The House on Blackberry Hill: Jewell Cove #1 (Jewel Cove) (17 page)

“And you’re not comfortable with that.”

“The whole situation sucks shit, and we both know it. But Josh is … was … my best friend. I’ve never taken sides, but…”

“I think it’s great you want to be there for him, Rick. God knows he won’t accept any support from me.”

Rick angled him a curious look. “Would you even offer it?”

“I don’t know.” Tom felt an old, familiar anxiety wind through him. “It’s too weird. But I don’t hate him, if that’s what you’re asking. I never did.”

Rick nodded. “I know that. I think Josh probably knows that, too.”

“Well, he could probably stand to see a friendly face, so I don’t see why you shouldn’t come. You don’t even have to talk to Jess, though why she has a bug up her ass about you is more than I know.”

Did Rick’s cheeks flush the slightest bit? It was hard to tell with the early summer tan already darkening his face.

“I came for another reason, too,” Rick said. He gave a half-smile. “Don’t know why I need it because everyone in this town knows me and has since I was in diapers, but I applied for a job with Jack Skillin’s charter operation. He wants references.”

Tom could understand why. Rick hadn’t exactly been a model citizen lately and any employer was taking a risk. It had nothing to do with his disability and everything to do with his very public drinking problem.

“You’re asking me for a reference?”

Rick sighed. “Yeah, I am. You’re one of the few people who still talks to me in this shit town. And before you say it, yes, I know why that is. I’m trying to get my drinking under control, Tom. I know it’s a problem.”

“You going to be working the boats?”

Rick huffed out a bitter laugh. “Nope. I get to work the sales shack. But it’s something. I’ve got to do something or I’m gonna go crazy. Besides, working the dock means I’m around if my mom needs me.”

Finally,
Tom thought. He’d felt for a long time that Rick had too much time on his hands. He was like a powder keg waiting for someone to light the fuse, and now he was dealing with his mom’s illness on top of everything else. “The drinking thing … is that going to be a problem on Saturday?”

“I don’t always drink myself stupid,” Rick said dryly. “I do know how to have a few and lock it down. I just choose not to most of the time.”

Tom wasn’t quite sure he believed him, but he was prepared to give Rick the benefit of the doubt, especially if he was finally looking for a job and trying to get his act together. “I’ll back you up. You can tell Jack that.”

“Thanks, man.”

“Yeah, well, life’s a hell of a deal, isn’t it? We can all use all the help we can get.” He got up and took the glasses off the top of his head, putting them on a workbench. “Come on up to the house. I’ve got a few sodas in the fridge and some leftover pizza from Gino’s. We can sit out on the deck and watch the fish jump.”

For over an hour they sat on Tom’s back deck, feet propped up on the railing as the sun went down and the water of the cove morphed from peachy-violet to gray. They ate Tom’s cold pizza, drank Cokes, and said little, letting the quiet night work its magic. Tom’s thoughts went from Josh and Erin back to Abby.

Abby was about as different from Erin as she could get. Not just in looks, though there was that, too. She might be paying him to fix her house but she didn’t need him. She was independent and more than a little strong-willed. Sweet, but at the same time he got the feeling that she always made her own decisions and didn’t let anything stand in her way.

He thought of Erin buckling to parental pressure over the demands of her heart. The idea of the stubborn Abby doing such a thing made him laugh.

“What’s so funny?” Rick asked, swilling the last bit of soda from the can.

Tom shrugged. “Nothing, really. Just thinking about people.”

“Anyone in particular? That Foster woman, maybe?”

No one ever said Rick was stupid. Tom threw the crust of the last piece of pizza back into the box.

When Tom didn’t answer, Rick leaned forward and put his hands on his knees. “Talk around town is that she’s fixing that place up to sell it. Doesn’t look like she’s going to be around for long.”

There was an unspoken warning in Rick’s words. “Yeah, I’d be stupid to start something there, wouldn’t I?”

“Hate to see you get the shaft twice, bro. What about Summer Arnold? She always had eyes for you, you know.”

Tom chuckled. “Summer Arnold’s not really my type. Maybe it’s the nose ring and pink hair.”

