Thirty-One
Samantha saw her family off to Scotland and London. She would be seeing them again soon. They were all certain there was more to be unearthed about Harry Bennett and Benjamin Hazelton Magowan, who, it seemed, had included his best friend in his will. Only Harry had never done anything about it.
Isaac wanted to help Samantha with her research when he was at Amherst. His father was thinking about teaching there for a year, maybe longer. Her parents didn’t plan to be in Scotland forever.
Her father pulled her aside at the airport, while his nephews and nieces unloaded the trunk of their grandfather’s old Mercedes. “Are you staying in Boston?” he asked her.
She shook her head. “I’m going back to Knights Bridge.”
“Will you be staying at the Sloan cabin again?”
She thought of Justin and smiled. “Maybe.” Her father groaned, and she grinned at him. “What?”
“Nothing.” He kissed her on the cheek. “You always did want a guy who could fix things.”
She hugged everyone goodbye and headed off before airport security started to get antsy. She drove through the tunnel and pointed the big car west. No need to stop back at her grandfather’s house. She was prepared for Knights Bridge this time. More or less, anyway. Backpack in the trunk, water bottle up front with her, her grandmother’s recipe for apple pie.
No tent, though. If she needed a tent...well, then, she wouldn’t be staying long at all.
* * *
In less than two hours, Samantha pulled into Carriage Hill. More leaves had turned, glowing orange, red and yellow in the afternoon sunlight. As she walked past the pots of yellow-and-white mums, she could hear laughter from the kitchen.
Maggie opened the door, still laughing. “Samantha! Welcome. Come on in. We’re making applesauce.”
The kitchen was warm with the smell of cooking apples, steam rising from two large pots on the stove. Empty canning jars were lined up on the butcher-block island. Olivia and Dylan were at the sink, paring knives in hand, colanders filled with apples on the counter next to them.
Justin was there, too, leaning in the mudroom doorway. His truck wasn’t out front. He must have walked down from the construction site. Samantha noticed bits of sawdust on his clothes—the uniform black canvas shirt, dark T-shirt, jeans, scuffed boots. A few days away, she thought, and nothing had changed.
“I wanted to say hi,” she said. “My family’s on their flight. I figured I would stop out at the cider mill before—” She stopped there. She didn’t know what to say. Before what? Before she went back to Boston?
But she didn’t want to go back. She wanted to stay here.
Justin eased into the kitchen. “I’ll go out there with you.” He nodded to his friends. “It’s a good year for apples. Let me know if you need more.”
He walked out to the old Mercedes with her and got into the passenger seat. She smiled at him. “Good that I have a car this time, don’t you think?”
“You probably don’t want to take it onto the mill’s driveway.”
“You’re right, I don’t.”
Samantha had no trouble navigating the back roads out to the cider mill. She parked under a large oak tree as gray squirrels chased each other along a branch. She got out of the car, shoving her hands into her jacket pockets at the unexpected cold.
Justin started down the driveway toward the cider mill. “You never thought your Captain Farraday would lead you here, did you, Sam?”
“In some ways, he seems as elusive as ever.”
They walked down to the clearing. A dozen bright-colored leaves floated in the millpond, and clear, coppery water flowed over the dam. The acrid fire smells had dissipated, the exterior of the little nineteenth-century mill showing no visible signs of damage. Samantha could see it now as Henrietta had seen it, painted a vibrant red, churning apples into cider, a part of the fabric of the community of Knights Bridge and of her life with Zeke.
“Come on,” Justin said. “There’s something I want to show you.”
They went inside. He’d pulled the dirty, cracked plastic off the windows. The sun streamed in, and she saw that he’d cleaned up from the fire. He wouldn’t be one to waste time.
A gold coin was on the worn sill of a front window, leaning against the glass.
“What’s this?” she asked.
He picked it up. “You tell me.”
“It looks like an eighteenth-century Spanish coin, but that doesn’t mean it is. Where did you get it?”
“I found it one night when the guys and I were out here horsing around. I kept it. Figured I’d do something with it one of these days.” He took her hand, opened her fingers and placed the coin in her palm. “I did some digging out here and checked town records. The mill’s built on an old cellar hole. It’s likely to belong to one of the earliest houses in the area.”
“The hermit your grandmother told me about.”
“Your pirate.”
Samantha rubbed her thumb along the markings in the coin. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
He shrugged. “I wasn’t sure what you were up to.”
“You knew all along my interest in Cider Brook had to do with pirates.”
