The Spyglass Portal: A Lighthouse Novel (26 page)

Claire’s face went deathly pale.

At her reaction, Sam’s pulse accelerated. “Who did this necklace belong to?”

“I…I don’t know. I…I’ve never seen it before,” Claire stuttered.

Sam slammed her hand against the doorframe, causing all of them to jump. “Yes, you have. I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m done playing games. You know a lot more than you’re pretending to know, and I’m not leaving here until I get the answers to some questions. The first one is who did this necklace belong to?”

Claire acted visibly shaken and was obviously searching her mind for a way to avoid the inevitable. Coming up with nothing, she sighed and said, “It belonged to my sister.”

Sam felt like she’d been punched in the stomach. “Where is your sister now?”

Claire’s eyes dropped to the ground. “She’s not in Pavee Cove, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

“Then where is she?” Sam’s voice came out as a bark and harsher than she intended.

“Not here,” Claire repeated.

“Is she dead?”

“I didn’t say that.”

Sam reached for calm. “I know my real mother wore this necklace. I’ve seen it—and her—in dreams. I called her Mama. I never called Bev Landers Mama.”

Claire met Sam’s gaze and tears pricked her eyes.

“Please help me,” Samantha said quietly. “I’ve grown up with the feeling of not belonging. I’ve had trust issues and a fear of abandonment ever since I can remember. I want to know why. My entire life has led up to this moment. Somehow, the spyglass I discovered in the lighthouse is connected to me. It’s shown me other lives I’ve apparently lived, or could have lived, or have been living simultaneously. I don’t understand how it works. I only know that Bev Landers was not my real mother. Are you going to tell me different?”

Aidan found her hand and squeezed.

“Please tell me the truth, Claire. I deserve to know. And who better to explain it to me than you, my aunt? Because you
are
my aunt, aren’t you?”

Claire’s shoulders sagged, like she carried the weight of the world on them. Finally, she nodded. “Yes, dear, I am. And you’re right. I’ve held onto this secret far too long. Please sit down, all of you.”

The four of them sat on folding chairs. As Claire began her story, Sam shoved her hands under her thighs to keep them from shaking.

 “Our people, the O’Neills, were travelers, like so many others here at Pavee Cove. The country folk, or non-travelers, considered us all con men and women. Common thieves. Maybe we were. But when it’s all a person knows, it’s all a person knows. We each had our job to do within the family and within the clan. My sister’s, and mine, was to shoplift.”

Samantha and Aidan shared a subtle glance.

“From the time we were five or six, we learned how to steal. We were real good at our trade by the time we were teenagers, too. In fact, we were experts. Like I said, it was the only life we knew. Life went along fine until the day my sister met a young man. His name was Morgan Garrett. He wasn’t Irish and he wasn’t a traveler. They were both sixteen and they fell desperately in love. They wanted to get married but his family forbade it. His parents had heard about our family business. My sister promised to quit the life, but that didn’t matter to them. The family up and left Pavee Cove in the middle of the night just to get their son away from her. She never saw him or heard from Morgan again. She found out she was pregnant not long after. Samantha, you were born when she was seventeen. She raised you on her own for six years, and she was a good mother.”

Claire stopped to let this news sink in. And sink, it did. After thirty-two years, Sam finally knew the name of her father. She mulled it over in her mind.
Morgan Garrett
. It was a strong name. “What happened when I was six years old?” she asked, feeling her stomach churn.

“Are you prepared to hear the whole truth?” Claire asked.

“Yes. More than prepared. I’ve been waiting all my life.”

“All right. You were with my sister in one of the village shops one day. She’d been trying to change her ways for a while, but it’s difficult for a tiger to alter its stripes after a lifetime of habit. I don’t remember what she shoplifted that day, but the owner of the store caught her. It was the first time she’d ever been caught. She grabbed your hand and the two of you fled out the door. As bad luck would have it, a couple of policemen were standing outside on the corner. They took off after your mother and you on foot and followed you to the lighthouse.”

Sam’s eyes enlarged. “The lighthouse? I
knew
I’d been there before. I felt it the day I arrived. And I had a vision of being pulled up the winding staircase.”

