Time After Time (3 page)

Arf.

There was a pause. Even
Snowball paused. Finally Cornelius Eastman said, with a sheepish
expression, "You said if you got a puppy that you didn't
want
a party,
honey."

Caroline managed to lasso
Snowball with her arms and squish him onto her lap. "No, I didn't,"
she murmured, studying the dog's moppy face intently. "I said a
puppy
and
a
party."

"You said a puppy
or
a party, dammit!"
snapped Jack.

"'And,'"
said Caroline, still studying the dog's
face.

The two men — seventy and
forty— exchanged looks. Netta watched them, mesmerized by the
family resemblance. Eastman genes ran true to type: the hawkish
nose, the fierce blue eyes, the thick brown hair. Oh, gravity had
taken its toll on the father and softened the once-square line of
his jaw. But he was still a good-looking man. Paul Newman could
take lessons.

Jack began to reason with
the girl in a calm, carefully controlled voice. "You don't really
know anyone here, Caroline. Who would we invite? Maybe when your
mother gets out of the clinic and you all go back to Aspen — maybe
then would be a good time for a birthday party."

Caroline looked up at the
older of the two men. "Dada?" she whispered as a tear rolled down
her cheek. "Can I?"

"Of
course
you can have a party,"
Cornelius said gruffly. "You're only five once. By all means.
Arrange one for Caroline, Jack."

"You must be kidding. You
know I'm flat out at the shipyard —"

"Yes, I suppose you're
right," Cornelius Eastman said, annoyed. He looked at his
housekeeper. "Netta? Would —? No, no, you have more than enough to
do already," he said quickly, withering beneath her baleful
look.

He turned back to his son.
"Well, Jack, I guess you're the only one with the resources. Have
Cynthia at the shipyard look into it and make the
arrangements."

"Dad, that's absurd," Jack
said sharply. "She has her hands full, especially this week. We're
revamping our billing system —"

Netta leaned closer to
Jack's ear and said, "If I could have a word with you, sir. I think
I can help you out." She picked up her basket of broken crockery
and led the thoroughly irritated son into the relative quiet of the
kitchen.

It distressed Netta to see
the household in such chaos. It used to be such a quiet,
well-ordered place. Too quiet, perhaps; but at least Jack could
bring his work home every night as he struggled to keep the family
shipyard afloat. Now, he hardly ever bothered coming home before
they were all asleep.

Could anyone blame him?
His own mother had fled from East Gate, even though she and
Cornelius had lived there every summer of their long marriage.
Could anyone blame
her?
To have her husband's illegitimate daughter under
her own roof, over her own objections.
Well.
It was all scandalous, it
really was.

Not that Netta hadn't
longed for the sound of children under the old slate roof. But they
were supposed to be Jack's children, happy children,
nice
children, and Mrs.
Eastman was supposed to cherish them, the way a proper grandmother
should. But she wasn't the proper grandmother! And in any case, she
was in Capri. It was all such a mess.

Netta closed the door on
the barks and shouts and turned to her adored Jack. He did look
bad: tired, and worn, and used up with worry over the failing
shipyard and his mother's hurt. As for Cornelius Eastman, well, he
was obviously slipping into dotage, insisting that Caroline and
Bradley stay at East Gate.

But that wasn't today's
problem.

"What is it, Netta?" Jack
said irritatedly. "Have you found the perfect nanny for our little
Caroline?"

Netta snorted.
"That
machine hasn't
been invented yet. No, but I do know someone who can take this
birthday party off your hands. You know the little cottage to the
west? It's been sold to a nice young lady named Liz Coppersmith.
She designs — I think that's how she described it — events for
people."

"This is a birthday party,
darlin'," Jack said, helping himself to a mug of coffee. "Not a
wedding. I'm not inclined to waste money on frivolity just
now."

"You never are, Jack,"
said his housekeeper with a dry look. "Not if you can pour it into
the shipyard instead. But you heard your father. He wants a party
for his dau ... for Caroline."

"Yeah, well, he also wants
the shipyard to stay solvent," Jack said with a black
look.

"He's on the fence about
that, and you know it," Netta said flatly.
"You
want to keep it. But your
father — he's tired of the struggle, and he'd maybe like to sell.
So don't go using that as an excuse, my boy."

Netta had no need to mince
words with Jack. It was one of the perks of having basically raised
him. His own mother, though she loved her son, would not have felt
so free to scold.

Jack took a sip of the
just-brewed coffee, burned his tongue, swore, slammed down the mug,
and said,
"Fine.
We'll have the damned party!"

"It's only a little
thing," Netta said, wrapping her ample arm around Jack's waist and
giving him two quick squeezes. "It won't make the difference
between bankruptcy or not."

Jack laughed softly and
swung his own arm around his portly housekeeper's shoulder. He
turned to her with a brooding, troubled look in his deep blue eyes
and said, "You understand, Nettie, that the birthday party will in
effect be a coming-out party. We can't keep this charade about my
'cousin' Caroline going much longer. Especially now that everyone's
up from Palm Beach for the season."

Netta gave him a
sympathetic smile. "Well, if the governor of Rhode Island can come
clean about his past," Netta said softly, "I guess your father can,
too. I only wish your mother wasn't taking it so hard."

Jack's look turned bitter.
"Yeah. After all, she knew she was marrying an Eastman. She was
bound to have to share him with another woman sooner or
later."

"Don't be fresh!" Netta
said sharply. "That's your father you're talking about."

"My father; my
grandfather; his father before that," said Jack in an even tone.
"As we know, the tradition goes way back."

Which is why you've never
married, my dear,
thought Netta.
You're looking for the perfect wife, mother, and
mistress all rolled up into one. You want to be the first in your
family. Ah, you dreamer, you.

