A Charmed Place (71 page)

By all rights Jane should have been depressed when she saw the cottage in bright morning sun: there seemed to be even less paint and more weeds than she remembered from the day before. But even in its state of forlorn shabbiness, the cottage beckoned to her. Maybe it was the fond memory of her summer there, or maybe it was her natural desire to put things right; whatever the reason, Jane found herself standing in the middle of the mowed-down lawn, hugging herself with anticipation.

It has so much charm, so much potential. It may not be the biggest cottage, but it's in a wonderful location. And it's so sweet. You can tell it wants to be friends. You can just telL

She swung around, searching for the ocean that she knew was out there not far from where she stood. But the house was on low land; there was no water view. It didn't matter. She inhaled a lungful of cold salt air, her chest expanding from the effort.
Now
this
was living
,
she thought, grateful simply to
be
alive.

It was at that exact, precise moment of gratitude that Jane found herself slammed violently in the back, so hard that she went sprawling on the soggy grass in front of her. Shocked and winded, she rolled over on her elbows and found herself staring at the massive head of a dog — or some cross between a dog and a mastodon — that was hovering over her. Drooling.

"Buster!
Dammit, Buster! Come back here!" It was a woman's voice, high and musical and totally without authority.

Jane didn't dare take her eyes off the panting beast, who seemed to be regarding her as he would a smallish partridge. It was only after the woman — pretty, twenty, and dressed in jeans and a bomber's jacket — grabbed the dog's collar with both hands, that Jane allowed herself to sit up. The collar, which looked pretty much like a large man's belt, seemed sturdy enough, but Jane wasn't so sure about the woman. She looked as fragile as stemware.

"He's just a puppy; he won't hurt you," the girl said with an apologetic grin.

"That's what they all say," Jane said with a shaky laugh, wiping the drooly sleeve of her jacket on the grass. She stood up.

"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

"As hilarious as it is heart-tugging ... a rollicking great read."

--I'll Take Romance

In Gilded-Age Newport, an upstairs-downstairs romance between a well-born son and a humble maid is cut short of marriage.  A hundred years later, the descendants of that ill-fated union seem destined to repeat history.  Or not.

Chapter 1

L
iz Coppersmith and her friend Victoria raised their wineglasses to the brooding mansion on the other side of the chain-link fence.

"
Not a bad neighborhood,
"
said
Victoria
, the taller, more whimsically dressed of the two. She dropped into a plastic lawn chair, shook out her red permed curls, and straightened the folds of her star-print sundress.
"
You
'
ll do lots of business over there,
"
she predicted,
"
or my name
'
s not
Victoria
.
"

Liz had heard her say
"
or my name
'
s not
Victoria
"
a thousand times since they
'
d
met five years ago in a grief-
management group. And every time, Liz had to resist saying,
"
Your name
isn'
t
Victoria
, damn
it.
"
Victoria
'
s name was Judy Maroney, and if it weren
'
t for her stubborn, persistent, rather amazing amnesia, Liz would be calling her Judy
and
not Tori at that very moment.

"
If I do get any work out of them
, Tori, it'll be thanks to you.
You found me a house in a perfect location.
"

"
I did, didn
'
t I?
"
said
Victoria
, pleased with herself.
"
Call it intuition, but I was sure you
'
d like it, despite that
unpromising
ad in the paper. I mean
—
a four-room house? I have more bathrooms than that, and I live alone.
"

They both glanced back at the sweet but plain two-
story cottage that now belonged to Liz. It was exactly the kind of house that children invariably draw; all that was
missing was a plume of Crayola smoke from the red-brick chimney.

"It's no castle," Liz conceded
. She
tilted
her head
toward the intimidating mansion to the east.
"
But what the hec
k," she said with an ironic smile.  "It's close enough."

She went back to
gazing
through the chain-link fence
at her neighbor
. The grounds of the estate were magnificent, even for
Newport
. An
cient trees, presided over by an enormous
copper beech, threw shimmering pools of shade over an e
xpanse of well-
kept grass. In the sunny openings between the trees we
re huge, wonderful shrubs — viburn
ums and hydrangeas and lush, towering rhododendrons. There were no flowers to speak of; only a green, understated elegance. It was like
having
her own private
deer park
—
except without the deer
— right in the heart of
Newport
.