The House on Blackberry Hill: Jewell Cove #1 (Jewel Cove) (16 page)

He stood and gaped at her. “What? Are you crazy?”

“I think there’s something underneath it.”

“Hopefully not rotted joists,” he grumbled.

“I was going to try to do it last night, but I knew that if I wrecked the board it would be wrecking the whole floor.”

“You’re damned right it would.” He frowned. “What makes you think that there’s something underneath there?”

She already felt ridiculous for mentioning the whole “house is haunted” thing. If she told him about last night he’d think she was completely out to lunch. She shrugged. “Just a hunch.”

“You’re willing to chance wrecking this flooring on a hunch? I could never replace it, Abby. Not and have it match. You do understand that, right? If I wreck this one board, it means replacing the whole floor.”

She looked up at him and nodded. “Which is why I didn’t go looking for a pry bar last night. Will you do it? It won’t get ruined if you do it.”

He shook his head. “You are the strangest woman I’ve ever met.”

“I know.” It wasn’t the first time she’d been called odd. She’d spent a good part of her childhood with her head in a book or in the clouds. Oddball came with the territory.

“If I say no, you’re going to do it when I’m not here, aren’t you?”

She smiled. “Probably. And then you’ll be sorry.”

He sighed heavily. “All right then. Let me get some things. Why don’t you…” His gaze ran down the loose material of her nightshirt, which she suddenly realized was quite thin. “Get dressed.”

He disappeared out the door and down the stairs. Hurriedly she dressed in a pair of denim shorts and a T-shirt and went to the bathroom to brush her teeth and pull a hair band into her hair. By the time he came back up, she was coming out of the bedroom looking perfectly tidy. The way she should have looked when he’d first arrived.

She waited while Tom used a small pry bar and claw hammer to lift the board, working it a bit at a time to keep from cracking the old wood. Impatient, Abby shifted her weight from side to side, trying to peer into the gap. Finally Tom lifted the other end and the nails let go with a squeak. “All in one piece,” he said, relief in his voice. “And you were right.” He looked up, amazement marking his features. “There’s something in there.”

It was too crazy. Abby knelt beside Tom and watched as he set the plank to one side. A small box was nestled in the gap. Carefully Abby reached in and removed it, kneeling on the bare floor, ignoring how hard the wood felt on her kneecaps.

She lifted the lid on the box.

“Oh, Tom.” The first item was a smaller version of the picture that was downstairs on the mantel. Edith and a baby. She turned it over and could still make out the slightly smudged ink on the back. “
Edith and Iris.
Tom, it’s my grandmother.” She touched the picture reverently. “She’s beautiful, isn’t she? And look at all that blond hair.”

Tom knelt beside her. “What else is in there?”

Abby reached in and took out a lock of fine, pale hair, tied with a thread at each end. “Do you suppose it’s Iris’s?”

“It could be.” He lifted a watch out of the box. “This is very nice.”

“It’s a man’s watch. Elijah’s, do you think?” Tom turned it over but there were no markings on it.

He shrugged. “It must be. But why would this stuff all be under the floor?”

Because Edith had wanted to keep it hidden. Abby knew that, but she didn’t know why.

At the bottom of the box was a small packet of letters. Aware of the fragile paper, Abby unfolded the first one cautiously. “This one is dated 1943. That was when Elijah was in the Navy.” Excitement ran through her words. Had she just found love letters from Elijah to his wife at home? “Listen to this.”

She read the letter aloud.

My dearest Edith,

As I sit here belowdecks, my thoughts are of you and how much I hated to leave you. This ship takes me far away from you and Marian, away to another world that seems impossible to imagine. The only thing that keeps me going is knowing that one day this war will be over and, God willing, I will be able to return to your side.

She looked up and met Tom’s gaze. “He did love her.”

“Did you think he didn’t?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. A few things people have said. A feeling. But this letter … it was written by a man who loved her very much.”

She looked down and continued reading, her voice soft.

I know we can’t be together. I know how impossible it all seems right now. I have a job to do and so do you. But that doesn’t stop me from telling you how much I love you and long to be with you again. You are in my every breath, and in my dreams I hold you in my arms. What we had … what we have … is too beautiful to be wrong.