She shook her head and
sighed.

Jack mistook her sigh and
said with his old roguish smile, "I'm too old to stick in a corner,
Nettie. So now what?"

She spun him around and
faced him toward the door. "I'm going to send you back to the table
and stuff you with birthday cake, that's what. Maybe sugar will
help."

The swing-door opened just
then, and Jack's father poked his head through it. "Netta, Netta,"
he said in a harried voice, "I need you out here. The kids are —
the dog is —
help
me, Netta," he begged.

Netta shooed both men out
ahead of her and thought wearily,
They're
hopeless. Where are the women? Who's going to organize this
foundering kingdom?

Why can't I stay in the
house, Mommy? I just
got
here."

"I know; I know," said
Liz, running a brush quickly over her daughter's sleek brown hair.
"But it's too wet outside to play, and Mommy's going to make a big,
big mess breaking through the ceiling to get into the attic. So you
go on to the restaurant with Aunty Tori, and by the time you get
back from lunch, I'll have the plaster all cleaned up outside your
room, and you can come and go wherever you want."

"Because I've hardly been
in my own house so far, you know," Susy said, clearly feeling
shunted around.

"We've only owned it for
three days, honey," Liz reminded her. "Got your money?"

Susy opened her plastic
purse and pulled out a neatly folded five-dollar bill, then put it
back inside. "Yes."

"Good." Liz turned to
Victoria and said, "Thanks a bunch, Tori. I didn't expect to have
to have the attic ready for the roofers so soon. But if they're
really willing to reshingle the dormers this week—"

"—they need to inspect the
rafters before then. No problem. We don't want rain dripping on our
Susabella, do we?" Victoria said, pinching Susy's nose
lightly.

Off they went. Liz made
one last pass around the second floor, searching for some sign of
an old covered-up entry to the attic. Nope, nothing: the entire
ceiling was plastered smooth.

For the life of her, Liz
could not understand why there was no access hatch. Granted, the
attic was no more than a crawl space, but it could provide at least
a little extra storage—something the cottage had in short
supply.

The most logical place to
cut the hole was over the landing in the hall between the two
bedrooms. Liz wrapped a red bandanna around her hair, slipped a
pair of goggles over her eyes, and did some preliminary drilling
here and there to figure out where the gap between the joists was.
Then she picked up the jigsaw and attacked the ceiling.

The sawing left a thick
cloud of dust and a shocking mess of plaster, lath, and horsehair
on the plastic-covered floor of the upstairs hall. But as the
opening began to take shape, Liz could practically hear the attic
sucking in deep breaths of fresh air.

She set up a stepladder
under the new opening and popped her head into the space above. The
smell of damp wood dashed her spirits; damp wood meant rotten wood.
Fearing the worst, she aimed a flashlight into the recesses of the
long- forgotten attic.

Not too bad,
she decided after a quick scan of the timbers. No
rot, no bats, no bees. There was a little dampness along a rafter
where she knew she had a leak, but that was all.
Good little house,
she
found herself thinking affectionately. She was about to climb back
down the ladder when the beam of her flashlight fell on something
rectangular straddling two joists at the far end.

It was a small,
canvas-covered, metal-strapped trunk, the kind people used to haul
around on steamers when they plied the Atlantic. Sealed away, who
knew for how long? Here, in the tiny attic of her tiny house. A
buried treasure.

With an eager, thumping
heart, Liz hoisted herself up through the opening and began
crawling on her knees from joist to joist toward the trunk. It was
slow going. Halfway there, an exposed nail ripped her jeans and
tore her thigh. Liz let out a cry and pulled away, whacking her
head on the roof's low ridgepole.
Damn!
Now she hurt in
two
places. Worse, she
was beginning to feel claustrophic in the unlit space. She took a
deep breath to calm herself and resumed her crawl.

When she reached the
trunk, she was frustrated once more: it wouldn't open. Liz had the
sense that the trunk wasn't really locked but was simply used to
being closed. She banged on the metal catch with the palm of her
hand once, twice, until it hurt too much to continue.

This is idiotic,
she realized eventually.
I'll haul it downstairs—somehow—and open it there.
She muscled the surprisingly heavy little trunk
from one joist to the next and was rewarded with the sound of the
lock snapping open on its own.

Despite her curiosity, Liz
hesitated before opening the lid. The one thing she did
not
want was to have
something fly up into her face when she did. A flashlight would
help; but the flashlight was lying next to the sawed-out opening,
throwing its beam only vaguely in her direction, and she hadn't the
heart to go crawling back for it.

Ho-kay. In we go,
she decided. She flung the lid open with a sudden
motion.

Nothing flew out. Liz
could see, by the slits of sunlight from a vent at the opposite end
of the attic, that the trunk contained papers and letters. Captain
Kidd's treasure, it was not.

Obviously the contents
weren't valuable enough for the owner to remember where he'd stored
them before he'd had the attic sealed in. Disappointed, Liz was
about to close the lid when she saw, tucked in the darkest corner
of the trunk, another, smaller box.

She reached in and took it
out. It was a lacquered box, seven inches wide and three inches
high, about the size of a Victorian tea caddy. Even in the
near-darkness she could see that it was lacquered a brilliant
Chinese red and decorated with an elaborate floral design. Still
hunched over, she fumbled awkwardly with the thing, trying to open
it. But it was clearly designed for a key, and she had no
key.

She shook it. It sounded
empty. It felt empty. The chances were it
was
empty. But Liz had a fierce,
sudden, irrational desire to believe it held treasure. She began an
awkward, painful crawl back to her sawed-out opening, leaning on
her forearm instead of her hand, which was holding the
box.