The Chesapeake Diaries Series (92 page)

“Immune. Right.” She snorted and jammed her hands into her pockets and walked back into the house. “Way to hang tough, Wyler.”

*   *   *

“Did you try the new pumpkin spice latte?” Vanessa poked Steffie in the middle of her back. “Carlo is going seasonal this year.”

Steffie shook her head. “I know this is a revolutionary thought, but how ’bout coffee that just tastes like coffee all year round? No need to change with the season, no need to be creative.”

“You change your ice-cream flavors with the seasons,” Vanessa reminded her.

“Ice cream is different. It has to have a flavor. Coffee already has one.” Stef stirred her mug of breakfast blend. “Oddly enough, it’s called ‘coffee.’ ”

“You could just make vanilla.”

“Boring.”

“My point exactly.”

“Nah, you can’t compare.” Stef took a chair at the table where Grace, Nita, and Barbara were already seated. “And you have to be seasonal because if you use fresh fruits, they have to be in season. Strawberries in early summer, peaches later, apples even later.” She took a sip. “Other stuff in between.”

“But strawberries seem to be in season all the time, somewhere.” Nita looked up as Vanessa and Stef sat down.

“But I prefer stuff when it’s in season here,” Stef said.

“What do you do in February when you want to make strawberry ice cream?” asked Barbara.

“I use the berries I froze the June of the previous year.”

“So, they’re not really in season when you use them,” Vanessa pointed out smugly.

“But they were in season when I froze them, so
technically, they count.” Stef held up her mug. “And coffee is always in season.”

The women debated the merits of flavored coffee over unflavored for another minute.

“Stef”—Nita leaned forward slightly to make eye contact—“was that Wade MacGregor I saw helping you unload your car last night?”

“I was unloading the car, and he just happened to be passing by on a walk with Austin.” Stef raised an eyebrow. “Where were you?”

“I just happened to be driving by and I saw him getting something out of the back of your car,” Nita explained.

“I bought paint,” Stef told her.

“My, you’re not letting any grass grow under your feet, are you?” Grace smiled.

“I want to move in as soon as possible,” Stef explained. “Why should I keep paying rent when I have a house of my own?”

“And it’s a lovely house, dear.” Grace patted Steffie’s hand. “I hope you’ll be very happy there.”

“Thank you, Miss Grace. I know I will be.”

“So how much paint did you buy that Wade had to carry it for you?” Vanessa asked.

“I bought enough for the entire downstairs. And my bedroom. Oh, and my bath. And Wade didn’t have to help carry it. He was just being kind. ’Cause of his sister and my brother, you know …”

“So tragic about his wife,” Grace murmured. Every head at the table swiveled in her direction at the same time, as if on cue.

“What? What did you hear?”

“What tragedy?”

“Who told you …?”

“I’m sorry,” Grace said softly. “I thought everyone knew.”

“Knew what?” Stef asked.

“Well, about Wade’s wife dying.” Grace looked somewhat chagrined to find out that she’d possibly be the source of gossip.

“What? She
died
? As in, DIED?” Vanessa gasped. “When? What happened to her?”

“And who told you?” Barbara asked.

Steffie sat mutely, taking it all in.

“Well, now, if I’d known that no one knew, I wouldn’t have said anything.” Grace was almost apologetic, but it was too late. The beans had been spilled, as Barbara was only too happy to remind her.

“Yes, but you did, so now you have to tell us everything you know,” Barbara prodded.

“Well, it seems he was married to Austin’s mother, who passed away from an illness. I didn’t want to pry and ask Berry for too many details, you know.” Grace glanced around the table. “Lest I appear insensitive.”

“God forbid,” Nita deadpanned.

“Who was she?” Steffie asked.

“She was his partner. The woman he went into business with. She got sick and died just recently.”

“How recently?”

“I don’t know for certain, Stef, but I believe it was over the summer,” Grace told her. “Berry said he wrapped up all their business in Texas and closed up shop, then packed up that trailer he hauled up here. Just pulled up stakes and came on back.”