“Let’s just say I doubted Duncan McCaffrey’s pirate expert had come here to follow Cider Brook into Quabbin. I figured you’d left out a few things.” He nodded at the coin in her hand. “Can you tell if the coin is part of Farraday’s lost treasure?
“Maybe. The Hazeltons built the mill. Did Henrietta’s family own the land before them?”
“Just the few acres around the mill. Her father sold them to the Hazeltons in 1872. His name was Smith, by the way. Benjamin Smith.” Justin was silent a moment before he continued, “There’s a story that after Zeke died, Henrietta would take little Ben out here and spend hours and hours on their own. People were worried she would take her own life. Then she and her son quietly left town.”
“She found Benjamin Farraday’s lost treasure, or at least some of it—what he hadn’t sold to support himself or for bribes to secure his freedom.”
Justin looked out toward the brook. “If the hermit was your pirate, he could have decided he liked his simple life here.”
“He was wanted by the crown by then.”
“Unloading a lot of ill-gotten gold and whatnot would only draw unwanted attention to himself. Better to keep the bulk of his treasure buried than to risk a hanging.”
“Then Benjamin Farraday never went back to Boston and bought a new ship,” Samantha said. “That was a ruse on his part to throw off authorities and to keep anyone from looking for him out here.”
Justin settled his gaze on her. “There’s no pirate shipwreck for you to find, then.”
She sighed. “That’s the way it goes. There are a lot of false leads and dead ends in treasure hunting.”
“What now?” he asked. “Think there’s more treasure out here?”
“I doubt it. My guess is Henrietta found whatever there was to find, and I’m glad of that.”
“What are you going to do with no treasure to hunt?”
“You’ve seen my grandfather’s office. There’s so much yet to go through there, and that doesn’t count all the other places he has stuff squirreled away—and now we have whatever Ben Magowan left him, too. Who knows where that will lead?” Samantha stepped into the threshold of the mill door and looked out at the brook tumbling toward the reservoir. “I’ve been thinking a nice, quiet cabin in a pretty New England town with a cute guy up the road would be a good spot to cart stuff and go through it.”
“A cute guy, huh?”
“That would be your brother Christopher.” Samantha turned back to Justin and smiled. “You would be—how did Loretta describe you? Tall, dark and taciturn.”
“Not cute, though. Good. I was worried for a second.” He tapped her hand with one finger. “And the coin?”
“It belongs here, don’t you think?”
“Sam...”
She placed it in his hand, curled his fingers around it. “You know what to do with it, Justin. I think you always have. That’s why it’s not in a vault.”
He surprised her with a kiss. “We’ll have to create our own treasures. I’m in love with you, Sam. I fell in love with you when I felt my padlock in your jacket pocket. I want to get to know you better, but it’s not going to change how I feel.” He brushed his fingers through her hair, down to her lips. “That’s forever.”
“Forever.” She kissed his fingertips. “I like that word. I think I’ve been in love with you since you plopped me out by Cider Brook and told me to stay put.”
“You weren’t intimidated.”
“Never.”
He grinned and hooked an arm around her middle, lifting her as he headed outside. He set her down by the millpond. Then, without a word, without so much as a glance at her, he flung Henrietta’s gold coin into the millpond. It hit a yellow leaf, then sank into the water. In no time at all, it would disappear in the muck at the bottom of the pond.
“To Henrietta and Zeke,” Samantha whispered.
She and Justin stared at the water as the ripples from the coin faded and another bright leaf dropped from a nearby tree.
They heard a commotion up on the trail along the brook. Heather Sloan and her nephews arrived in a panicked search for Beaver, the big Sloan dog that looked so much like Olivia and Dylan’s Buster.
Justin turned from the pond and looked at Samantha. “Beaver’s not a long-lost pirate, but want to help find him?”
She took his hand and smiled. “Let’s go.”
“Ah, Bess. I’d do anything for you. I’d die for you.”
“I know you would die for me, as I would for you,” Lady Elizabeth whispered in the dark of their bunk. “May it never come to that, my love.”
Captain Farraday held her close. “I’ll get you home and I’ll keep you safe.”
“I know you will. You’re not such a rogue after all, are you, Captain Farraday?” She touched his scarred cheek with her fingertips and smiled. “You’re my hero. You always will be, no matter what happens to us.”
* * * * *
Keep reading for an excerpt from THAT NIGHT ON THISTLE LANE by Carla Neggers.
One
Bumblebees hummed in the frothy catmint on the edge of the stone terrace, the only sound to disturb the hot New England summer afternoon. Phoebe O’Dunn watched a solo bee hover above a purple blossom, as if debating what to do, then dart past the green-painted bench where she was seated and disappear across the herb and flower gardens. None of its fellow bumblebees followed.