“Just hate to see you get your hopes up.” Rick brushed crust crumbs off his jeans, and Tom noticed the awkward movement of his prosthetic hand. “You already got the crap kicked out of you by love,” Rick said. “It’s not worth it.”

Tom was surprised at the bitterness in Rick’s voice, but he couldn’t deny the truth in the words. Abby had never made any secret of Jewell Cove being a temporary address. She’d be leaving. If he were a smart man, there’d be no more kisses in the foyer or any other part of that house.

The more he thought about it, the more he realized that making the entertainment unit was a dumb move. Abby certainly wouldn’t care less, and after the renos were done, Tom wouldn’t have a reason to be in the house again.

As Rick got up and said good-bye, Tom knew that the picnic at Sarah’s was the perfect time to establish things as friends … no, as business associates. That was all there could ever be between them. He’d only been fooling himself to think otherwise.

*   *   *

Abby had felt a pressing need to find more answers ever since discovering the letters, so she spent one sunny morning in the attic, shoving the boxes and chests she’d already been through to one side of the windowless room. Books, clothes, old bedding … most would remain packed away for now until she could decide what to do with them. Some, sadly, were destined for the dump after too many years being shut up in the airless space. Those she put closer to the door, working up a bit of a sweat as the temperature in the attic rose and the physical labor of moving things around heated her up. But there were other boxes that she knew she’d come back to another day—books for the library, clothing to be examined for holes, different knickknacks, shoe boxes of black-and-white photos. Some were family treasures she knew she should keep. She understood now why there’d been pressure to make this place a museum. Besides its age, there were so many antiques and period items from the past that it made sense.

A museum would certainly fill the house with people, but that wasn’t what Abby had in mind.

What this place needed was laughter. Friends.
Family.
It needed someone who could take it and make it a home. And that someone wasn’t her.

Marian had felt the same way about the house, though, and while Abby wasn’t any closer to solving the mystery of the family split, she was starting to let go of a lot of her resentment. It was hard to hate a woman who had taken this big empty house and filled it with young women who needed her help, though Abby did wonder why Marian had chosen that particular cause. Abby swallowed, remembering how alone she’d felt in the weeks and months after her father’s death when she was nine. She’d felt so lost; torn away from her home to live with a mother she barely knew, without her dad and without Gram’s love and stability. She and Gram might have grieved together, but her mom hadn’t wanted to hear her crying at night. At the time it had been easier to keep all her feelings locked inside.

Abby had longed to have a place where she was welcomed, accepted, understood. Her aunt Marian had provided such a place for girls in trouble, young women shunned because they’d made a mistake in judgment. It had been personal for Marian somehow. Abby could feel it even if she couldn’t prove it.

The next stack of boxes were shoved into a far corner of the room and she pulled one down and plopped it on the floor in front of a three-legged stool she’d unearthed. She pulled off the cover and stared at a stack of journals and photographs. This was more like it. Real people, Jewell Cove’s heritage in black-and-white. Abby flipped through the pictures first, examining each one with awe. There were some featuring upper-class women in elegant dresses, posing with the rose garden behind them. White tents had been set up for an elaborate garden party—the Fosters were really top-drawer, weren’t they?

Another showed a cluster of men standing in front of a ship down at the docks—one of Elijah’s shipping fleet, perhaps? There was one of Marian, holding Edith’s hand on one side and clutching a bouquet of daisies in her other hand as she stared up at the camera, her dark eyes full of impishness. There were several more of Edith, and Abby touched the photos with trembling fingers drawn to one in particular. Even in the sepia tones, Edith’s face seemed to glow as her hand rested on her belly, gently rounded with pregnancy. That had been Iris, Abby thought, pausing over the picture for a moment. Then she put it aside and picked up another.

This one was the household staff, all lined up in the great hall in full uniform. How grand it all looked, with the chandelier and wide, elegant woodwork and their spotless uniforms. The Fosters had maintained quite a staff, even during wartime. Abby counted a cook, kitchen maid, two housemaids, an older man who was out of livery but who had probably been a man-of-all-work or groundskeeper, and a smart-looking chauffeur who was young enough to have been called up and for some reason hadn’t been.