“How long is he planning on staying, did she say?” Vanessa asked.

“It didn’t occur to me to ask.”

“Did anyone get the feeling that Berry and Dallas were as surprised as everyone else in town when Wade showed up with that little boy?” Nita looked from one face to the other. “Steffie, your brother is practically a member of the MacGregor family. Did Grant say if Dallas had mentioned that her brother had a child?”

Steffie shook her head, and her fingers began to tear tiny pieces off her paper napkin.

“Now, does that seem odd to anyone besides me?” Nita asked.

“It does.” Barbara nodded. “That boy is what, a year and a half, maybe? Berry is, as you all know, a neighbor of mine. I see her several times a week, but she’s never mentioned that Wade had a son. I can’t imagine that she’d have known she had a great-grandnephew but didn’t bother to mention it. It’s not her style.”

“Stef, at Beck’s wedding, did Wade mention a wife?” Nita looked Stef right in the eye. No beating around the bush there. “You did spend a lot of time … 
chatting
with him that night.”

“Never said a word, Nita.” Stef felt her cheeks flush. Leave it to Nita to come up with a clever euphemism for what Wade and Stef had been doing that night.

“Grace, did Berry say what the wife died from?” Barbara asked.

Grace shook her head. “No, and I didn’t want to press her to find out what the circumstances were. All
I could think of was how sad for that little boy to lose his mama before he was old enough to really know her,” Grace told them. “And how sad for Wade to be a widower so young.”

Everyone nodded in agreement that it was sad, indeed. Except for Steffie, who, more confused than ever, downed the rest of her coffee. “Gotta run,” she told the others. “I’m getting a late start today.”

“When are you going on your new fall hours?” Grace appeared relieved to have the conversation moving in a different direction.

“As of next week, we’ll be closing at seven, except for Friday and Saturday nights,” Stef said. “With the kids back to school and the evenings getting cooler, there’s no point in staying open later than that.”

She gathered the shredded napkin and her mug.

“I’ll see you all later.” She started to walk away from the table.

“Stef, by the way, was that you I saw coming out of Enright’s office today?” Barbara asked.

“The firm handled Horace’s will. There were some papers I had to sign for the house.” Stef smiled. These ladies didn’t miss a trick. Between Nita, Barbara, and Grace, they pretty much had the whole town covered.

“That Enright boy can write my will any day.” Barbara wiggled her eyebrows.

“He is a dear young man, isn’t he?” Grace smiled. “I was glad to see one of the younger Enrights step in to keep the family practice going.”

“Now, which of Mike’s brothers is Jesse’s father?” Nita asked.

“The oldest one. Craig. He used to be married to Delia Enright, the mystery writer,” Grace told them.
“She and Craig divorced years ago, and he married Lainie, his current wife, Jesse’s mother.”

“I saw Jesse in the market the other day,” Nita said. “He was picking up one of the flyers for Natalie’s Run.”

“He said he was going to run,” Stef replied.

“I think it’s so nice that the town gets behind that charity run every year,” Grace said. “What a nice way to honor your late sister, Steffie.”

“We are grateful to everyone who participates,” Stef told her. “I hope I’ll see you all there next Saturday.”

Everyone at the table nodded.

“Great. Thank you. I appreciate it.” Stef grabbed her purse from the back of her chair. “And this time, I’m really leaving.”

She tossed the remains of the napkin into the trash and left her mug on the counter for Carlo. Walking back to Scoop, she thought about the good people of St. Dennis who were willing to donate their time and their money to run—or walk—to raise funds for childhood leukemia, the disease that had taken her sister, Natalie. Only eighteen months old—roughly Austin’s age—when Natalie died, Stef had no memories of her sister, who’d been four when she passed away. There were photographs, but few of Stef and Natalie together. Natalie had been diagnosed when Stef was only five months old. Of the four Wyler siblings, Natalie had been the closest to Stef in age, and even though she’d never known her, Stef had always felt a connection to her. She wished Natalie had lived long enough for Stef to have some personal recollection
of her, some memory that had been hers and hers alone.

