Authors: Mariah Stewart
“Yes. The sooner the better. That’s why I’m here.”
“Well, keep in mind that it can’t be any sooner than six months. I probably don’t need to remind you that your mother’s will specified that you had to live in the house for a minimum of six months before you could sell it or any of the contents; otherwise, you forfeit everything and all the proceeds from the sale of the property will go to the charities she listed in her will.”
“I’ve read the will”—Ellie nodded—“and the lawyers in New York made that very clear.”
“I can put you in touch with a Realtor when you’re ready. Now, there might be some minor repairs that need to be done or perhaps some upgrades you might want to think about before you put it on the market. There’s been no real updating in maybe thirty years, so I’m sure it all looks very dated. I can send Cameron O’Connor over to talk to you about all that. He’s actually the one who’s been taking care of the place.”
“He’s the handyman?”
“You could call him that.” Jesse appeared to be suppressing a smile. “Now, here are the papers you need to take to the bank in order to have the accounts moved into your name.”
“But if I put my real name on the accounts, then the people at the bank will know …” She frowned. So much for her desire for anonymity.
Jesse tapped a pen on the desktop and appeared to be considering other options.
“We can do this: we can maintain the accounts as they are now, in the name of your mother’s estate. As executor, I’ve been signing the checks on behalf of the firm. I can continue to do so until the house is sold. You can submit any bills you have for repairs or whatever to me, and I’ll pay them. If you need cash, we can arrange that as well. We can work under the pretext that the estate has agreed to pay for any repairs to the property as part of your agreement of sale.”
“Perfect.” She sighed with relief.
Jesse gathered all of the papers, slid them into a brown legal envelope, and tied the strings to secure it.
“Here you go, Ms. Ryder.” He handed it over to her.
“It’s Ellie,” she told him.
“Ellie, I wish you all the best.” He paused, then added, “I hope you’ll think about what I said, and that you’ll give the folks around here a chance. Everyone isn’t out to hurt you.”
“I’ll try to keep that in mind.” She rose, the large envelope under her arm. “Hopefully, I won’t be here long enough to find out. Well, no longer than six months, anyway.”
Jesse opened the door for her and led her into the foyer.
“If you need anything, anything at all, let us know and we’ll do whatever we can to help,” he told her.
“Thank you, Jesse. I can’t even put into words how much I appreciate everything you’ve done.”
“You’re welcome. Maybe we’ll run into you at Cuppachino for coffee one of these days. It’s the place where all the locals gather every morning.”
“I don’t know that I could handle one of those cupcakes every day.”
“They are lethal, but I’ll be sure to tell Brooke—she’s my fiancée—that you enjoyed it.”
“Please do.” Ellis craned her neck to see if Violet was at her desk so she could say good-bye, but the room was empty.
Jesse held the front door open and stepped outside with her. “Glad to see the sun came out. It’s been a little on the gloomy side the past couple of days.”
“It’s still chilly,” Ellis noted.
“November moving headfirst into winter,” he said. “Hope you brought some warm clothes.”
“I did, thanks.”
Jesse accompanied her to the end of the brick walk, his hands in his pocket. “Check in from time to time and let me know how things are going.”
“Will do. Thanks again for everything, Jesse.”
He nodded and waited at the sidewalk while she walked to her car, then waved before turning and going back into the building.
Nice guy, she told herself, and said a prayer of thanks that her mother’s family had selected such a firm to represent them. She was well aware that another attorney might have been willing to sell her out. She could see the headlines now:
Daughter of Clifford Chapman Found Living Under Assumed Name in Small Maryland Town!
King of Fraud’s daughter dumps his name, hides out on Eastern Shore!
Sad but true.
She slid behind the wheel and started the car. Following the directions Jesse had printed out for her, she drove around the square and made a left to head back to Charles Street. Once on Charles, she made another left and drove back through the center of town. Two blocks past the light, she took a right onto Bay View Road and drove all the way to its unpaved end. The number
1
was painted in dark green on a white mailbox that looked surprisingly new. She stopped in the middle of the street and stared at her inheritance.
