hadn’t been able to afford many quality pieces, so my place was sparsely furnished at this point, but I adored it.

  It had taken a lot of stubbornness on my part to get Dovie to accept rent. When I’d cut myself off from my family’s fortune, I’d meant it.

  Dovie, however, reminded me often that she had been putting my rent money into a mutual fund that would someday be mine.

  My mother was just as bad, mentioning that my trust fund was waiting for me when I “came to my senses.”