Phoebe had met on the terrace with her sister Maggie and her friend Olivia Frost to discuss the upcoming vintage fashion show at their small-town library, but inevitably talk had turned to the charity masquerade ball tomorrow night in Boston, two hours away. Maggie and Olivia were going. Phoebe wasn’t, but she just might be able to help with costumes.
The dresses would be perfect.
If she’d had any doubts, they’d been dispelled when Maggie and Olivia sank into their chairs at the round, natural-wood table across the terrace and said they were stumped. With just twenty-four hours before they had to leave Knights Bridge for Boston, they had no idea what to wear.
Phoebe did. She’d already had the dresses cleaned and now they were hanging in the back room at her little house on Thistle Lane, just off the Knights Bridge common. She hadn’t mentioned them yet because—well, she didn’t know why, except that she couldn’t help feeling as if she were handling someone else’s secrets. She’d discovered the dresses two weeks ago in a mysterious hidden room in the library attic. So far she hadn’t told anyone about them or the room.
“We should have figured this out sooner,” Maggie said from the shaded table. Like Phoebe, Maggie had wild strawberry-blond hair, hers a tone darker and four inches shorter. And they had freckles. Lots of freckles, Maggie especially.
“Dylan didn’t give us much notice,” Olivia said without a hint of criticism. Her fiancé, Dylan McCaffrey, had purchased tickets to the masquerade ball to support the cause, a neonatal intensive care unit at a Boston hospital. He’d handed them to Olivia just before he and several friends took off to the White Mountains for a few days of hiking. She added with a sigh, “I’ve never been to a masquerade.”
“Neither have I,” Maggie said. “We must know someone in Boston who can help with costumes.”
Phoebe listened to the bumblebees hard at work in the catmint. She and Maggie had been friends with Olivia since preschool. They were gathered in Olivia’s backyard. Fair-haired and pretty, she’d returned to Knights Bridge in the spring to convert her classic 1803 center-chimney house into The Farm at Carriage Hill. In the process, she’d met and fallen in love with Dylan, a former hockey player, now a wealthy San Diego businessman. His arrival in Knights Bridge had turned the out-of-the-way rural Massachusetts town on its head.
Pushing back stray curls, Phoebe got to her feet. She and Maggie both wore sundresses and sandals, but Olivia had on shorts and an old T-shirt after spending the morning in her gardens. When she’d left Boston, she’d put her graphic design skills and boundless energy to work in transforming her historic house into an idyllic spot for showers, meetings, girlfriend weekends and the occasional wedding—including her sister’s upcoming wedding in September and her own in December.
“You’ve been awfully quiet, Phoebe,” Olivia said. “Any ideas what we could wear?”
“I was just thinking...” Phoebe tried to sound casual. “What if you two dressed up as Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly?”
Olivia pushed back her chair and eyed Phoebe with obvious interest. “How would we pull off Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly? Do you have something in mind?”
Maggie, a caterer with two young sons, stood with her iced tea, the sprig of peppermint and wedge of lemon that she’d artfully hooked onto the glass now floating among the ice cubes. She cast Phoebe an amused look. “Do you see me as Audrey Hepburn or Grace Kelly? Either one?”
Phoebe smiled at her sister. “Sure, why not?”
“You really do have an imagination,” Maggie said. “What are they, dresses that came in for the vintage fashion show?”
Phoebe hesitated, framing her explanation. As director of the Knights Bridge Free Public Library, the vintage fashion show was her brainchild, an end-of-the-summer event that would involve the entire community. It would showcase clothing from 1900 to 1975. The various library reading groups were focusing on twentieth-century books, the historical society was helping out, local businesses were donating food and staging materials—it was an all-consuming project that now, finally, was well in hand.
Phoebe had discovered the tiny hidden room while looking through the library attic for anything she could use for the show. It was as if she’d stepped into a time capsule, a secret hideaway. The room was filled with reproductions of dresses from movies up through the 1960s and from different historical periods—Medieval, Regency, Victorian, Edwardian, Roaring Twenties.
Who could have predicted such a thing?
She wanted to know more before she told anyone. Who had set up the room? Who had worked there, left everything behind? Why?
Did anyone else know about it?
She’d started volunteering at the library as a teenager and working there in college, and she’d never heard a word about a hidden attic room.
Finally she said, “Everyone’s been going through trunks and boxes in closets and attics for the fashion show. It’s been loads of fun so far.”
Olivia nodded. “I helped Gran load up her car trunk with old clothes from her and her friends. They’re all getting a kick out of the idea.”