The house seemed to have nothing in common with the others she’d passed on her travels through town, those imposing Colonial and Federal and Queen Anne styles that appeared on every block. This house was set at an odd angle to the road as if to gaze out upon the Bay and looked like an overgrown cottage, with misplaced gables here and there. The front porch didn’t look original but it was impossible to tell when it had been added. It stretched across the entire front of the house and sagged a little on one side. The white clapboard siding could use a new coat of paint and the shutters were faded. Three brick chimneys—one of which listed slightly to the side—protruded from the roof. At the end of the driveway—which was covered in what appeared to be crushed shells—stood an outbuilding, a garage or a carriage house, the windows of which had been painted black. The shades in every window of the house had been pulled down, making it look as if it had something to hide. Two sides of the property were bordered by some of the
tallest trees she’d ever seen. All in all, the impression was far from inviting, and yet something about the scene felt oddly familiar.
Like it or not, this was home.
She eased the sedan into the driveway and sat for several long moments before bursting into tears.
E
VENTUALLY
, Ellie told herself, she was going to have to get out of the car.
“Why delay the pain any longer …?”
She opened the car door and walked across the crushed shells to a path that wound its way leisurely from the driveway to the front steps. Her fingers traced the shape of the key inside the envelope Jesse had given her as she approached the porch. She ripped open the envelope, took out the key, and stuck the paper into her pocket.
“Here goes.”
She fitted the key into the lock and turned it, pushed open the door, and stepped into a square foyer. The house was dark, as much because of the approaching dusk as because all the shades were pulled down to the windowsills. In spite of the chill outside, the house was warm—
Thank you, Jesse
—and very still, as if it had been holding its breath, waiting for her.
Ellie stood for a very long moment in the hushed foyer, her eyes adjusting to the dim light. The stairs to the second floor stood directly in front of her. Straight ahead to the left of the stairs was a long hall that led
clear through to the back door, which also had a shade tightly pulled. There was a room to her right and another to her left. The furniture in both was covered with white sheets, giving what she could see of the downstairs the appearance of a ghostly landscape.
“Well.” She spoke aloud to break the silence. What to do first, now that she was here?
After some deliberation, she walked into the room to her left and lifted the shades from the four windows—two facing front, one on either side of a fireplace. Paintings on the walls were draped with fabric and it took Ellie a moment to realize that the only things in the room that weren’t covered were the carpets and the andirons on the hearth. She backed out of the room as if afraid of disturbing it, and went across the hall, where she found more of the same. There was no way to disguise that this was the dining room. A crystal chandelier, its ovoid drops covered with dust, hung over a long flat surface that lay beneath the expected white sheet. Against one wall, furniture lay hidden beneath more sheeting, and a peek under the draping on two smaller shapes revealed a sideboard and a tea cart. Peeling back the thin quilt from the side of the tallest piece of furniture, she found an empty china cupboard, the former contents having left round marks in the dust on the shelves. The placement of the windows and the fireplace exactly mirrored the room across the hall. The architect, she thought, clearly appreciated symmetry.
A feeling of déjà vu swept over her, and was promptly dismissed. Her mother must have described
it all to her, she reasoned, and somehow she’d retained the images.
A door on the back wall swung open with a push and led to a butler’s pantry that had glass-doored cabinets on one wall, and an expanse of counter with a small soapstone sink on the other. The cabinets were crammed with dishes, plates and bowls, and cups and saucers, all stacked haphazardly on top of one other.
The kitchen, a large square room, lay behind the pantry. Ellie pulled up the shades and looked for a switch for the clumsy overhead light fixture. Near the back door were the controls for a security system that obviously wasn’t on, and the black push-button switch that served to turn on the light.
She wasn’t sure the room hadn’t looked better in the dark.
Chipped Formica in a truly terrible shade of yellow covered the counters. On the floor, there was dark linoleum of indeterminable age and a dreadful mustardy color. Wooden cabinets were built in along one long wall.