His face called to her as she moved the photo in for a closer examination. Knowledge shot into her like a jolt of lightning. Not only was he young enough to have been called up, but the blond hair and cheekbones looked achingly familiar. Maybe it had been a long time, but there was no mistaking it.

He looked like her father.

Her fingers trembled as she stared at the picture. Abby’s mind worked furiously through all the facts. The letters she’d found. Edith’s affair. The lock of blond hair, the watch …

Looking down at the photo still clutched in her hand, it all added up: Elijah wasn’t her great-grandfather. Despite the shocking revelation, a warmth and peace seemed to envelop the room, and she looked around, wondering if Edith was watching. Abby didn’t see her, but she could feel her nearby, giving her approval. This was the mysterious Kristian. There was no doubt in her mind. Edith had had an affair with the chauffeur. And Abby’s grandmother was the result of that affair.

Her hand started to tremble and she put the photograph down on her lap. The letter he’d written while crossing the ocean … he must have finally been called up and gone off to do his patriotic duty. What a scandal it would have been—he was the help and she was married. That final letter in the box—the one that said he was coming home—Edith was going to run away with the chauffeur.

The ripples of that fact washed over her, trickling down into present-day circumstances. It meant that Abby was not an actual Foster at all. And yet here she was, sitting in the attic of the Foster mansion, owner of it all when none of it truly belonged to her. She hadn’t a drop of Foster blood in her veins.

Had Marian known?

Was this why Iris had been cut off? Elijah must have found out somehow. Or perhaps he’d taken one look at Iris and had known that the pale-haired, blue-eyed baby couldn’t be his. So Elijah had sent Iris away after Edith’s death and brought up his only child, Marian. Of course. Elijah wouldn’t have wanted to raise his dead wife’s bastard. Not many men would, but Abby got the feeling that the stern-looking, uncompromising Elijah would find it particularly repulsive.

The pieces were starting to fit, but the answers only served to pose more questions. Abby went through the box, searching for clues. There were more pictures—bittersweet photos of Iris as a baby, all plump and pink and smiling. Marian and Iris together, Marian holding Iris in her lap, dark hair against light but clearly Marian was smitten with her baby sister. The children with Edith in front of the Christmas tree, a severe-looking Elijah standing behind them and just apart.

That was December of ’44. Abby wondered what happened in the months between that and V-E Day, when everything irrevocably changed.

*   *   *

Tom stopped at the door of the storage room and poked his head inside. “Hey, Abby?”

Abby jumped at the sound of his voice. She swiveled on the stool, a hand pressed to her chest. “Whew,” she breathed. “You scared me.”

“Sorry.” He grinned. “I tried calling up, but you didn’t hear.”

“Was there something you wanted?”

He took a step inside the room. There were boxes everywhere, separated into sections, and one open on the floor in front of her feet. “I’d like to start prepping the kitchen in a day or two, but that means packing up what’s there. I thought you’d want to do that yourself so you’d know where things are and can find what you need to eat or whatever.”

“Good idea,” she replied, collecting the photos on her lap into a neat pile.

“What’ve you got there?” he asked, leaning forward curiously.

He saw her hesitate. Things hadn’t been as awkward as they might have been after their kiss, but they hadn’t exactly been comfortable, either. Especially since all he could think about was doing it again.

“Can I trust you?” She perched on the edge of the stool and looked up at him, her eyes wide. “I mean, this is the big-family-secret kind of stuff. Major skeletons in the closet. The kind of thing that would rock the small world of Jewell Cove.”

He chuckled a little. “That sounds pretty big. But maybe it’s not as big as you think. Our town’s been the subject of lots of scandal over the years. Did you know that one of my ancestors on my dad’s side was a pirate? He used to sail along the coast pillaging and stealing.”

She smiled, clearly intrigued. “You’re making that up.”

“God’s truth. Then he became a privateer during the Civil War. Made a tremendous fortune. Of course, it’s long gone now. But there are rumors about there being treasure buried out on Aquteg Island, out past Fiddler’s Rock.”

She held out the picture, but as he put his fingers on it she hesitated. “Swear to me you won’t tell a soul.”

“I swear.” She let it go and he looked down at the picture. It was a group of people—servants—in the great hall downstairs. “What am I supposed to be looking at?”