“I can think of several dresses that would be perfect for a costume ball,” Phoebe said. “Two in particular. I’m not positive about sizes, but we can alter them if we need to.”
“Easier to take in a seam than let one out,” Maggie muttered.
“If we need to let out seams, we could add a strip of similar or contrasting fabric,” Olivia said. “It’s a costume ball. No one’s going to kick us out if our costumes are a little quirky.”
“You’ll be wearing masks, too,” Phoebe said.
“Ah, yes. Plausible deniability.” Olivia grinned, obviously liking that idea. “No one else has to know it’s me trying to pass myself off as Audrey Hepburn.”
“Not as Audrey Hepburn herself,” Phoebe amended. “As one of the characters she played.”
Olivia laughed. “Well, that just makes all the difference, doesn’t it? Hey, if one of these outfits works, I’m all for it.”
“Me, too,” Maggie said, with somewhat less confidence. “You’re sure it’s all right? We won’t be stepping on anyone’s toes borrowing a couple of the dresses?”
“It’ll be fine,” Phoebe said, leaving it at that. “Why don’t you come by my cottage later? We can open a bottle of wine and you can see if the dresses work for you.”
“What about you, Phoebe?” Olivia asked. “You have to come with us now. We can’t go off to the ball like the wicked stepsisters and leave you sweeping the ashes out of the fireplace. Dylan left a half-dozen tickets. No one will use them if we don’t.”
Whenever Olivia mentioned Dylan, Phoebe could see how very much her friend was in love with him.
A happy ending.
Phoebe’s favorite books and movies were ones with happy endings, and she welcomed a real-life romantic happy ending, as rare as it could be.
She waved off a bee that had found its way to her. “It’s very generous of Dylan. A neonatal ICU is a great cause, and it’ll be a wonderful night for everyone, I’m sure, but I can’t go.”
“Why not?” Maggie asked, obviously skeptical.
“I have things to do.” Phoebe glanced at her watch and winced. It really was later than she expected. “I have to get back to the library. I have story hour, but I’ll be home by six if you want to come by then.”
“We’ll be there,” Olivia said, then turned to Maggie. “I guess I shouldn’t speak for you.”
“Wouldn’t miss it,” Maggie said. “I want to see these dresses and I need a costume.”
Aware of her sister’s eyes on her, Phoebe offered to help clear the table of the iced-tea glasses and plates of tarts they had sampled for possible addition to the Carriage Hill catering menu, but Olivia shooed her away. “You need to get to story hour. The kids will get restless if you’re late.”
“An understatement,” Phoebe said with a smile as she snatched a tiny apple-pear tart. “This one’s my favorite, but they’re all fabulous. I’m off. I’ll see you later.”
Instead of going back through the house and disturbing Olivia’s dog, Buster, asleep in the mudroom, Phoebe followed a bark-mulch path through basil, oregano and dill plants soaking up the summer sun, then crossed a patch of shaded lawn and went around the side of the house to the front yard.
She had the door open to her Subaru, which she’d owned since she’d started commuting to the University of Massachusetts in nearby Amherst, when her sister burst out from the kitchen ell, a later addition to Olivia’s old house. Phoebe didn’t have a chance to get into the car before Maggie flew down the front walk and caught up with her.
“Phoebe, what on earth is wrong with you?”
She knew exactly what her sister was getting at. “I pay my own way, Maggie. You know that.”
“It’s not as if Dylan offered to pay off your mortgage for you. The tickets are his donation to a worthy cause. It looks good if the ball is well attended. It’s great publicity for the neonatal ICU and what it does, and it gets other people thinking about giving. Everyone wins.” Maggie sighed at her older sister. “We can’t be grinds all the time.”
“I’m not a grind,” Phoebe said. “I love what I do. I have fun—”
“And you live within your means and never take a false step,” Maggie finished for her, then winced. “Sorry. That came out wrong.”
“It’s okay. It’s just...” Phoebe stared at the tiny tart in her hand, suddenly wishing she had left it on the table. “It’s a slippery slope, wanting more than you can have, but I take lots of false steps. We all do. I’m not being morally superior.”
“Oh, Phoebe, I know. You’re the kindest person in Knights Bridge. Probably in all of New England.” Maggie’s rich turquoise eyes shone with emotion. “I just don’t want you to miss out on a good time.”
“Dressing you and Olivia for a masquerade will be a great time,” Phoebe said, smiling at her sister. “I have to go. Those boys of yours will be tearing up the library.”