“I’ll bet there isn’t a thing in this room that isn’t older than I am.” She paused to consider the refrigerator, which looked much newer than everything else. “Well, maybe
that
. But not much else.”
She walked to the stove. It, too, appeared newer than she’d expected. Not brand-new, but not 1950s, either. Curious, she thought.
A table with four chairs stood against the side wall under the windows. When she raised the shade, the last bit of afternoon sun spilled across the floor, high-lighting
the cracks in the old linoleum and the faded paper and paint on the walls.
Ellie stood in the center of the room, her hands on her hips, feeling more than a little bewildered, and stared at the wallpaper, blue-and-white-patterned teacups on a background that was probably once white but was now yellowed with age. She’d seen that same paper—those same teacups—somewhere, but couldn’t remember where.
She went to the back door and unlocked the dead bolt, which looked relatively new compared to just about everything else she’d seen so far, then stepped outside onto a small porch where she found nothing but a stack of wood. Like the shutters and the downstairs rooms, the porch needed a fresh coat of paint.
The yard was much deeper and wider than it looked from the house. Remnants of garden beds ran along the porch, the right side of the property, and the outbuilding—carriage house? garage?—that faced the driveway. A large shed with a door flanked by a window on each side stood in the back corner. She’d leave investigating that for another day. And there were those trees, huge things with long bare branches.
Bare branches where there’d been leaves not too long ago—but where were the leaves? She stepped off the porch and walked the length of the yard. She thought of the lawns she’d passed on her way into town, where the fallen leaves had carpeted the ground. Not here, though. She looked up at the trees and wondered if they were dead. She reached up to break a twig from the closest maple, and found it supple, not dry as one might expect from a dead tree. So where were the leaves?
A trip around the yard revealed a thick layer covering the flower beds.
Birdseed on the ground under the feeders that hung from the branches of several dogwoods meant that someone had filled them.
Raked leaves. Filled bird feeders. Wood stacked near the back door.
She glanced at the house nervously. Could someone be inside, hiding, perhaps, on the second floor? A squatter, maybe, someone who knew the house was empty, had been empty for years?
There was an outside entrance to the basement, double wooden doors that were God knows how old. Maybe …
Ellie took a deep breath and walked to the doors and gave one a good yank—but they didn’t budge.
“Okay, locked is good.”
She went back up the steps and stared at the pile of wood. Must have been Jesse, she decided. Of course. Hadn’t he said they’d been looking out for the place? She hadn’t thought that would mean raking the leaves into the flower beds and keeping the bird feeders filled, but those were nice touches. She exhaled and went back inside, making certain she relocked the door.
She walked softly on leather-soled flats back to the foyer. At the bottom of the steps she stood, as if listening, waiting to see if there was any sound from the second floor. Convinced there were no squatters—surely Jesse would have noticed—she climbed the steps slowly, almost on tiptoe. At the top of the stairs was a landing and a hall that, much like the one below, led to the back of the house. She counted the
doors—there were five, all closed. Her hand paused at the one closest to her before grasping and turning it. She pushed it open and peered inside.
“More sheets. Where,” she wondered, “did they find so many sheets?”
The wallpaper was peeling from one corner, the flowers fading to the palest of yellows. She picked up a strip that had flaked off and fallen to the floor. The flowers, like the teacups on the paper in the kitchen, seemed to ring a very distant bell in her memory. She slipped the paper into her pocket and left the room.
One by one she opened the other doors, took a long studied look inside before closing them again. There were four good-size bedrooms and one large bath accessed from the hall. Two of the bedrooms had their own baths, all were fully furnished and had closets. Ellie resisted the temptation to open those doors, not sure of what she’d find hanging there.
She stood on the landing, looking at the doors she’d moments earlier opened then closed. She had to pick one to sleep in, and she needed to do that now so she could find sheets—
no problem there
—and hopefully, blankets. All of the bed linens would have to be washed, of course. Did this house have a washer and a dryer? She hadn’t seen one on the first floor. Perhaps in the basement.