“It was your mama’s favorite spot. She and Morgan used to go there to…you know…rendezvous. After he left, she’d go there to think, and then later, she’d take you with her and show you the pretty sky from the tower room and talk about your dada.” Claire shook her head sadly. “I guess she felt safe there. But that day, there was no escaping the law. Those two policemen cornered her, and it wasn’t long before someone else showed up. The person who changed your mother’s life forever.”

“Who?” Sam leaned forward with sweat dripping down her back.

“A social worker.”

A slap in the face couldn’t have stung as badly as those three words. Biting down hard on her lip was the only thing that kept Sam from screaming.

Claire went on. “Many in our clan had started to leave Pavee Cove because the police had really begun to crack down on us, in hopes of running us out altogether. But my sister and I refused to go. This was our home. The O’Neills had been here for generations. One of our ancestors sailed from Ireland on a ship with the legendary Captain Eamon McBride.”

Another emotional punch almost physically knocked Samantha off the chair. “Go on,” she urged.

“Of those of us who stayed, many were arrested and put into jail. Some charges were trumped up to teach others a lesson. Homes were vandalized. Old people were harassed. Women with children had it the worst. There was always the threat of taking our babies from us.”

Claire glanced at Aidan. “Your ma got out in the nick of time. Mary was smart to take you away from the cove when she did. She wanted you to grow up differently and away from the traveling life. She wanted a fresh start for the two of you, and she took it!”

Sam and Aidan grasped hands again, and she felt him squeeze tight. “Why didn’t you leave, if it was so bad?” she asked Claire.

“My husband had died two years before. I had my boy to think of. I wanted a fresh start, too, but I wasn’t as brave as Mary. My sister wouldn’t go. She always thought Morgan would come back to Pavee Cove for her. I didn’t want to leave her, and you, behind. So I got myself a legitimate position as a receptionist in a lawyer’s office and saved a little money. The cops left me alone when they saw I’d gone straight. Eventually I was able to buy the market.”

“Why didn’t my mother want to do better, both for her and for me?” Sam asked.

Claire sighed. “She tried to change, but there was a part of her that couldn’t stop taking risks. It was very difficult to leave the trade while she was here. It was only after she finally fled Pavee Cove that the transformation in her occurred. But I’m getting ahead of myself in the story.”

Sam’s stomach dropped. She was starting to see where she’d gotten some of her traits. “Go back to where you mentioned the social worker. What happened?”

Claire took a deep breath and continued. “I didn’t have a phone when all this happened, but Sallie Hennessey had seen my sister run into the lighthouse with the policemen behind her. She dashed to my cottage to inform me.”

“Was your cottage…?”

“Yes,” Claire nodded. “You guessed correctly. I lived in the white clapboard house on the south end of the beach. I ran to the lighthouse and climbed to the tower and pushed my way past the two policemen. That’s when I saw the woman trying to convince your mother to give you to her. When I asked the cops who she was, they told me, a social worker. She’d come to take you away because your mother was going to jail for shoplifting.”

Samantha’s heart pumped double-time as she tried to recall that moment. But, of course, she couldn’t.

“I looked past the woman and saw my sister crouched on the floor with you in her arms,” Claire went on. “You were crying, and it broke my heart to see the fear in your pretty blue eyes. ‘You don’t deserve that baby,’ the social worker told your mother. ‘Give her to me. She’ll be better cared for where she’s going.’”

Sam expelled a breath. “Did she mean in foster care?”

“Probably. Your mama refused. The cops told her they were taking her to jail and she was to hand you over to the social worker or they’d take you away by force. It was then that my sister removed the cross necklace from her neck and clasped it around yours, Samantha. She said, ‘I love you’ and then she pulled the spyglass from behind her back.”

The gold cross now felt hot beneath Sam’s hand as she rubbed it between her fingers. “Spyglass?” Her voice was barely a whisper.

“Yes. She’d found it washed up on the beach a couple of years before. Once she discovered its miraculous power, she traveled through parallel universes from time to time looking for her true love—your father. But she never found Morgan, bless her heart. She shared her secret about the spyglass with me, and I always worried that she’d get stuck in another dimension on one of her voyages. But being the risk taker she was, she was willing to take that chance in order to find her soul mate.”

