True Love (34 page)

“I’ll be fine,” she told him again as she moved her hand across the table to touch his fingers. She was still in a daze after the night before. They’d made love for hours, taking their time with each other. Even though Alix knew that something had happened, she couldn’t
get him to tell her what it was, but all last night and this morning he’d acted as though Alix might walk out the door and never come back. She was concerned about him and didn’t want him to worry. “Dad will be here, and Lexie and Toby. What are you so afraid of?”

He wanted to say, “My grandfather and your mother,” but didn’t. This afternoon he was going to board JetBlue and fly to New York to begin making arrangements for the purchase and shipment of the materials to build Alix’s chapel. “Sure you don’t want to go with me?” he asked.

“I’m not sure at all, but …” She didn’t really understand why she felt that she
had
to stay on Nantucket but she did, and she went with her instinct. “I’m going to learn what I can about Valentina. And who was the other woman you asked me about?”

“Parthenia.”

“And you don’t know her last name?”

“With a first name like that she doesn’t need another one.” He looked down at his coffee and thought that it was his grandfather who’d put this idea of remaining behind and working on the papers into Alix’s mind. If it was, Jared knew
why
he was doing it. One month from today Captain Caleb Kingsley would depart from this world forever. The last close attachment of Jared’s life was going away. Forever.

Alix reached across the table to put her hand over his. “I wish you’d tell me what’s bothering you.”

“I would if I could.” He gave her a half smile. “What have you heard from your mother?”

“She’s finished her book tour and is back home now. The last time we spoke, I started to let her know just what I thought about her lying to me all these years.”

Jared genuinely grinned. “How hard did she laugh?”

Alix groaned. “I hate that you know both my parents so well. Mom said it was all done for art and therefore was permissible.”

“Did you tell her I was going off-island?”

“I did, actually.”

Jared took a drink of his coffee. “Then she’ll be here within twenty-four hours after I leave.”

Alix started to speak but paused when Linda appeared and put their food before them. When they were alone, Alix leaned toward Jared and said softly, “Why would my mother need to wait until you left before she came here? What other secrets do you two have?”

“You mean like sex on the chamber pot staircase, like you and I had last night?” he asked, eyebrows raised. “My back still hurts.” Alix didn’t like his joke.

Jared realized his bond with Alix was much more important than any loyalty to her mother. “Victoria wants the last of the Kingsley women’s journals, specifically Aunt Addy’s, so she can make a novel out of them.”

Alix ate a few bites of her breakfast quesadilla as she thought about what he’d said and how it fit so well into what she already knew. “Then it wasn’t Aunt Addy’s storytelling—there are journals.”

“Yes. Lots of them.”

“Is this one of your two secrets?” she asked. “It is.”

“And the other one is that you’ve seen Captain Caleb as a ghost?”

“More or less,” he said.

“Is that it? I now know
all
your secrets?”

“I guess maybe you do,” he said, but his eyes were laughing. He hadn’t exactly told the extent of his ghostly encounters.

“And you think Mom is going to wait until you’re not around to come here to look for Aunt Addy’s journals?”

“I do,” Jared said. “And since no one knows where they are, I’m a little concerned that she could …” He’d been about to say that Victoria might take a chain saw to the old house, but he didn’t think Alix would like to hear that.

“You’re worried that she might damage your house in her quest to find the books, aren’t you?” Alix asked.

“Exactly.” Jared was relieved that she understood. “You think your dad can … you know?”

“Make her behave?” Alix asked. “No. She terrifies him. He stands up to everyone else in the world but my mother turns him into a wimp. Dad says there is no man on earth strong enough to handle her.”

“I have to agree with him on that,” Jared said. “I would never want to go head-to-head with Victoria. Ready to go?”

She nodded, he left money, they said goodbye to everyone—including Mark the owner/cook—and went out to get into Jared’s truck. They were heading out to the North Shore to look at the chapel site again. The building permit had yet to come, but it would be there soon and they wanted to be ready.