Stay strong, my love, and when this is over I will see you again. Until then,

Always yours,

Kristian

Abby looked up at Tom in confusion. “Kristian? Who on earth is Kristian?”

Tom looked down at the letter and back into her eyes. “Kristian,” he said quietly, “is probably the reason this was hidden under the floor.”

“Edith was having an affair.”

“Looks like.”

“But with whom? Who was Kristian?”

“Maybe the rest of the letters will tell you.”

Abby sat down on the floor and crossed her legs. Something about the date at the top of the letter kept drawing her attention. In 1943, Elijah came home, just ten months before Iris had been born. Iris. Abby picked up the picture of Edith and the baby hidden with the stash under the floor. The possibility hit her square in the chest. Good God, had Iris been Kristian’s daughter and not Elijah’s? It would explain so much. And if Elijah had known …

Tom sat down beside her and took the letter from her fingers. “This is dated February of ’43, and judging by the tone of the letter, it sounds like Edith’s affair with this Kristian was already ending. Edith wouldn’t have been pregnant with Iris yet, not if Iris was born in 1944. That is what you were thinking, right?”

She nodded, somehow let down. “I guess I let the romantic mystery of it all sweep me away.”

“Oh, I don’t know.” His smile was slightly crooked. “This seems pretty crazy to me. At least you can’t say the house is boring. In a place like this, family secrets are almost a given, aren’t they?”

She smiled back, somehow relieved that the dates didn’t add up.

“Why don’t you read the letters in the garden? It’s warm out and it’ll get you out of the fumes.”

“Oh, right. You’re starting the painting today.” She tucked the box under her arm and pushed herself to her feet. “And I’ve kept you from it.”

“I don’t mind. It was kind of exciting. There’s a lot of history in these old houses, but most of it gets lost. I still don’t know how you knew to look here, though. Heck of a hunch.”

“I was walking around, thinking about how to furnish this room, and the board creaked. It kind of felt like there was … I don’t know, no support under it.” She smiled weakly, knowing she was a terrible liar. “What can I say? I read a lot as a kid. I used to dream up stuff like this in my imagination all the time.”

She hoped she’d sounded convincing. Because admitting she’d followed Edith up the stairs and into the nursery before she disappeared would not exactly make Abby the picture of perfect mental health.

Tom seemed to accept her explanation as he too got to his feet. “Well, I’d better get to it. I’ll get to that switch today, too. Don’t want you to always be in the dark.”

“Thanks, Tom.” She was hugely relieved that things were back to seminormal after last night. While Tom was crazy-attractive and kissed like a devil, she knew deep down that their attraction could only end in heartbreak … for her. Even if Tom were on the market, she wasn’t looking for a relationship. Relationships were messy, with emotions involved and the potential to be hurt at the end. And this
would
end. She wanted to find out about her family but after that the house was going up for sale. She had no reason to keep it.

Tom replaced the floorboard as Abby went downstairs and made some toast and tea for breakfast. She heard the tapping of his hammer, replacing the nails and locking away the secret compartment, now empty.

She sat in the garden among the tangle of shrubs and rosebushes and sipped her tea. Looking down at the box in her hands, Abby couldn’t imagine the meager contents of the box would take too much time to go through.

She picked up the letters and untied the faded ribbon holding them together. The paper was thin but the words were easily discerned. As Abby read the stack, there was no doubt in her mind. Edith had been having an affair. Each letter was filled with love and tenderness, and the emotions expressed on the written pages made her feel slightly like a voyeur, peeking into private moments.

At last Abby came to the final letter in the box. More worn than the others, the last letter was short and completely devoid of the flowery language Abby had come to associate with Kristian and Edith’s romance; the scribbled lines caused her to put down her teacup and a chill washed over her skin despite the heat of the sun.

I’m coming home. Wait for me,
meine Liebling.
The three of us will finally be together.

Her brow puckered at the endearment that was written in what she suspected was German. Her gaze skimmed to the top of the page once more as a strange feeling washed over her. It was dated October of 1943.