“What happened next?” Sam asked.

“Your mother lifted the spyglass to her eye. I know she was scared to death of going to jail. And she probably didn’t want you to be ashamed of her. Either way, I think she realized she was going to lose you. But she had a way out.”

“The spyglass.”

“Yes. But I couldn’t let her do it. She placed the instrument to her eye and I shouted, ‘Don’t do it! Do the right thing for once in your life!’”

You could have heard a pin drop, the room was so silent. All eyes were glued to Claire. “What did she do?” Aidan asked.

“She handed her little girl over to the social worker and gave herself up to the police. They handcuffed her and dragged her past me. As we touched hands, she slipped the spyglass to me. ‘Get rid of it,’ she whispered.”

Sam’s thoughts drifted back to her few hours in jail and recalled Claire mentioning her sister having had a similar experience. At the time, she hadn’t known it was her mother she spoke of.

“My sister was taken to jail, but somehow she managed to escape a couple of days later. She fled Pavee Cove, never to return. One night I returned to the lighthouse and busted a hole in the wall of the tower and stuffed the spyglass into it. Then I covered it up so it wouldn’t ever wreak havoc with anyone’s life again. And that’s the story.” Claire drew a deep breath into her lungs.

 After several weighty moments, Samantha said, “Do you remember the social worker’s name?”

“No. I tried to find out, but the policemen never would tell me who she was or where she’d come from. I remembered she had short dark hair and olive skin, but that wasn’t enough to go on. There was never a way to track where you’d gone.”

“It was Bev Landers. She must have decided to keep me for herself, instead of putting me in foster care. No wonder I never felt like I belonged to her. I now know why she was secretive, and I grew up afraid of trusting anyone. Deep down, I must have always known I wasn’t her daughter.”

“I’m so sorry,” Claire said, reaching for Sam’s hand. Her body drooped with fatigue, visibly worn out from reliving that day when she’d lost both her sister and niece.

“I have one more question, Claire. What happened to my mother? Where did she go?”

Before she could answer, they heard someone banging on the front door. “Do you mind if I see who it is?” Claire asked. “People don’t expect the market to be closed in the middle of the day.”

“Of course. Go ahead. I think we all need a break anyway,” Samantha said.

“I’ll help you, Mom.” Jason followed his mother out of the storage room, leaving Sam and Aidan alone.

“Does any of this bring back memories of your own childhood on Pavee Cove?” she asked him.

“Remarkably, it does. I can recall hearing my mom whisper to her friends about people being carried off in the night and others being thrown in jail to rot, but I never understood what it all meant until now.” He scratched his head, his face still twisted with confusion. “Claire is your aunt? I don’t remember her ever mentioning she had a niece.”

Samantha’s heart gripped. If they were to move forward in their relationship, she could no longer hide the truth about Remy from him.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

“Are you all right?” Aidan asked, stroking her hand. “This has been a lot to take in.”

Samantha nodded. “It has, but there’s more. I have something important to tell you.”

“Okay. Go ahead.” He pulled her into his shoulder and kissed the top of her head. “Don’t be afraid to share anything with me. We’ve been through so much already.”

That was true, but she had no idea how he would respond to the news she was about to throw at him. Hopefully he’d understand once she explained it thoroughly.

“This morning when we talked about the spyglass, I could tell you were disappointed that it didn’t work for you. I know how badly you wanted to find Remy.”

“I did. Even as a young boy, I believed her and I were soul mates. But I can see now how ridiculous that idea was.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because a person doesn’t meet his soul mate when he’s a kid. It just wasn’t my destiny to be with her. I’m convinced you and I were fated to meet each other.”

She gulped. “Aidan, the spyglass
did
work. Remember when I pulled it out of your hands that night in the tower? Without thinking, I looked through it. You probably don’t even remember my having done it. I didn’t until later. Anyway, the next day, you weren’t in my bed. It was as if you’d never been there the night before.”

“I don’t understand. You’re talking about last night. I woke up at the lighthouse this morning and came to town to buy donuts.”