Alix was looking at the people standing outside of Downyflake, waiting for an available table. She’d been on the island long enough that she could distinguish locals from tourists—and watching them, she felt as though she were an observer at a zoo. They seemed abnormally clean and thin, as though they’d been extruded from a machine and were not quite real. Jewelry and cell phones dangled from their arms.

She was about to make a derogatory remark, when three pretty girls with long, glossy hair saw them.

“Jared! When are you going to come play with us?”

“I’m too old for you kids,” he said out the truck window.

“You didn’t say that
last
summer,” the prettiest one said.

“And that’s what aged me.”

The girls laughed.

“Sorry about that,” he said as he turned onto Sparks Avenue. “I know their dads.” He was looking at her intently, wondering how she’d handle the bit of flirty wordplay.

“Does that mean you think
I
am old enough for you?”

Jared laughed. “You
are
Victoria’s daughter—and you look like you’re planning something.”

“I was thinking that Mom would love to write about Valentina and Captain Caleb. Maybe I can get her so involved with those two
that she won’t need to search for Aunt Addy’s journals. Besides, what could possibly be in them? In my memories of Aunt Addy, she’s hardly a wild woman, or a possible murderer.”

Jared said nothing as he looked at Alix.

“Oh, right. Captain Caleb’s ghost,” she said. “But surely my mother couldn’t think that she’d be able to write an entire novel based on a few ghostly encounters. A foggy figure standing at the top of the stairs then vanishing. That’s not much. I vaguely remember stories Aunt Addy told me about Captain Caleb, but romantic daydreams aren’t the same as the truth. I’ll tell Mom that it would be better if she tried to find out what catastrophic thing happened to Captain Caleb that made him into a ghost. Isn’t there always some romantic tragedy that results in a ghost?” Alix looked at him. “That, of course, will lead her to the story you told me about Valentina and Caleb. I know Mom hasn’t seen the papers, but has she heard the story?”

“I don’t believe she has,” he said. “If she had …” He looked at Alix.

“Mom would already be here asking to go through your attic.”

They exchanged smiles of understanding. At the hint of a romantic story, no doubt Victoria would have quickly been on the doorstep cajoling, sweet-talking, doing whatever it took. It would have been nearly impossible to resist her.

“You know,” Jared said, “I think this might actually work.”

“It probably will,” she said. “I can be a good salesman when I need to be. Too bad you and Dad didn’t tell me about all this earlier. If you two hadn’t spent your lives keeping secrets, I could have helped from the beginning.” For the rest of the drive to the North Shore, Alix quietly—but firmly—told Jared where he’d made his mistakes in handling Victoria.

He just smiled and didn’t defend himself. He knew there was a lot more to the Kingsley ghost than just a vague vision standing at the head of the stairs, and he wondered what Alix was going to say after she found out all of it. Would she be so sassy then?

When he got to his land on the North Shore, he parked and turned off the truck. “Want to see the site again? If you can stop bawling me out, that is.”

“You can’t blame me for feeling left out, can you? I missed out on an entire
life
.”

Leaning across the seat, he said, “From my point of view, whatever it was that made you what you are was done right.” After a quick kiss, he got out of the truck.

All Alix could do was smile.

They spent a couple of hours at the site. In the toolbox in the back of the pickup Jared had construction flags, stakes and string, and a two-hundred-foot tape. With no need for discussions, he and Alix got right to it, both wanting to see the outline of the chapel laid out on the ground.

As though they’d been working together for years—which, thanks to Ken, in a way they had—they temporarily staked and strung the foundation, then stepped back into the shade and looked at it.

“Can you envision it?” He’d pulled a couple of bottles of cold water from the cooler and handed one to her.

“I can.” Her voice changed. “I want to tell you that this is very generous of—”

“Don’t say it!” he said.

She knew he didn’t want to hear her gratitude yet again. “All right. Just so you know.” She looked around. “Did Valentina live here or in town?”

“Both. After Caleb built the new house, he gave the old one to his cousin Obed.”

“Gave
it to him?”

