"I understand the shipwreck is one of the Cape's most celebrated mysteries, that her parents' ship was intentionally led onto a sandbar."
"That's what everyone says. It was—what, eighty years ago? Hannah's about the only one around here who'd even remember."
And Clate wasn't sure her memory was entirely accurate.
"Look," Tuck went on, "Mrs. Frye and I haven't always seen eye to eye on everything, but, hell, she's an old woman. I don't wish her any harm. But if she's planning to sprinkle a little monkshood on somebody's pizza..." His voice trailed off, and he appealed to Clate with a sheepish gesture; gossip embarrassed him. "You know what I'm saying?"
"I do indeed. Thanks for coming to me with this, Tuck. If you find anything else, let me know, okay? Meanwhile, I'll see what I can find out."
After Tuck left, Clate headed inside, changed into dry clothes, and poured himself a glass of iced tea. If there were ghosts in the Frye house, he could feel their presence, and he could imagine it if there weren't. Had Jason and Hannah Frye loved each other? Or had Jason Frye taken pity on her, remembering the little girl who'd waited in vain for her parents to come home? The man had been dead almost twenty years, Caleb and Phoebe Macintosh eighty. Whatever had happened, the past was past and there was no undoing it, only accepting it.
But Hannah Macintosh Frye wasn't after buried treasure because she couldn't accept her parents' deaths. She wanted to find out who'd lured them onto that sandbar, and why, and if her father really had been bringing home treasure to his family. She wanted answers to questions that had haunted her since the age of seven.
Again, Clate had the nagging feeling that she was holding back something, maybe nothing crucial by his standards, but something she didn't want, or couldn't bring herself, to speak about aloud.
Piper didn't have the objectivity to see that however well intentioned her elderly aunt might be, however she might justify her actions, Hannah Frye was manipulating her.
The telephone jerked him from his dark thoughts. It was his assistant in Nashville. "I've done some checking," Mabel Porter said. She still had the sounds of the Cumberland hills in her voice. "No one's saying they called up there and talked to anyone in Frye's Cove. It's become common knowledge, though, that you have a place in one of the last undeveloped areas of Cape Cod."
"So?"
"So, why did you buy it if not to develop it?"
A good question. He could have bought dozens of other properties on Cape Cod more suited to his personality and lifestyle. He didn't have to buy a crumbling eighteenth-century house on a tidal marsh. "It seemed like a good idea at the time." And that was the truth, he realized. He'd had no other rational, logical reason. No wonder people were confused. "Anything else?"
She hesitated.
"What is it, Mabel?"
"Your daddy called."
Only someone from the same, hardscrabble town would have said those words as matter-of-factly. Clate shut his eyes, fought the image of the man in the churchyard. "Any message?"
"He just said to tell you he'd called. He didn't leave a number."
He wouldn't. He wouldn't risk having Clate call back and tell him never to bother him again. "Thank you, Mabel."
Mabel started to say something, but stopped herself. She knew all about Clayton Jackson, Sr. His supposed recovery from alcoholism. His second marriage. His second family. A boy and a girl, half-siblings Clate had never met. Even Irma Bryar had stepped carefully around that one.
His father wanted his firstborn to forgive him, but Clate didn't know if he could, or whether it mattered if he did. Neither of them could relive the past. There was no undoing what was done.
After he hung up, Clate listened to the thunder rumble, even as the sun broke through the clouds. He could see his mother's grave. If she'd lived, would she have transformed her life? Would his father have been able, with Lucinda Jackson alive, to transform his?
For no reason that Clate could fathom, he thought of Hannah Frye. He wondered how he'd feel about his parents after eighty years. Would the rawness and regret and hatred—the love—have eased by then? His father would be long dead. There'd be no more calls, no more chances.
Clate drank more iced tea and pushed on into his musty library, listening to the thunder until it faded into the distance.
Piper reread the magazine article on Clate Jackson before heading off to her appointment in Chatham, a picturesque village on the east side of the Cape. A retired New Jersey optometrist had hired her to help him create an authentic early Cape Cod menu and decor for his new restaurant, beyond, as he put it, clam chowder and watercolors of lighthouses.