Maggie groaned. “They’ll be full of energy after spending the day with Mom. She lets them do whatever they want. When I picked them up yesterday, they were helping her muck out the goat barn. Knee-deep in you-know-what. I wouldn’t care except they didn’t have a change of clothes. I’ll never get the smell out of my van.”
“It’ll wear off in time but you probably don’t want catering clients to get a whiff.”
“No kidding.”
Phoebe commiserated even as she was amused at the image of her mother and her young nephews. “I’ll see you in a little while. I hope I wasn’t rude to Olivia—”
“You weren’t, and she’d understand if you were. Don’t worry. She’s trying to figure out things herself. This is new territory for her. For Dylan, too. He never pictured himself living in a little town like Knights Bridge until he met Olivia. He obviously still loves San Diego, too.” Maggie stepped back from Phoebe’s car and waved a hand. “They’ll figure it out. I should have such problems.”
“What would you do with a fortune like Dylan has?”
Her eyes flashed with humor. “Get someone to paint my house. I hate ladders.”
Phoebe laughed as she climbed into her car, but she also felt a pang of uncertainty about what was next for Dylan and his millions, and what it would mean for quiet, picturesque Knights Bridge.
She left her car windows open and drove back toward town. She could smell the clean, cool water of a stream that ran along the edge of the narrow road. Carriage Hill was the last house on the dead-end road, two miles from the Knights Bridge village center. The road hadn’t always been a dead end. Once it had wound into the heart of the picturesque Swift River Valley. That was before four small valley towns were depopulated in the 1930s and deliberately flooded to create Quabbin Reservoir. The reservoir now provided pure drinking water for metropolitan Boston.
Boston must have seemed so far away back then.
It seemed far enough away now. Barely two hours, but so different from her life in Knights Bridge. She’d never lived anywhere else. Olivia and Maggie had both lived in Boston for a few years before returning to their hometown, Olivia in March, Maggie last fall. Phoebe’s biggest move had been from her mother’s house—or madhouse, as she and her sisters would say fondly—to her own place on Thistle Lane. It was a cottage, really. Perfect for just her. She could even walk to her job at the library.
Phoebe appreciated the peaceful back road as she pulled her thoughts together. Story hours were a favorite part of her job, but her visit with Maggie and Olivia had left her feeling edgy and frayed.
Questioning, wanting...dreaming.
I like my life, she reminded herself as she came into Knights Bridge center, known as one of the prettiest villages in New England with its shaded town common surrounded by classic houses, a town hall, library, church and country store.
Phoebe parked in front of the library, a solid, rambling brick building filled with endless nooks and crannies. Persistent stories said the library was haunted, to the point that the producers of a television series about ghosts had considered it for a show before choosing another supposedly haunted New England library. Phoebe often heard creaks, groans, moans, whistles and—once—what she would have sworn were whispers. But she’d never considered she might encounter an actual ghost.
Specifically, George Sanderson, founder of the library in 1872.
Upon his death in 1904, he left the library his extensive collection of books and archives, a Steinway baby grand piano and a dozen straw hats made at one of the small mills he’d owned in the valley. The last Sanderson had vacated Knights Bridge during the Depression, when the family mills were demolished ahead of the damming of the Swift River for Quabbin. Homes, businesses, barns, fences, trees—everything in the valley went. Even graves were moved to a new cemetery on the southern end of the reservoir.
Old George’s portrait still hung above the fireplace in the library’s main room. He was handsome and stern-looking, not exactly the sort Phoebe imagined would encourage story hours for small children. As she headed up the sunlit brick walk, she heard squeals of laughter through the open front window, where the children’s section was located.
Her five-year-old nephew, Aidan, Maggie’s younger son, pressed his face against the window screen. “Hey, Aunt Phoebe!”
“Aidan Sloan, do not poke that screen,” she said firmly, picking up her pace.
He giggled and disappeared from sight.
Phoebe ran up the steps and went inside, welcoming the cool, solid wood-paneled interior, hardly changed since the library was built to George Sanderson’s specifications. The main room included a small stage, the piano tucked on one end. Before Phoebe’s arrival as director, the library had seldom used the stage and the trustees had complained about the “wasted space.” With careful planning, she’d gained their support and found the money to launch a modest concert series, with musicians who didn’t expect more than a few dozen in the audience, and opened up the stage for art and garden shows. It was where the library would hold its vintage fashion show in less than two weeks.
We make use of all that we have.
That was Phoebe’s motto for the library as well as her own life. Why moan about what she didn’t have when so much was right within her grasp?
Her older nephew, Tyler, almost seven, was sitting cross-legged on the hardwood floor in front of the stage with a book about raptors in his lap. “Aunt Phoebe, did you know that raptors have three eyelids?”