Ten months before Iris’s birth.

C
HAPTER
11

Tom loved the satiny feeling of wood beneath his fingers. It was almost like it was still alive and he treated it that way, deferring to each species’ particular characteristics. Right now he was working with a smooth, hard oak, something rugged and timeless. His plans were for an entertainment unit, stained a dark walnut, with doors that would hide away the television and components. When closed, it would resemble a wardrobe and melt into the décor of the library without a problem.

Of course there was a chance she wouldn’t want it, in which case he’d maybe sell it. That’s what he did with most of his handiwork.

He kept telling himself that, especially when he started to feel rather uncomfortable about the fact that he was making a piece of furniture for
her
. Or when he started examining his motives for doing so. Did he have feelings for Abby? It appeared he did, on some level. He wouldn’t have kissed her otherwise. Wouldn’t be thinking about her all the time.

Still, it wasn’t like he was in love with her. And the piece was as much for the
house
as it was for her, wasn’t it?

He’d only ever made furniture for a woman once before, though, and that little fact nagged at him like a black fly bite that needed scratching. He’d been starting out then, learning his craft, and he’d made a coffee table out of pine for Erin. He’d pictured giving it to her and then making end tables to match and putting them in the apartment they would share …

He’d been pretty young and naïve back then. And when Erin had married Josh, Tom had taken an axe and found great pleasure in smashing the table to splinters, then burning it on the brush pile.

He frowned, looked at his measuring tape, and then measured again just to be sure before taking the piece of wood to the table saw to cut.

The shrill whine of the saw was fading and the discarded end thrown into a pile when he looked up and saw Rick Sullivan standing in the doorway to his workshop.

“Hey,” he said, pushing his safety glasses to the top of his head. “What brings you out here?”

Rick appeared sober for once, and Tom was glad. Everyone in town knew that Rick had struggled since coming back from the Middle East. No one was allowed to hail him as a hero—he’d turn around and walk away from any group or individual who tried to portray him as one. He had a prosthetic where his left hand used to be.

But Rick only needed his right hand to lift a bottle, trying to drown out the demons who chased him. Tom had more patience than most with Rick because he understood how easy it could be to get pulled under when despair took over. That didn’t extend to making excuses for him all the time.

Rick came farther inside the shop. “What are you building this time?”

“An entertainment unit. Just getting started on it, though.”

“The Foster place must be keeping you busy.” Rick picked up a piece of bird’s-eye maple and examined it, then put it back down again.

“Pretty busy, yeah. But I still like doing this in my downtime. It … calms my brain.”

Rick’s gaze met his, and understanding flowed between the two of them.

“Thanks for the drive a few weeks ago,” Rick offered, putting his right hand in his pocket.

“I didn’t mind.” Tom wasn’t about to deliver a lecture on drinking. He knew if he did, Rick would turn around and walk out.

“We go way back, don’t we, Tom?”

There was something in Rick’s voice that made Tom pause. He looked over at his friend. Rick had let his hair grow a little after leaving the Marines, losing that jarhead look, and he didn’t have the big build of the Arseneault men. Just a shade under six feet, he fit into the “lean and tough” category. Since coming home, he’d lost some of that wiry physicality, but the hard lines in his face remained. He looked like he’d seen far too much for a man his age.

“Way back to first grade.” Tom grinned, pulling over a sawhorse and sitting on it. “When Jimmy Dawes cleaned my clock for touching his Spider-Man lunch box and you punched him and told him to leave me alone.”

Rick grinned. “Jimmy needed to get over himself. Still does.”

Tom laughed. “Pull up a pew, Rick, and tell me what’s on your mind.”

Rick grabbed a second sawhorse and perched on the seat. “Couple of things. First of all, is it going to be a problem if I come to this shindig your cousin’s planning for Saturday night? She said no, but I knew you’d tell me straight.”

“If Sarah invited you, she wants you to come.”

“It’s not Sarah I’m worried about. Jess hates me. And let’s face it. You and me—we’re friends. Josh and I are friends. Sara invited me to be peacemaker, I think.”