“For one dollar. It’s still a common practice on Nantucket. Check the local newspaper, the Inky, for property transfers and you’ll see it being done nearly every day. Nantucketers often inherit their houses.” He made a scoffing noise. “Otherwise, we couldn’t afford to live on our own island.”

Alix thought of the rather ordinary twenty-million-dollar house
she’d seen. What he said certainly made sense. “So Caleb went away on a ship, leaving the love of his life behind carrying their child. But she married his cousin—probably because she had to—and at first Valentina and Obed lived here in the original house.”

“That’s right,” he said. “After Caleb’s death, when his brother returned with the will, Obed and Valentina moved into the big house on Kingsley Lane.”

“With Caleb’s son, the first Jared,” Alix said. “Then Valentina disappeared and this house burned to the ground.” She thought for a moment. “Do you think there’s any connection between her disappearance and the fire?”

They were both looking at the depression in the earth that was in the center of where the chapel would be. When he didn’t answer right away, she looked at him.

“I think,” he said slowly, “that there is a
strong
connection between the two events.”

He was saying that he thought Valentina had died in the fire, but she didn’t want to believe something so terrible could have happened to the young woman Captain Caleb had loved so much.

They looked at each other, and understanding passed between them. There was more to this building than giving Izzy a place to get married. It had to do with Jared’s family. And righting a wrong, she thought.

“I do have a question,” she said. “Who is Parthenia and where did you hear of her?”

“What time is my flight?”

Alix groaned. “And I thought you had no more secrets.”

Smiling, he lifted her off the ground and swung her around. “I wouldn’t be very interesting if I had no secrets, now, would I? Come on, let’s go into town. I have to buy ten pounds of chocolate-covered cranberries to take with me.”

“You can’t get them in New York?”

“Only if I want low quality and tasteless,” he said as they started back to the truck. “The ones I buy are made with
Nantucket
cranberries.
Besides, they’re not for anybody in New York. Stanley got the truck I keep off-island and I’m driving to Vermont to see the lovely Sylvia. They’re for her.”

On their way back to town, he teased her about Sylvia—who turned out to be the blacksmith he’d mentioned before. She was married to a farrier and they had two little girls. Jared said that if he was going to coax Sylvia into doing the big hinges for the chapel for them right away, rather than six months from now, he needed to show up bearing gifts. They parked at the house, walked back to town, got the cranberries at Sweet Inspirations, then crossed the street to Bookworks. They bought four children’s books set on Nantucket, and the latest edge-of-your-seat nonfiction book by Nat Philbrick—who lived close by. By lunchtime all the shopping had left Alix exhilarated, but Jared was exhausted. They went to Languedoc for lunch.

After they ate, they walked back to the house and carried their purchases upstairs. On the bed was Jared’s half-packed suitcase. He had an apartment in New York so he didn’t take much, but he needed to pack the gifts.

“Is that all of it?” Alix asked as she closed the case.

“No, one thing is missing,” Jared said as he took her in his arms and kissed her.

She clung to him.

“Think you’ll miss me?” he asked, his face buried in her hair.

“Stop it or you’ll make me cry.”

He moved back to look at her face. “I could stand your tears if I knew they were for me.”

She put her head back down on his chest and the tears began to come. “You’ll go back to being the Great Jared Montgomery and forget all about me.”

He kissed the top of her head. “Haven’t you yet realized that there is no Jared Montgomery? He’s not real. The real me is here in this house, on this island.” He started to say, With you. But it was too soon for that.

Alix put her arms around his neck and kissed his mouth. “Your beautiful lower lip,” she whispered.

“Is that the only part of my body you like?” He was kissing her cheeks, her temples. Soft, sweet kisses.

“I like your mind. You’re fairly intelligent. For a man, that is.”

Jared laughed. “I’ll show you how smart I am!” He swept the suitcase onto the floor.

“Please do,” she said. “I like anything you can show me or tell me or ask—” She broke off because he kissed her into silence.

Chapter Nineteen