“In fact, I did, Tyler.” She laughed. “You’d be surprised at what a librarian knows. Would you like to see a raptor’s eyelids sometime?”
He nodded eagerly.
“We’ll have to figure that out, then. Right now, though, let’s go in with the other kids.”
“I want to stay here.”
Tyler—as redheaded as his mother—preferred to read a book on his own than to be read to, especially with his squirming younger brother. Phoebe put out a hand, but he ignored it and stood up on his own. He shuffled past her into the children’s section, his head down, shoulders slumped, as if she’d asked him to walk the plank.
He and Aidan would be tired after spending most of the day with Elly O’Dunn, their energetic maternal grandmother. She’d taken the afternoon off from her job at the town offices to look after the boys while Maggie catered a lunch and then met with Olivia at Carriage Hill. Phoebe, her mother and her two youngest sisters were doing what they could to help Maggie as she managed two young boys and a catering business on her own, without Brandon Sloan, her adrenaline-junkie carpenter husband. Phoebe didn’t have all the details, but she knew Brandon’s construction work in Boston had been on-and-off at best the past year or so. It had to have put a strain on his marriage. He had a tendency to take off into the mountains or up the coast when things got tough, instead of talking.
Brandon was the third of six Sloan siblings—five brothers and a sister. His family owned a successful construction business in Knights Bridge and would welcome him back, but returning to his hometown would signal defeat in his eyes. Phoebe had known him since nursery school. He’d wanted out of Knights Bridge at ten. Then he and Maggie fell for each other as teenagers and married in college. Almost no one in town had believed their marriage would last. Phoebe had hoped it would, because they were so much in love.
She sighed. She could be such an idiotic romantic. Hadn’t she learned by now?
She gathered the dozen boys and girls onto a round, dark red rug. They came quickly to order, even her nephews. They were reading Beatrix Potter and had just started The Tale of Peter Rabbit, their last book of the summer, and they couldn’t wait to find out what happened next.
* * *
With Peter Rabbit and Knights Bridge’s little ones safely back with their families, Phoebe locked up the library and walked across South Main Street and through the common to Main Street and the Swift River Country Store, a town fixture for the past hundred years. It sold everything from galoshes to canned goods and fresh vegetables to a decent selection of wine. The afternoon heat had eased but it was still warm when she headed back to the library with two bottles of pinot grigio, already chilled. Olivia would bring a bottle of some kind of red from a California winery owned by Noah Kendrick, Dylan’s best friend and founder of NAK, Inc., the high-tech entertainment business that had made them both fortunes. The only thing Phoebe knew for sure was that her choice of white wine wouldn’t be nearly as pricey as whatever red Olivia brought.
Having a friend fall for a wealthy Californian had its unexpected advantages.
Normally she’d have walked home but her visit with Maggie and Olivia meant she had her car. She got in, set her wine on the front seat next to her and shut her eyes a moment, listening to the rustle of leaves as a gentle breeze floated through the shade trees on the wide library lawn.
Finally she started her Subaru and turned off South Main onto Thistle Lane. The library stood on the corner. Thistle Lane led away from the common, connecting to a back road with views of the reservoir in the distance. On her trips to the library as a girl, Phoebe had dreamed of living on the quiet, tree-lined street, away from the chaotic life she had out in the country with her parents and younger sisters. Thistle Lane represented order, independence and, at least to a degree, prosperity.
In less than five minutes, she turned into her short paved driveway. An old American elm graced the corner of the yard next to hers, holding on against the ravages of Dutch elm disease, in part due to intervention by the town. It was a beautiful tree, a symbol of the past and yet very much part of her everyday world. When she bought her house eighteen months ago, she’d thought she was being practical, never mind that she was the only one to make an offer. The house was built in 1912 by one of the early directors of the library, then sold to a series of owners, until, finally, the town was forced to take possession when the heir to the last owner couldn’t be located and property taxes went into arrears.
Phoebe rolled up her car windows, shut off the engine and collected her wine bottles as she stepped out into the shade. With its new roof, furnace, windows, wiring and plumbing, the house was no longer a notch above a tear-down. It still needed a new kitchen and bathroom, but she had to save up before she tackled any more big projects. Right now, she was concentrating on some of the fun cosmetic work—paint, wallpaper, gardens and restoring flea-market and yard-sale finds.