She couldn’t help but feel sick about Wade’s wife. Had the woman been dying when she and Wade had been dancing the night away?

Uh-uh. Wade would never have left a dying wife.

But when was she his wife? And what if he hadn’t known she was dying?

She shook her head almost imperceptibly as she walked along. Grace said the woman had been ill. He wouldn’t have left her if he’d known she was on her deathbed, even for Beck’s wedding. Which led to the question of whether or not he was married at Beck’s wedding. But wouldn’t Berry have referred to the woman as his ex-wife if he hadn’t been?

Too many questions, far too few answers.

It must be so very difficult for Wade, Stef thought, to have had to bury someone he loved. And surely, he had loved her, if he’d married her, right?

And yet there was this … 
something
between the two of them, some sort of fission that activated whenever she and Wade got within fifty feet of each other. She’d felt it last night at the house, and she was pretty damned sure that he’d felt it, too. Did that sound like a man who was mourning the loss of his true love?

And didn’t it just suck for poor Austin to have lost his mom at so young an age? She viciously kicked a stone across the asphalt in the parking lot on his behalf. As tough as it was for her not to have known her sister, it was much sadder for Austin. All he’d know of his mother is what he’d hear from Wade or other people. He’d know her face from photographs, but
he’d never know the sound of her voice or the way she smelled or the feel of her arms around him.

With the back of her hand, Stef wiped away tears for a dead woman whose name she didn’t even know—a woman who’d won the love of the man she herself had wanted—but she couldn’t wipe away her curiosity. Surely Wade had grieved for his wife, but somehow, Stef hadn’t had a sense that his heart had been broken beyond repair, the way her parents’ had been after Natalie’s death. In Wade, she saw a deep sadness, but not the kind of grief that destroyed the soul.

What, she wondered, more confused than ever, was missing from this picture?

Diary ~

I heard the nicest bit of news—Horace Hinson has left his lovely old home on Olive Street to his cousin (twice removed, if I recall correctly), Steffie Wyler. And for my money, he couldn’t have made a better choice. Steffie was always the old boy’s favorite—why, I remember interviewing him for the paper once, right before he went to live in the home up in Ballard. He mentioned how he regretted never having married and having a family of his own, and how only his cousin Shirley Wyler’s children came to visit him, and how, when she was just a little girl, he’d taught Steffie how to make ice cream on an old hand-crank number his mother used to use. So it’s fitting that she should have the house where she learned her trade, I would think. Horace would be so proud of her
.

I admit I have often wondered why Horace never married. Years and years ago, I heard my mother and one of her friends whispering some rumors that there’d been a love affair that was doomed from the start, but I never heard the name of the woman. Neither, apparently, had my mother or her friend, since I seem to recall that trying to guess who the lady in question might be was at the heart of their gossip
.

Speaking of houses—I do not know what to make of this: Vanessa was chatting about having found a Ouija board in her attic, and how it claims to be guided by a spirit named Daz. Now, I find this strange, indeed—one would think that if any otherworldly spirit inhabited the old place, it would have been Alice Ridgeway, who’d lived in that house for ninety-some years and who, let’s face it, knew her way around a Ouija board. I daresay the board Vanessa found had belonged to Alice, once upon a time
.

Which just served to remind me that I must once again ask Vanessa to look in the attic for those journals of Alice’s. And, of course, to let me know if she finds them. I shudder to think of what might happen to … well, certain reputations if those old books fell into the wrong hands! What a mess that would be!

And speaking of which, I certainly made one the other day in Cuppachino. We were discussing young Wade MacGregor and I lamented the fact that his poor young wife had died so recently. Well, how was I to know that no one else knew that he’d been married, to whom, and that he was now a widower?! Way to spill it, Gracie!

~ Grace ~