With her painting skills and eye for color, Olivia had been a huge help, but The Farm at Carriage Hill and her new life with Dylan were creating uncertainties for her. Phoebe had welcomed having Maggie and then Olivia move back to Knights Bridge, but that didn’t mean more changes weren’t coming. Change was inevitable, Phoebe thought. Her own life was more settled than the lives of her sisters and most of her friends. Her job at the library was secure. She had no plans to move, go into business for herself or get involved with a man.
Five years from now, her life would likely look more or less as it did now.
“Just without an avocado-green refrigerator in my kitchen,” she muttered happily as she headed down the curving stone walk with her wine.
The narrow clapboards of her small house were painted classic white. At Olivia’s suggestion, Phoebe had chosen a warm, welcoming green for the front door. It was framed by pink roses that she’d pruned and trained to climb up the white-painted trellis by the porch steps. When she’d moved in, the yard was an overgrown mess. She didn’t have Olivia’s green thumb, but she’d nonetheless managed to save many of the shrubs and perennials that had come with the property.
As she started up the steps to the small, covered porch, she saw that her twin sisters had arrived ahead of her. They were seated on wicker chairs that Phoebe had reclaimed and painted white, adding cushions in a mix of pink, blue and white flowers. Ava and Ruby, at twenty-three the youngest of the O’Dunn sisters, were fraternal twins, but they were so much alike that people often assumed they were identical. In both appearance and temperament, they took after their late father, Patrick O’Dunn, an auburn-haired, green-eyed, gorgeous-looking dreamer, as hopelessly impractical as the widow he’d left behind almost ten years ago.
“Thanks for coming,” Phoebe said as she unlocked the front door. “Olivia and Maggie will be here any minute.”
“This is going to be so much fun,” Ruby said, tucking a pink rose blossom behind her ear. She had on a long black skirt and a white tank top, her short, wavy hair dyed a purple-black that made her skin seem even paler, more translucent. “We brought all our goodies. Makeup, wigs, hairpieces, curling iron, needles and thread. We’ve already done up a half-dozen masks. Three are simple. You’d be able to recognize whoever’s wearing them. Three are more elaborate. It’d be tougher to recognize who’s wearing them.”
Ava smiled. “We will not fail you.” She twirled a rose stem in her fingertips. Her hair was its natural reddish brown, trailing down her back in a loose ponytail. Her skirt, which came to just above her knees, was a deep, warm red that worked surprisingly well with her turquoise lace top. “A masquerade ball in Boston. It doesn’t get much fancier than that.”
Phoebe pushed open the door. “Dylan has extra tickets if you want to go.”
“I wish,” Ava said wistfully, tossing her rose over the porch rail into the grass. “We have to work, and classes start again next week.”
“Otherwise we’d go in a heartbeat,” Ruby added.
No doubt they would, Phoebe thought. “It does sound grand,” she said as she led them inside. “Maggie and Olivia are counting on your theatrical flair. What do you think of Maggie in the blue gown Grace Kelly wore in To Catch a Thief and Olivia in Audrey Hepburn’s black dress from Breakfast at Tiffany’s?”
Ava turned, intrigued. “Do you have the dresses?”
Phoebe nodded. “I have the dresses.”
“Oh, wow. Excellent. Ruby?”
“Grace’s icy-blue chiffon gown? Audrey’s little black dress?” Ruby laughed. “That’s fantastic.”
“I even have pearls and a cigarette holder,” Phoebe said.
“Where did you get them?” Ava asked.
“I’m thinking of including them in our vintage fashion show,” Phoebe said evasively. Her sisters followed her into the kitchen, where she put the wine in the refrigerator, a relic that, somehow, still worked.
Ava leaned against the counter, a cheap wood that Phoebe had painted creamy white, her first renovation when she’d moved in. “So, Phoebe,” Ava said, crossing her arms on her chest. “Have you decided what you’re wearing?”
Phoebe got out wineglasses and set them on the cracked Formica counter, sidestepping her sister’s question. The twins were in graduate school—Ava in New York, Ruby in Boston—but they were spending the summer in Knights Bridge, living at home to save money. They had student loans that would take years if not decades to pay off, and big dreams that might never pay off, but Phoebe hoped everything would work out for them, believed in them. She knew they felt the same way about her but suspected they had their doubts about her choices. Not her library work. Her solitary life—or what to her sisters seemed like a solitary life. Meaning she didn’t have a man.
She’d had one, once. She’d been on the road to marriage and a happy ending of her own, but it hadn’t worked out that way.
Everyone in town knew her story—Phoebe O’Dunn, jilted at twenty, within forty-eight hours of finding her father dead from a tree-trimming accident. She’d shielded her mother and sisters from the depth of her pain, but the shock had taken its toll. Broken hearts healed but that didn’t mean life was ever the same. Phoebe had deliberately shut the door on romance, at least for herself.
But it was fine, all fine, because she was fine. She loved her work, her family, her friends, her town. She couldn’t be more content than she was right now.
Ava looked out the window over the sink at the backyard flower garden, dominated now, in mid-August, by hollyhocks that ranged from soft white through three shades of pink to deep maroon. “You’re not going to the ball, are you, Phoebe?”
Phoebe changed her mind and decided to pour the wine now. She grabbed the pinot grigio out of the refrigerator and set it on the counter. “No, I’m not going,” she said matter-of-factly as she rummaged in the utensil drawer for a corkscrew. “Do you both want wine?”
Ruby plopped her tote bag onto a chair at the table. “Phoebe, you know you’d have a great time. You never go anywhere—”
“I have so much to do here. I’m taking vacation days before the end of the summer. I’ll go someplace then.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know. Someplace.” Phoebe held up a glass. “Wine?”
“Sure,” Ruby said with a sigh. “Just don’t think I’ve given up.”
“Me, either,” Ava said. “You should go to this ball tomorrow, Phoebe. Maybe you’ll change your mind when you see the masks Ruby and I made. Anyway, wine for me, too. I’ll get our goodies out of the car.”
“Hang on, I’ll help.” Ruby withdrew a square of golden-colored soap from her tote bag and tossed it to Phoebe. “Check it out while we’re setting up. It’s a new soap Mom, Olivia and Maggie are trying out. Mom wants your opinion.”
Olivia and Maggie were experimenting with making their own artisan goat’s milk soaps to sell at The Farm at Carriage Hill. If it worked, Elly O’Dunn’s goats could go from being an expensive and impractical hobby to earning their own keep. Phoebe was happy to do what she could to help and knew Ava and Ruby were, too, although Ava in particular wasn’t crazy about their mother’s goats—especially when she had to clean up after them. They all appreciated the mildness and purity of the soaps.
Phoebe took in the gentle lavender scent of the bar Ruby had tossed her. “It really is lovely, isn’t it?”
“Olivia’s already designed the labels,” Ruby said. “Dreams do come true, Phoebe. Olivia’s are.”
“I know. I want yours to come true, too.”
Ava stopped in the hall doorway. “What about your dreams?”
“My dream,” Phoebe said lightly, abandoning the soap for her wine, “is to see Maggie and Olivia all set for their charity ball. Go grab your stuff. I’ll get the dresses.”
* * *
Three hours, two and a half bottles of wine, a pot of vegetable curry and much laughter later, Phoebe was again alone in her kitchen. Olivia and Maggie had precise instructions, beautiful handmade masks and everything else they needed to transform themselves into their own versions of Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly.
The dresses had worked out even better than Phoebe had imagined.
The dresses.
Ava had recognized them first. “Phoebe, these aren’t like the dresses Audrey and Grace wore in Breakfast at Tiffany’s and To Catch a Thief. They are the dresses.”
“Close copies,” Phoebe had said, then again deflected questions about where she’d gotten them.
She turned out the light in the kitchen and walked down a short hall to a small back room. For most of the past eighteen months, she’d used it to store paint supplies, tools and junk she’d collected from the rest of the house but wasn’t sure what to do with. Then, on a rainy night earlier that summer, she’d cleaned everything out, wiped down the walls, mopped the floor and considered the possibilities. A guestroom? A study? A spa bathroom?
In another life, it would have made a great baby’s room.
She felt the same pang of regret she’d felt that night, but it was ridiculous. If her father hadn’t died and her steady college boyfriend hadn’t given her an impossible ultimatum, she wouldn’t have ended up on Thistle Lane at all, with or without babies.
Florida.
She’d have ended up in Florida.
She tore off the dry-cleaning plastic to a third dress she’d had cleaned along with the Grace Kelly and Audrey Hepburn dresses. It hung on a hook in the back room.
She stepped back, marveling at the creativity and the workmanship of the gown. It was Edwardian, one of the period pieces in the hidden room. Its creator had chosen a warm, rich brown silk satin, decorated it with sparkling beads, lace and embroidery, all in a matching brown. It had an empire waist, a deep square neckline and loose, belled lacy sleeves.
And there was a matching hat.
It was as romantic and beautiful a dress as any Phoebe had ever seen.
A gown for a princess.
She tried to shake off the thought. She’d had too much wine. Just two glasses, but she felt...well, a little reckless.
And why not?
After all, what could be more perfect for a masquerade ball than a gorgeous, mysterious dress from a secret attic room?